Intelligent sensors — Why they are so important for future ocean observing systems

The complexity of installations in the oceans to carry out observations on specific processes and for detecting long-term trends have grown significantly in the past years. This applies also to the type and number of sensors that are in use in observing systems. In these days, sensors shall be compatible to different platforms that are in use like floats, gliders or moorings, and accordingly also different data acquisition systems. Facilitating the integration process in existing or newly established observing systems comes with a real benefit for the operators and is important for the broader application of different sensors. However, how to achieve the goals is under debate. The most serious obstacle for all initiatives is the willingness of stakeholders to adopt a strategy and, even more so, to adopt a specific architecture to enable interoperability across platforms and observing systems. Therefore, the situation at this point in time is characterized by the fact that parallel approaches have been developed (IEEE 1451, the OGC set of standards, etc.) that are ready to be evaluated but still lacking the support by the community. Therefore it seems to be a good time to consider and to agree on the implementation of interoperability arrangements. These and related aspects shall be discussed in this paper.