In a joined effort of the 52°North Sensor Web and Semantics communities, we have developed a new framework that enables the plug & play of sensors with the Sensor Web based on Semantic Web technologies. The design of the developed architecture got just published in a journal article.

The developed framework includes mechanisms for the automated semantic mediation between characteristics advertised by new sensors and the defined requirements of sensor web services. The semantic mediation framework is combined with (i) our Sensor Bus, a publish/subscribe architecture to establish message-driven communication between sensors and services, and (2) the 52°North interpreter for Sensor Interface Descriptors, used as a generic driver mechanism for sensors.

To demonstrate this development, we applied it in an oil spill use case where marine sensors measuring for example water temperature and salinity need to be integrated on-the-fly with a Sensor Observation Service. As the figure below illustrates, the semantic matchings of various sensor / service properties need to be assured before the sensor can be connected with the service.
For being able to “talk” to the utilized sensors, we developed according instances of the Sensor Interface Descriptor model for the different marine sensors using our SID Creator tool.