The GeoSpatial Web of Things Report on an a study project at ifgi, summer term 2016 Geospatial Sensor Webs Conference, Münster, 2016-08-31

Albert Remke, Nicholas Schiestel

Motivation One of todays mega IT trends is the Web of Things: Things of the physical world become first class citizens in the World Wide Web, ready to interact with humans and with other machines.

• What are the benefits of the WoT regarding the availability and usability of spatial data ?

• How can we uptake those trends in the context of SIIs ?

IoT vs WoT

Educational Goals • Better understanding of the IoT and WoT concepts,

standards and technologies • Improving software engineering skills such as agile software

development, communication and collaboration in a team of software engineers, self-organization

• Advancing the knowledge in managing, sharing, analyzing, visualizing time series of measurement data

• Acquiring some domain knowledge in the field of hydrology and disaster management

The Challenge • Build a smart and mobile Water gauge

• Capable to measure the water level of the river Werse, capable to send alerts if the water level exceeds a certain threshold, wirelessly connected to the Internet & Web, power supply enables 2 days of independent operation, Rain proof,..

• Build a data archive, which connects to the mobile water gauge • Demonstrate how to visualize data coming from this data archive and from

other water gauge data sources, with WebClients and GIS

• Build a client, which can be used to control the water gauge

• Solution has to be published as Open Source SW on Github

The Challenge • Three teams, each implementing a complete system,

but based on different architectural approaches

• Team A – “Lean Vertical Integration” the classical approach: use existing technologies to implement the functional requirements of a specific use case

• Team B - “Virtual Smart Thing” - the smart thing lives on a server

• Team C - “Physical Smart Thing” - the physical thing implements all its “smart” capabilities

Architectural Aspects

HW - Raspberry Pi - Ultrasonic sensors

8

[1] [2] [3]

[5] [4]

GSys A geospatial system for floodways & bridges Heinrich Löwen, Nicholas Schiestel, Rehan Aziz Chaudhary, Timm Kühnel

Mobile Water Gauge

Virtual Smart Thing - Architecture

Virtual Smart Thing - WebApp

https://github.com/nicho90/GWoT-VST.git

Some Findings • (A) Vertical Integration Team – implemented a system, which was very much

focused on the requirements of the use case -> easily scalable, perhaps less adaptable to other use cases

• (B) Virtual Smart Thing – took some time for the group to seperate between the „Smart Thing“ and the system, which implements the use case. Later on spent some more ideas on the smartness of the sensor objects. -> easily scalable, typical architecture for vendors of smart things & value added services

• (C) Physical Smart Thing – Had to focus on modeling the „Thing“ and its capabilities, which led to the strongest focus on implementing a smart object in the WebOfThings. -> limited scalability, easily integratable e.g. into SenseMap, no single-point-of-failure

References

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Pictures

[1] http://www.poulsenontour.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/floodway_ueberflutete-strasse-1024x514.jpg

[2] https://www.bettaroads.com.au/_Media/thumb_img_6245_1024_med.jpeg

[3] http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/36349404.jpg

[4] http://www.gameplanmedia.co.za/drak/ScotstonsCar.jpg

[5] http://www.hevol.info/Australien/images/2008/DSC06384.JPG

[6] http://2y5mo62gdufr3ganc332cx3n.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/REST-API-Logo.png

[7] https://wolfpaulus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/jsonlogo.png

[8] http://blog.thingstud.io/wp-content/uploads/mqttorg.png

[9] https://www.pubnub.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/WebSocketsLogo.png

[10] https://www.w3.org/html/logo/downloads/HTML5_Logo_512.png

https://www.manning.com/books/building-the-web-of-things?a_bid=16f48f14&a_aid=wot