The document discusses the rise of big data, sensors, and the Internet of Things (IoT), and how the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) develops standards related to these topics. It notes that sensors are generating massive amounts of data and that location is a key aspect of most data. The OGC has developed standards like Sensor Web Enablement to help manage sensor data and the envisioned Sensor Web/IoT. Ensuring data quality, privacy and provenance will remain important as more data is collected and shared.

1. ®
Big Data, Sensors Everywhere, and
OGC Standards
Carl Reed, PhD
July 22, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

2. The Open Geospatial Consortium
Not-for-profit, international voluntary consensus standards
organization; leading development of geospatial standards
• Founded in 1994.
• 485+ members and growing
University
24%
• 38 standards
• Thousands of implementations
• Broad user community
implementation worldwide
Commercial
41%
Research
7%
• Millions of users
OGC
NGO
10%
Government
18%
®
© 2012, Open Geospatial Consortium
2

3. OGC at a Glance
Not-for-profit, international voluntary consensus standards
organization; leading development of geospatial standards
• Founded in 1994.
South America
2
• 485+ members and growing
Asia
Pacific, 59
• 38 standards
• Thousands of implementations
• Broad user community
implementation worldwide
Africa, 4
North America
163
Europe
203
• Millions of users
Middle East
7
OGC
®
© 2012, Open Geospatial Consortium
3

4. Thought
• And this process of digitizing the world's physical objects
may prove the defining element of the age of data. "All the
objects in the world are going to become alive and Internetconnected in a way that they weren't before."
• So what's next? . . . the "age of data ubiquity," one in which
a new generation of nimble, data-centric apps exploit
massive data sets generated by both enterprises and
consumers.
– [Hoskins, CTO Pervasive Software, April 2013].
•
http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/the-age-of-data-ubiquity-sensorsspread/240151991?cid=nl_IW_cio_2013-04-01_html&elq=503df1e8cada4443aba3d7abe37e6f0a
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

5. How does this relate to the future of geotechnology and location services?
The rise of mobile applications is a good
example of this trend. They are very thin
skins representing some data asset behind
the scenes.
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

6. Convergence
Network accessible sensors, cloud computing, big
data, modeling, augmented reality, business
intelligence, decision support. Sensor data may
pose the greatest challenge
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

7. Premise
We live and operate in a space-time
continuum!
NASA
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

8. Premise
Everything we do, every event happens
somewhere, sometime!
Tourism
Education & Research Sustainable
Development
Infrastructure Transportation
Health
E -Government
Emergency Services
Aviation
Energy
Consumer
Services, Real
Time
Information
OGC
Geosciences
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

9. Premise
• Geography and location have significant
impacts on our lives
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

10. Fact
• Geography Seen as a Barrier to Climbing
Class Ladder
• Analyzed massive amounts of location based income and
tax data. Millions of records as well as census data
• Many geographic factors, such as income diversity within a
community versus separation into distinct income
communities
• New York Times, July 22, 2013
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

11. Premise
Every decision we make has a location
(geographic) element
Where to live? eat?
get gas? buy shoes?
to build? to hike?
Is closest drinking water?
Is a hospital?
Is last place I fished
What is:
Fastest way to school?
Safest way through swamp?
Rainfall pattern?
Stream flow for rafting?
Best patrol allocation?
Floor plan for mall?
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

12. Fact
We need geographic context and location
information in most (all) decisions we make.
AKA Geospatial Intelligence
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

13. Fact
Deployment of location enabled sensors and
the Internet of Things is rapidly evolving –
and creating a data centric requirement
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

14. Major industrials have been preparing for IoT
• “In 2008, the number of devices connected to the Internet
exceeded the number of people on Earth. By 2020, there
will be 50 billion devices connected” - CISCO
• Internet of things to give
$10-15 trillion boost to
global economy:
General Electric
"Redefining the language of geospatial industry"
Ola Rollen, President and CEO, Hexagon AB.
OGC
®
© 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium
14

15. Big Data = 4Vs
[M. Stonebraker and IBM]
OGC
®

16. Volume
Twitter
90 Million tweets / day
8 terabytes / day
640 terabytes of
operational data on just
one Atlantic crossing
http://www.information-management.com/issues/21_5/big-data-is-scaling-bi-and-analytics-10021093-1.html
OGC
®

