Sensor Data Bus

Overview

The wealth of data available from sensors, satellites, and Internet services has created a glut of information that is often too vast for a researcher to adequately capture or comprehend in a simplistic data model. Multidisciplinary research that uses environmental data—such as research on the impacts of climate change—requires scientists to be able to connect disparate datasets in order to see the big picture, and they can ill afford the time and resources required to create these interconnections in a project-by-project, ad hoc manner.

Capturing and disseminating varied data efficiently so it is easily usable by researchers requires a range of expertise, from deploying sensors in the field to managing real-time data to developing nuanced database architectures. The RENCI Sensor Data Bus project built on RENCI’s lessons learned from prior projects designed to capture, aggregate, and disseminate environmental data to create a unique data framework that brought together and organized disparate environmental sensor information and disseminated it to the research community.

SDB aggregated sensor data on precipitation, flooding, winds, and other weather phenomena and provided interfaces and open-standard Web services that promoted data interoperability, platform independence, and robust delivery methods for all kinds of spatiotemporal data.

The SDB implements open standards using advanced and emerging features of the Microsoft platform. RENCI-provided open source license services include the following:

  • .NET class library and web service implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
  • Environmental Database model (EnviroDB) for capturing spatiotemporal data of point, trajectory, and coverage types
  • WaterML (WaterOneFlow) web services
  • SOAP and RESTful services
  • Data mining and analysis services for EnviroDB repositories
  • Web user interfaces for EnviroDB repositories
  • Sensor data management and hosting for scientific collaborations

Project Team

  • John McGee (Project Leader)
  • Vijay Dantuluri
  • Oleg Kapeljushnik
  • Michael Stealey

Partners