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| Apr Jun |
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Intelligent Networks • Smart Objects • Design for Humans |
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| Monday, May 02, 2005 |
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Sensor Data Are Spatial Data
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) President Mark Reichardt writes that all sensor data constitute spatial data because every sensor has a physical location, and this reasoning is a core tenet of OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) effort. SWE is a key element of the OWS-3 Interoperability Initiative for advancing OpenGIS Specifications through "hands-on" prototyping and testing. SWE's objective is to facilitate interoperable access to distributed, dissimilar sensors and sensor networks so that applications to discover, access, and combine sensor data from a wide variety of technologies and databases can be implemented. Reichardt says the publication of standardized descriptions of sensor capabilities, location, interfaces, and observations can be effected through XML-based text schemas, which Web brokers, clients, and servers can employ to facilitate automated Web-based discovery of sensors' presence as well as the evaluation of their properties. The XML schema provides sensor control interface information that enables communication with the sensor system, and offers a way to automatically produce far-reaching standard-schema metadata for sensor-generated data, allowing data in distributed archives to be discovered and interpreted. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's SensorNet requirements and the needs of other OGC members are helping drive the SWE specs' maturation, as well as reconcile OGC's Sensor Model Language with the IEEE 1451 "plug-n-play" sensor standard and mature the Sensor Alert Service via employment of the OASIS Common Alert Protocol. Reichardt says these examples illustrate how closer relationships between OGC and other standards bodies are helping the consortium reach its goals.
[ACM TechNews]
8:45:39 PM
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Footnote to previous post: Related to my comments about John Thackera - another visionary, the late Ken Sharma (d.1999), used to always ask the group at the beginning of a meeting, "What is the purpose of this meeting?", "Are the right people in the room?" and finally "How do we know when we are done?".
I always liked that last one...
"How do we know when we are done?"
8:13:45 PM
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IN THE BUBBLE: DESIGNING IN A COMPLEX WORLD
"We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if "tech" ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the ends it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we're unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how? In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff, and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now -- not in a remote science fiction future; it's not about, as he puts it, "the schlock of the new" but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can't. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology -- ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles -- above all, lightness -- inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation."
Right on. I attended the Doors of Perception conference November 14,15,16 of 2002 entitled"Flow" and have always valued Mr. Thackera's views and appreciated his approaches. He has been throwing out hints for years regarding the "purpose" - getting the right people in the room - and prompting them to look at design issues objectively around context:people and not just through the lenses of thier specific discipline or industry perspective. Now its his turn to talk. Listen-up.
Get it from Amazon, or your favorite bookseller.
7:11:03 PM
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