Making citizen science sensor platforms and their measured data accessible to GIS users can be a challenging task. Data has to be discovered, downloaded, and converted before adding it to a GIS project. To facilitate integration and enhance interoperability between sensor platforms and GIS, this work proposes a method for accessing sensor platforms directly through GIS. Our approach implements selected parts of the OGC GeoServices REST API directly on a sensor platform, thus making it a first class node on the Internet of Things. Users can get a live view of what is measured in the field in their GIS.

1. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform
as a Live Link
from GIS to the
Internet of Things
Dustin Demuth, Arne Bröring, Albert Remke
AGILE 2013, Leuven, 16th May 2013

2. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Citizen Science is growing...
Examples:
Quake Catcher Network
AirQualityEgg
Safecast‘s bGeigie

3. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Challenge
How to integrate collected
Citizen Science data with GIS?

4. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
3 Data Sharing Approaches
Sensor 1
Web Portal GIS
Sensor n
Sensor 1
OGC
Service
GIS
Sensor n
Sensor 1 Service
GIS
Sensor n Service
runs on
publishes to
publishes to
A
B
C

5. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
WebThing
Goal: Apply Internet / Web of Things Concept
HTTP
HTTP
Sensor
Platform
as a:
GIS

6. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Arduino Mega
Low-cost
Ethernet
Sensors
GPS
runs on
GIS
interacts
with accesses
Service
Approach – Hardware Design
Micro Controller
+ SD Card Power
Supply

7. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Approach – Software Design
Looking for protocol ...
– Well-defined / standardized
– Lightweight
– “Geo/GIS - enabled”
GeoServices REST API
– Currently going through OGC
standardization process
– Simple WS interface + JSON
– Supported by ESRI‘s JS
clients
– More ESRI software to come
– Also other vendors?

8. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Approach – Software Design
GeoServices REST API
– Designed to be implemented on mature GIS server
– Only portions of Feature Service realized here
– Usage of Feature Service data elements:
• Layer :=> Sensor
• Feature :=> Measurement

9. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Approach – Software Design
Implementation of GeoServices‘ Feature Service
http://sensebox.org/geoservices
– Description of service and array of all layers
http://sensebox.org/geoservices/<layer>
– Description of a specified layer (e.g. bounding box)
http://sensebox.org/geoservices/<layer>/query
– Array of all features of a specified layer (e.g. feature Ids)
http://sensebox.org/geoservices/<layer>/<feature>
– Description of a feature of a specified layer (e.g. attribute values)

10. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Approach – Software Design
/geoservices
Read sensors regularly
List of all layers (= sensors)
/geoservices/thermo1/query
List of all features (= measurements)
/geoservices/thermo1/m123
Description of feature
http://<some IP>

11. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Approach – Software Design
Encoding of a feature:
{
"geometry" : {
"point" : { "x" : 7.652118, "y" : 51.934969 },
"spatialReference" : { "wkid" : 4326 }
},
"attributes" : {
"ObjectID" : "m123" ,
"Time" : "2013-05-16T10:30:03Z" ,
"Value" : “15"
}
}

12. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Approach – Software Design
Feature Service – Filtering capabilities:
– /geoservices/thermo1/query
?geometryType=GeometryPoint
&geometry=7,52
features of layer ‘thermo1’ which are on point (7 , 52)
– Further parameters:
– where, returnGeometry, inSR, outSR,
spatialRel,relationParam, objectIds, outFields,
returnIdsOnly
However, due to processing and memory constraints
filtering is not implemented.

13. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Application of the ‘SenseBox‘
AirQuality SenseBox Traffic SenseBox

14. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Discussion
Performance
– Limited processing speed
– Limited memory (main memory: 12 kB, program memory: 256 kB)
– No multithreading
• Only one client at a time
• Can cause lost measurements
Energy-consumption
– Higher demand, due to persistent internet connection
API support
– Not yet widespread – only ESRI JavaScript clients

15. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Conclusions and Outlook
Way of exposing sensor platforms as first-class citizens
on the Web accessible via GIS
Direct & live link from GIS into the real-world
Limitations regarding performance & energy consumption
Implementation is easy to deploy and to adapt
In future:
– Move to more powerful microcomputers such as Raspberry-Pi
– Enable remote configuration of sensor platforms

16. enviroCar.org

17. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
enviroCar - Overview
Gathering automobile sensor data using OBD2 (~ 20 €)
Analysis of collected data on the server
plug in
Read out
(via Bluetooth)
upload

18. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
enviroCar - Analysis of CO2 Emmissions

20. A Citizen Science Sensor Platform as a Live Link from GIS to the Internet of Things - AGILE 2013
Questions?
Thank you!
Arne Bröring
broering@52north.org
Project website: http://52north.org/senseBox