Applying discrete global grid systems to sensor networks and the Internet of Things

Abstract

The rapid growth in global sensor networks is leading to an explosion in the volume, velocity and variety of geospatial and geoscientific data. This coupled with the increasing integration of geospatial data into our everyday lives is also driving an increasing expectation of spatial information on-demand, and with minimal delay. The challenge we face in meeting these expectations is how to convert the vast and increasing volume of data being delivered from an increasingly diverse network of sensor things into meaningful information in a timely fashion. A key factor in meeting these challenges is the development and implementation of international standards (through the Open Geospatial Consortium [OGC®] and other international standards bodies) focused on establishing common methods and protocols that enable machine-to-machine transfer of data from sensors to people via the internet. However, until recently there has been a gap in the standardization of the spatial data architectures and technologies used to manage the geospatial data at the server-side and this has led to numerous ad-hoc and bespoke spatial data infrastructures being constructed which are potentially incompatible with each other and the wider ecosystem of the Internet of Things. Over the past 3 years the OGC has been working at filling this gap through the development the first international standard for Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS), with this new standard expected to be published in 2017. DGGS are a form of Earth reference system that represents the Earth using a hierarchical equal-area tessellation of the surface of the Earth and are designed to ensure a repeatable representation of measurements that is better suited to today's requirements and technologies. A DGGS presents a common framework that is capable of linking very large multi-resolution and multi-domain datasets together to enable the next generation of analytic processes to be applied. To date, DGGS haven't been used directly in the context of sensor networks. This paper proposes to demonstrate the application of DGGS to the Internet of Things and to highlight the immense benefit and value of using standards to enable interoperability in the era of Big Data.