17. Velocity
3 GB per second
LOFAR: distributed sensor array farms for radio astronomy
OGC
®

18. Veracity
OGC
®
How was this calculated ?

19. Variety – Benefit Areas
OGC
®

20. Variety – Systems
OGC
®

21. Variety - Sensors
OGC
®

22. Variety - Models
Short Term
OGC
®
Long Term

23. What’s in common?
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

24. Location
OGC
®

25. Power of Location
• “Location targeting is holy grail for marketers”
– Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP CEO, MWC 2011
• By measuring the entropy of each individual’s trajectory, we
find a 93% potential predictability in user mobility
– Limits of Predictability in Human Mobility, Science 2010
• 1st law of geography: "Everything is related to everything
else, but near things are more related than distant things.”
– Waldo Tobler
OGC
®
© 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium
25

26. Geospatial Integration
OGC
®

27. How ?
http://geoplatform.ideascale.com
OGC
®

28. ®
Big Data, the Internet of Things
and OGC Standard
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

29. Region-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Feature-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Human-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Device-Centric
Geospatial
Information
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
Steve Liang (PhD)
OGC
®
GSC MSTF Conference at Georgia Tech Research Institute – Atlanta, GA , USA – May
7, 2013

30. Steve Liang (PhD)
OGC
®
GSC MSTF Conference at Georgia Tech Research Institute – Atlanta, GA , USA – May
7, 2013

31. Device-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Human-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Feature-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Region-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Steve Liang (PhD)
OGC
®
GSC MSTF Conference at Georgia Tech Research Institute – Atlanta, GA , USA – May
7, 2013

32. Device-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Human-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Feature-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Indoor
Space
Region-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Steve Liang (PhD)
OGC
®
GSC MSTF Conference at Georgia Tech Research Institute – Atlanta, GA , USA – May
7, 2013

33. Device-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Human-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Feature-Centric
Geospatial
Information
IoT
Space
Region-Centric
Geospatial
Information
Indoor
Space
Steve Liang (PhD)
OGC
®
GSC MSTF Conference at Georgia Tech Research Institute – Atlanta, GA , USA – May
7, 2013

34. OGC Sensor Web Enablement Standards enable
the World-wide Sensor Web Vision
• Standard Information Models and Schema
– Observations and Measurements (O&M) – Core models and schema
for observations
– Sensor Model Language (SensorML) for In-situ and Remote Sensors
- Core models and schema for observation processes: support for
sensor components, georegistration, response models, post
measurement processing
Standard Web Service Interfaces
– Sensor Observation Service - Access Observations for a sensor or
sensor constellation, and optionally, the associated sensor and
platform data
– Sensor Planning Service – Request collection feasibility and task
sensor system for desired observations
– Sensor Registries – Discover sensors and sensor observations
OGC
®
GSC MSTF Conference at Georgia Tech Research Institute – Atlanta, GA , USA – May
7, 2013

35. Sensors in Debris Flow Monitoring
Station
Geophone
Spotlight
Flow meter
Water Level Meter
CCD Camera
Rain Gauge
Soil Moisture
Wire Sensor
Load cell
OGC
®
Copyright © 2012 Open Geospatial Consortium
Meteorological
sensors

36. OGC SWE-IoT Status
• SWE-IoT SWG uses a lightweight RESTful web interface to
access sensor observations and to task acuators
• Current design supports JSON representations of SWE
formats.
• Plan to release the draft for public review mid-2013
• Plan to submit the specification to TC for voting in 2013 Q4
• http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/sweiotswg
OGC
®
GSC MSTF Conference at Georgia Tech Research Institute – Atlanta, GA , USA – May
7, 2013

37. ®
Crowd Sourcing, Social Media,
Big Data and OGC Standards in
Action
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

38. Social Networking User Generated
Information / Crowdsourcing
Source: http://www.ushahidi.com/
Source: Erik (HASH) Hersman. Flickr
•
•
•
•
•
Ushahidi
InRelief
OpenStreetMap
Sahana
CrisisCommons
Source: http://www.openstreetmap.or
Source: www.inrelief.org
Source: http://www.sahanafoundation.org
OGC
®

39. COBWEB
• Crowdsourced environmental data
to aid decision making
• Introduce quality measures and reduce uncertainty
• Fusion of crowdsourced data with reference data…
• Security
• Spatial Data Infrastructure - like initiatives
– National SDI’s in UK, Greece and Germany
– INSPIRE
– GEOSS
OGC
®

