Sensor information framework: Using workflow to integrate distributed sensor services

Recently, sensors and sensor networks are receiving much attention due to the growing number of small, inexpensive sensor nodes with advanced sensing capabilities. These “smart” sensors enable sensor networks and Sensor Webs to better monitor environmental variables and to share the resulting sensor data in real-time. The advancement in sensor technology also poses new challenges due to the increased number of distributed sensors, the increased amount of heterogeneous sensor data, and the sensor services that must interoperate in this dynamic environment with bandwidth, power, time, and computational power constraints. In this work, we present an approach to using the workflow technology on a service-oriented information framework to provide state-of-the-art mechanisms to access, integrate, analyze, and visualize distributed sensor data. We demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of this information framework on implementing weather station sensor services based on the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Observation Service (SOS) standard.