Pervasive data sharing as an enabler for mobile citizen sensing systems

Today, users can use their personal devices for a wide range of applications and services, such as controlling other devices, monitoring human physiological signals, and accessing information while on the move. Due to the communication and sensing capability of personal and wearable devices, their pervasive deployment and use may lead to an improvement of social and personal welfare by exploiting novel mobile citizen sensing systems. However, the pervasiveness of such large-scale sensing systems is only possible if devices are able to share sensing data independent of the available communication infrastructure, their location, and applications making use of the collected data. This article describes a set of paradigms that should be considered to build pervasive data sharing systems, and proposes a node architecture to implement them.