The Modular SSN Ontology
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The Modular SSN Ontology: A Joint W3C and OGC Standard Specifying the Semantics of Sensors, Observations, Sampling, and Actuation Armin Haller, Krzysztof Janowicz, Simon Cox, Maxime Lefrançois, Kerry Taylor, Danh Le Phuoc, Joshua Lieberman, Raúl García-Castro, Rob Atkinson, Claus Stadler To cite this version: Armin Haller, Krzysztof Janowicz, Simon Cox, Maxime Lefrançois, Kerry Taylor, et al.. The Modular SSN Ontology: A Joint W3C and OGC Standard Specifying the Semantics of Sensors, Observations, Sampling, and Actuation. Semantic Web – Interoperability, Usability, Applicability, IOS Press, In press. hal-01885335 HAL Id: hal-01885335 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01885335 Submitted on 1 Oct 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. 0 Semantic Web - (2018) 0–24 IOS Press 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 The Modular SSN Ontology: A Joint W3C 4 5 5 6 and OGC Standard Specifying the Semantics 6 7 7 8 8 9 of Sensors, Observations, Sampling, and 9 10 10 11 Actuation 11 12 12 13 Armin Haller a,*, Krzysztof Janowicz b, Simon J D Cox c, Maxime Lefrançois d, Kerry Taylor a, 13 14 Danh Le Phuoc e, Joshua Lieberman f, Raúl García-Castro g, Rob Atkinson h, and Claus Stadler i 14 15 a Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia 15 16 E-mails: [email protected], [email protected] 16 17 b Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA 17 18 E-mail: [email protected] 18 19 c Land and Water, CSIRO, Melbourne, Australia 19 20 E-mail: [email protected] 20 21 d Univ Lyon, MINES Saint-Étienne, CNRS, Laboratoire Hubert Curien UMR 5516, Saint-Étienne, France 21 22 E-mail: [email protected] 22 23 e Open Distributed Systems, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany 23 24 E-mail: [email protected] 24 25 f Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA 25 26 E-mail: [email protected] 26 27 g Ontology Engineering Group, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain 27 28 E-mail: rgarcia@fi.upm.es 28 29 h Metalinkage, Wollongong, Australia 29 30 E-mail: [email protected] 30 31 i Institut für Informatik, Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany 31 32 E-mail: [email protected] 32 33 33 34 34 Editor: Pascal Hitzler, Wright State University, USA 35 Solicited reviews: Eva Blomqvist, Linköping University, Sweden; Alessandro Oltramari, Bosch Research and Technology Center, USA; 35 36 Freddy Lecue, Accenture Tech Labs Ireland, and INRIA, France 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 Abstract. The joint W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) Spatial Data on the Web 41 42 (SDW) Working Group developed a set of ontologies to describe sensors, actuators, samplers as well as their observations, 42 43 actuation, and sampling activities. The ontologies have been published both as a W3C recommendation and as an OGC im- 43 44 plementation standard. The set includes a lightweight core module called SOSA (Sensor, Observation, Sampler, and Actuator) 44 45 available at: http://www.w3.org/ns/sosa/, and a more expressive extension module called SSN (Semantic Sensor Network) avail- 45 46 able at: http://www.w3.org/ns/ssn/. Together they describe systems of sensors and actuators, observations, the used procedures, 46 47 the subjects and their properties being observed or acted upon, samples and the process of sampling, and so forth. The set of 47 ontologies adopts a modular architecture with SOSA as a self-contained core that is extended by SSN and other modules to 48 48 add expressivity and breadth. The SOSA/SSN ontologies are able to support a wide range of applications and use cases, includ- 49 49 ing satellite imagery, large-scale scientific monitoring, industrial and household infrastructures, social sensing, citizen science, 50 observation-driven ontology engineering, and the Internet of Things. In this paper we give an overview of the ontologies and 50 51 discuss the rationale behind key design decisions, reporting on the differences between the new SSN ontology presented here and 51 its predecessor [9] developed by the W3C Semantic Sensor Network Incubator group (the SSN-XG). We present usage examples and describe alignment modules that foster interoperability with other ontologies. 1570-0844/18/$35.00 c 2018 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved Keywords: Ontology, Sensor, Actuator, Observation, Actuation, Sampling, Linked Data, Web of Things, Internet of Things A. Haller et al. / The Modular SSN Ontology: A Joint W3C and OGC Standard 1 1 1. Introduction cover new aspects of sensing that have become more 1 2 relevant, such as actuation, a key element of the Inter- 2 3 Sensors are a major source of data available on the net of Things (IoT). 