40. Take away:
• Crowdsourcing
– Quality measures and reduce uncertainty
– Fusion of crowdsourced data with reference data
– Sensor Web / IoT / WoT
– Security
– Use of Open Standards
– SDI, INSPIRE & GEOSS
– Economically sustainable
– Society's ability to cope with change
OGC
®

41. CITI-SENSE Project
Goal: Development of sensor-based Citizens‘ Observatory
Community for improving quality of life in cities
Community-based environmental monitoring and information
systems using innovative and novel earth observation applications
27 Participating Organizations from 14 countries
Economist, April 2013
OGC
®

42. CITI-SENSE Objective
To develop ”Citizen’s Observatories” to empower citizens to:
• Contribute to and participate in environmental governance
• Support and influence community and policy priorities and
associated decision making
• Contribute to Global Earth Observation System of Systems
(GEOSS)
• Improve decision making
OGC
®

43. CITI-SENSE Architecture
OGC
®

44. Initial CITI-SENSE platform test
CivicFlow
crowdsource
Web and App
(U-Hopper)
Sensor packages
(Airbase,
GeoTech)
Sensing&Control
Visualisation widgets
Sensor API
Loader
(Snowflake
)
OGC
®
Publisher
(Snowflake
SenML )
SensApp
(SINTEF)
SenML

45. ®
Some slides from Wouter Los
University of Amsterdam

46. ESFRI Environmental Research Infrastructures
• Tropospheric
research aircraft
• Upgrade of
incoherent
SCATter facility
• Multidisciplinary
seafloor
observatory
• Plate observing
system
COPAL
EISCAT-3D
EMSO
EPOS
• Global ocean
observing
infrastructure
EUROARGO
• Aircraft for
global observing
system
• Integrated
carbon
observation
system
• Biodiversity and
ecosystem
research infra
• Svalbard arctic
Earth observing
system
IAGOS
ICOS
LIFEWATCH
SIOS
OGC
®
23/10/2012
W. Losi - ENVRI @ EUDAT
46

47. OGC
®

48. Gas (CO2 etc) fluxes
Radar interference data
∂ (concentration)
Areal and
satellite
observation
Species data, distributions,
abundance, biomass, etc.
Observations, sensor data,
collection data, DNA, etc
Marine
sensors
Plate
tectonics
Currents, salinity,
deposition, etc
Seismic data,
satellite data,
sensors, etc
OGC
®
29/03/12
Pasquale Pagano - ENVRI @
EGI CF 2012
48

49. Geospatial Data Services
Data Access
Data Process
OGC
WCS
OGC
WPS
THREDDS
WPS 52N
P1
P2
P..
WPS Hadoop
Data Pub. /Vis.
OGC
OpenSearch
Linked Open Data
Catalogue
Services
gCube Data staging
Data Discovery
Hadoop Cluster
H F
D S
OGC
WMS, WFS
GeoServer
Geospatial Repositories
OGC
®
by courtesy of P. Pagano

50. But
• Provenance
• Data Quality
• Privacy
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

51. Provenance
• "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership,
custody or location of a historical object. A type of
metadata.
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

52. Data Quality
• Are (the data) fit for their intended uses in
operations, decision making and planning"
(J. M. Juran). Metadata, provenance, and
uncertainty measures important!
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

53. Privacy
• In the context of the location data collected by so many
mobile apps these days, anonymization generally refers to
the decoupling of the location data from identifiers such as
the user’s name or phone number.
• Except, according to research published in Scientific
Reports on Monday, people’s day-to-day movement is
usually so predictable that even anonymized location data
can be linked to individuals with relative ease if correlated
with a piece of outside information. Why? Because our
movement patterns give us away.
OGC
®
» David Meyer Mar. 25, 2013 (http://gigaom.com/2013/03/25/why-thecollision-of-big-data-and-privacy-will-require-a-new-realpolitik/)
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

54. Privacy
• You can be constantly tracked through your mobile device,
even when it is switched off. What’s more, those sensors
you’re pairing with your device make it ridiculously easy to
identify you.
• simply by looking at the data (from the Fitbit) what they can
find out is with pretty good accuracy what your gender is,
whether you’re tall or you’re short, whether you’re heavy or
light, but what’s really most intriguing is that you can be
100 percent guaranteed to be identified by simply your gait
– how you walk.
» CIA CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt (2013)
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

55. And a final thought!
OGC
®
Copyright © 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium

56. Questions & Comments
Carl Reed
creed@myogc.org
Open Geospatial Consortium
www.opengeospatial.org
OGC
®
Copyright © 2012, Open Geospatial Consortium,