Defining Ontology modules

Pass 1

Following the agreed process for the development of the ontology, after the device ontology review and assessment of existing sensor ontologies, we now have to identify the bits that are missing or need revision.

The Key Sensor Concepts page describes the current structure of the sensor ontology and its central concepts. There are references like the MMI facet list and the SANY sensor taxonomy that give other perspectives on what a sensor ontology should cover -- see also SensorML and O&M.

This table is a condensed version of the extended minutes from our device ontology review. Members of the group can identify package(s) they're interested working on and enter their name in the "Who's doing it?" column. The "Use case(s)" column is meant to narrow the scope of the package.

The amount of work per package isn't equal; some are actually quite large while others are just have a look at something and add a couple of concepts to the ontology.

This is a work in progress - this table is being refined and updated, as is the design of what should be included.

Pass 2

Table 1 - Groups and sub-groups of concepts

• Table below based on pass 1 and on the categories from the Compton et al 2009 review paper allocated to the main groups described above (plus a 5th group for the rest and the imported ontologies)

Pass 3 Groups and sub-groups

Pass 4 SSN Ontology

Some changes to the ontology split into "modules" have been made during the final phase of development to match the documentation page structure and the scope of the examples supplied by the XG participants.

See the page introducing the Ontology structure.

The table below lists for each sections and modules:

• the initial discussions about it (when available)
• the documentation page for the module
• the examples page for the module

Modules and Mapping to use cases

A set of use cases have been identified as motivational use cases for the work that has been done in the context of this group. They can be roughly classified into four main groups, according to the following two axes:

1) User classification: from users who directly manage sensors and sensor networks; through to users who use and manipulate data (but may not have any direct interest in sensors).

2) Technology: from Semantic Web through Sensor Web to Sensor Network.

The following table and figures provide different viewpoints on this classification, providing names for these four groups of use cases (data discovery, device discovery and selection, provenance and diagnosis, and device operation tasking and programming). The reason to identify several use case categories is that each one requires different levels of detail for the modelling of the sensors, the features they observe, their capabilities, their environment and their conditions of use. These use cases will be described next.

The figures below illustrates which modules are more important for each category of use cases defined above.

Use Case 1: Data discovery and linking

Comment: there are many ways to find the datasets containing the right observations. Some discovery strategies, via the features or the observed properties are less dependent on sensor-related knowledge.

Use Case 2: Sensor device selection and discovery

Comment: in this use case, measuring capabilities are more important to identify the sensing assets.

Use Case 3: Provenance and diagnosis

Comment: operational restrictions become more important, especially the ones which impact sensor performances.

Use Case 4: Tasking, programming

Comment: to operate sensors and sensor networks, it is important to better manage the environmental conditions and system features more generally and to know what are the communications or the energy requirements for each sensors.