3 4 Web today. The trend towards making cities, offices, Four years after the publication of the first version, 4 5 and homes ‘smarter’ by turning them into sensor-rich work started on an update and formal standardization 5 6 environments [31] drives the demand for specifications of the SSNX ontology, this time jointly led by the W3C 6 7 that describe how to model and publish sensor and ac- and the OGC, to address the feedback gathered on the 7 8 tuator data as well as how to foster interoperability usage of the ontology and lessons learned. This ac- 8 9 across platforms on the Web or other data infrastruc- tivity resulted in the publication of the new Semantic 9 10 tures. Sensor Network (SSN) modular ontology, designed to 10 11 Sensor readings are often provided only as raw nu- provide a flexible but coherent perspective for repre- 11 12 meric values, but any searching, reusing, integrating, senting the entities, relations, and activities involved in 12 13 or interpreting of these data requires more than just the sensing, sampling, and actuation [22]. The main inno- 13 14 observation results. Of equal importance for the proper vation of this formal standard version of SSN is the 14 15 interpretation of these values is contextual information separation of SSN into ontology modules, the central 15 16 about the studied feature of interest, such as a river, of which is the Sensor, Observation, Sample, and Ac- 16 17 the observed property, such as flow velocity, the uti- tuator (SOSA) ontology, providing a lightweight core 17 18 lized sampling strategy, such as the specific locations for SSN. SOSA aims to broaden the target audience 18 19 or sampling stations and times at which the velocity and application areas that can make use of Semantic 19 20 was measured, the procedures followed to produce a Web ontologies. Other SSN modules add additional 20 21 result, and a variety of other information. terms, introduce additional ontological commitments, 21 22 The Open Geospatial Consortium’s (OGC) Sensor and/or clarify and support the alignment of SSN with 22 23 Web Enablement (SWE) standards [6, 26, 49] provide other ontologies. 23 24 a framework for describing sensors and observations, This paper does not aim at providing an exhaus- 24 25 as well as encodings for their data and service inter- tive description of the SSN ontology, since that can be 25 26 faces for interacting with them. SWE implementations found in the specification [22], but to motivate the de- 26 27 followed the style of other OGC standards, relying on velopment decisions and the design patterns followed 27 28 web-hosted service calls and XML payloads, which while indicating the most substantial changes made 28 29 have limited compatibility with the more recent and since the initial release of the ontology. Throughout 29 30 widely used web platforms. this paper we will introduce concepts from SSN (and 30 31 A W3C Incubator Group was created in 2009 with SOSA) in detail, supported by examples of its use in 31 32 the goal, among others, of defining an OWL ontol- a smart home case study. As will be detailed below, 32 33 ogy that would, to some degree, reflect the SWE stan- SOSA [30] is a self-contained pattern designed for 33 34 dards. That group produced the original Semantic Sen- reuse and to meet the demands of a larger, schema.org- 34 35 sor Network ontology (SSNX1)[9, 36]. SSNX was de- style target audience. Hence, SOSA is only introduced 35 36 signed to be consistent with W3C endorsed best prac- here to a degree necessary to understand its relation 36 37 tices on publishing data on the Web, which recommend to SSN and because SSN imports and extends SOSA 37 38 a Linked Data approach, allowing sensor data, for ex- classes and relations. 38 39 ample, to be published as part of a global and densely The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. 39 40 interconnected graph of data [42]. The SSNX ontology Sec.2 briefly reviews the origins of the SSN ontol- 40 41 has been the basis for many subsequent research ini- ogy. Sec.3 explains the rationale behind the main 41 42 tiatives and some operational deployments. However, changes to the core of SSN, with observations mod- 42 43 users of the original ontology have identified a num- eled as events alongside the related sampling and actu- 43 44 ber of potential points of improvement, inconsistencies ation activities which are introduced as well.