Presentation given by Chris Higgins at EnviroInfo & ICT4S 2015 workshop, in Copenhagen

1. COBWEB
EnviroInfo & ICT4S 2015,
Workshop - Infrastructures and Platforms
for Environmental Crowd Sensing and
Big Data,
Copenhagen,
9th Sept, 2015
Chris Higgins
chris.higgins@ed.ac.uk
Sta

2. Introduction to COBWEB
• Research Project: Funded under the European
Commission’s Framework Programme 7
• Started Nov 2012 for 4 years (Month 35 of 48)
• First demonstrator completed and tested during
the 2015 field season
• Why?
– GPS enabled, internet connected mobile devices
now ubiquitous
– Lots of potential, eg, can citizen sourced
environmental data be useful for decision
making?

3. Citizen Observatory Web
• Generic crowdsourcing infrastructure
– A toolkit which can be downloaded and used
in multiple scenarios
• Data which supports policy
• Address data quality issues
• Open standards

4. Project Partners

5. UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves
Sites of excellence to foster
harmonious integration of people and
nature for sustainable development
through participation, knowledge
sharing, poverty reduction and human
well-being improvements, cultural
values and society's ability to cope
with change, thus contributing to the
Millennium Development Goals

6. COBWEB Biosphere Reserves
Biosffer Dyfi Biosphere
Mount Olympus
Gorge of Samaria
Wadden See & Hallig islands

7. Dyfi Biosphere Reserve #1
www.biosfferdyfi.org.uk

8. Dyfi Biosphere Reserve #2
Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right (2013)
©CountrysideCouncilforWales.Allrightsreserved.

9. Co-design

10. Co-design – Snowdonia National Park
• Japanese Knotweed - Fallopia japonica
• Giant Knotweed – Fallopia sachalinensis
• Hybrid knotweed – Fallopia x bohemica

11. Co-design – RSPB
• Domenlas Saltmarsh
– Survey vegetation
– Use quadrats
– Soil salinity levels
– Weather conditions
– Look at reversion process
• Covert Coch Peatbog
– Survey vegetation
– Use quadrats
– Soil moisture
– Grazing history
Janetbaxter.co.uk

12. Co-Design - Penparcau Community Forum

13. Co-Design - Penparcau Community Forum
• Temperature
• Humidity
• Wind speed
• Wind direction
• Pressure
• Precipitation
In situ sensors

14. Usability Testing

15. Not just apps…
A number of demonstrator mobile phone
applications
– Exactly what, deliberately left open and
subject to discussion with community
3 pilot case study areas:
1. Validating earth
observation products
2. Biological monitoring
3. Flooding

16. COBWEB Framework

17. Key components at different TRL’s
• Conflation
• QA workflow editor
• QA WPS/services
• Sensor networks
• GeoNetwork/Portal
• Middleware
• Authoring tool/Survey designer
• Apps
• User management and privacy
• Access control
• Authentication

18. The app itself
Key features
• Capture information
– Images
– Audio
– Text
– Location
• High quality background maps
• Saved maps for use “offline”
• Custom data collection forms
• Manual location correction

19. View COBWEB Portal

20. Join COBWEB Portal

21. Customise your own app for your survey

22. Customise your own app for your survey

23. Customise your own app for your survey

24. Citizen captures data on their phone

25. Approach to QA
• Quality Assurance: complex problem and often use
case specific:
– Internal quality (metrics)
– External quality (fit for purpose)
• A generic system that can be easily customised to fit
new use cases, based on standards
• Understanding data quality is likely to require a
combination of approaches and tests, the system is
designed to enable this
• As quality requirements are use case specific, the
quality control tests are configurable to utilise a wide
variety of datasets and parameters

26. Classifying quality: Seven pillars
Pillar Example Test Notes
Pillar 1 – Location Based
services
Assessment of spatial
accuracy – estimate from a
mobile device and number
of satellites
Tests often carried out on
the mobile device
Pillar 2 – Cleaning Removal of junk data via
an attribute text check
Very lightweight, can flag
or remove malicious entries
Pillar 3 – Automatic
validation
Analysis whether an image
is blurry
Higher level testing, often
used to assess ranges
Pillar 4 – Comparison with
authoritative data
Use of a set of boundary
polygons to check whether
an observation is in or out
Wide variety of tests that
involve comparison with
what it known
Pillar 5 – Model based
validation
Running a flood model Can be complex, and may
also include question based
modeling
Pillar 6 – Big/Linked data Querying Twitter via a
hashtag for similar
phenomena
Tapping into large
databases such as sensor
records and social media
Pillar 7 – Semantic
harmonisation
Rationalisation of entries
via an ontology
Attempts to recognise
multiple entries of the
same observation

27. Web Processing Service
• OGC Standard
• Web facing
• Public
• Holds spatial and non-spatial processes
• Processes are suited to chaining
• BPEL is the traditional method of chaining
– However, removed from WPS 2.0

28. BPMN Workflow Engine
• JBOSS JBPM – A Java based BPM workflow
engine
• Orchestrates processes in a given order
with defined inputs
• Chains results from one process to the
next
• Can be executed remotely via REST
• Graphical interface utilises BPMN2.0 – a
recently ratified OMG standard
• Unlike BPEL this interface is standardised

29. Current questions
• What is the Post Quality database. How to manage
different schemas and different data sources?
• RDF to handle the fuzzy view of crowdsourced
data?
• How is client side QA being managed?
• GeoPackage + watching service?
• Client side vs server side
• Security
• Can we protect certain datasets/processes and
make them available to those who have the
correct credentials?
• Many others!!

30. For more information on QA – see:
• Relevant sessions at the OGC Technical
Committee in Nottingham next week
• Architecture Implementation Pilot – 8 deep
dive videos:
http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/1969

31. Service Provider (SP) Identity Provider (IdP)Discovery Service (DS)
“GEOSS user” Single-
Sign-On
Trust Gateway (TG)
to OpenID
Google
OpenId
COBWEB/GEOSS AIP-6 Federation
NASA Ames
Secure Dimensions
CUAHSI*
Catapult
University of
Edinburgh
Kst. GDI.DE
*: Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science
EarthServer (FP7) project
MEEO

32. Remainder of project…emphasis shifting
• Rolling out software
• Getting greater buy-in
• Sustainability
• More focus on research agenda
• Greater focus on Greece, Germany
• Additional Biosphere Reserves

33. Thank you
• Website: http://cobwebproject.eu/
• Mailing list:
http://eepurl.com/Ita05
or use the QR code
• Follow us: @cobwebfp7
• And look out for members of the
COBWEB team at events.
chris.higgins@ed.ac.uk