13-08-2012, 02:49 PM
An Integrated SensorWeb Grid Cyber implementation for Environmental Protection
An Integrated SensorWeb Grid Cyberimplementation.pdf (Size: 746 KB / Downloads: 22)
Abstract
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been deployed
for collecting the observed data across different areas. The
continuous evolution of wireless networks and sensors emerges
a new instrument concept which is called SensorWeb network.
This type of network measures data related to geospatial information
and can detect the conditions of remote places as a new
instrument for environmental monitoring in the physical world.
On the other hand the uninterrupted demand of the scientific
community for computational and storage resources led us to the
Grid Computing. Grid Computing is the combination of several
distributed computational resources to a single problem at the
same time, usually to a scientific or technical problem that requires
a great number of computer processing cycles and a huge storage
capability of data.
Index Terms—Earth science, environmental protection, geographical
information system, geospatial science, grid computing,
SensorWeb, SensorWeb grid cyberimplementation.
I. INTRODUCTION
GEOPHYSICISTS have developed various tools which
are incorporated in computer science in order to investigate
environmental changes. These scientific tools include
techniques such as: a) data mining techniques for analyzing
time series data produced by sensors networks; b) modeling
codes that theoretically simulate the effects of the environmental
changes; c) data assimilation codes that attempt to
forecast areas of increased hazard; and d) large-scale probabilistic
simulations that can model the behavior of extensive
interacting fault systems. Such tools, which are typically driven
by observational data inputs, are obviously excellent candidates
for incorporating into a Grid for geophysicists.
Wireless sensor infrastructures are usually based on proprietary
designs and protocols and so it is also challenging to integrate
them with the standard wired Grid architecture. These
promising edging technologies motivate us to present a novel integrated
architecture between SensorWeb and Grid Computing,
called SensorWeb Grid Cyberimplementation. The technologies
which provide an easy-to-use interface to local and shared
instruments, sensor arrays, data stores and data sets, computational
systems, networks, scientific and engineering applications,
data analysis and visualization tools and services, and col-
Manuscript received October 18, 2010; revised December 08, 2010; accepted
December 29, 2010. Date of publication January 10, 2011; date of current version
July 27, 2011. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper
and approving it for publication was Prof. Evgeny Katz.
The authors are with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
National Technical University of Athens, Zographou 15773, Greece (e-mail:
nikpreb[at]mail.ntua.gr; protonot[at]cs.ntua.gr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2011.2104949
laboration capabilities, all within a secure framework, they can
be called Cyberimplementation. The main goal of a SensorWeb
Cyberimplementation is to be able to collect real-time data from
inhospitable and hazardous locations related to environmental
protection, climate monitoring and forecasting, and other earth
sciences. The main advantage of the SensorWeb Grid Cyberimplementation
is the vast resource of computational and storage
capabilities which can collect, process and store huge data from
the real-world in real-time. The core of this network relies on
the Grid Computing but its eyes are the SensorWeb.
In this paper, we have coined the term Cyberimplementation
and we demonstrate a novel architecture which is flexible
and scalable because it can integrate heterogeneous wireless
networks, such as SensorWeb with the existing wired Grid
infrastructure. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate
the integration features and to handle the dynamic sensor data
into a SensorWeb Grid Cyberimplementation. Another goal is
to ensure the uninterrupted processing, monitoring and storing
of the results in a SensorWeb Grid Cyberimplementation
which helps us to measure the environmental pollution in
real-time and to forecast the climate changes. Also, this network
is user-friendly and available to any user independently
of his geographical location. However, the SensorWeb Grid
Cyberimplementation demonstrates a novel architecture which
increases and extends the usability of a Grid network through
the Pan-European e-Infrastructure. This infrastructure can be
the basis for uninterrupted monitoring of the environmental
protection across the earth.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
presents the related work on the area of sensor networks and
grid infrastructure. Section III analyzes the technological requirements
of a geo-infrastructure. In Section IV, a framework
which provides resources coordination is developed. Section V,
presents the application of the proposed implementation and
methodologies developing the interoperable environmental
protection system. Section VI demonstrates the testbed of
the developed environmental monitoring application. Finally,
Section VII concludes this paper.
II. RELATED WORK
In recent years, efforts have been made by the geophysicists
to monitor and predict environmental incidents on earth. This
scientific field is still challenging for the scientific community.
The usage of environmental applications and computer
technologies, such as sensor networks and grid infrastructures,
is increasing rapidly. The main characteristics of an environmental
monitoring and forecasting system are the capacity
of processing, the huge data volume, and the autonomous
operation [1], [2].
1530-437X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1788 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 11, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011
The term of a Distributed Sensor Network (DSN) is defined as
a collection of a large number of heterogeneous intelligent sensors
which are distributed geographically over an environment
and connected through a communication network [3]. Also, a
different approach to the definition of a sensor network is given
in [4] because this kind of network can monitor phenomena in
a geographic space in which the geospatial content of the collected,
aggregated, analyzed, and monitored information can be
implemented by a network called GeoSensor Network (GSN).
In order to clarify the above definitions, we should mention that
a DSN without georeferenced sensor nodes is not a GSN. Thus,
we define a GSN as a specialized sensor network compromising
of georeferenced geosensor nodes. If the geosensor nodes are
actively or passively moving through the space they form a mobile
geosensor network.
However, a sensor network can be utilized for environmental
monitoring applications [1]. For example, there is microclimate
monitoring [5], habitat monitoring [6], GlacsWeb project [7],
PODS project [8]. The microclimate monitors applications
check the climate data such as radiant light, relative humidity,
barometric pressure, and temperature throughout the volume of
giant trees [5]. GlacsWeb project monitors the behavior of ice
caps and glaciers for understanding the climate of the earth [7].
The PODS project monitors the rare and endangered species of
plants in a volcano neighboring with high-resolution cameras,
temperature, and solar radiation sensors [8]. Sensor network
is also utilized in the flood monitoring to provide warnings
and in the monitoring of coastal erosion around small islands
[9]. The Automated Local Evaluation in Real-Time (ALERT)
was developed for providing important real-time rainfall and
water level information to evaluate the possibility of potential
flooding [10].
Regarding the side of grid computing in earth science several
projects have been deployed across Europe. The Deployment Of
Remote Instrumentation Infrastructures (DORII) project [11]
aims to deploy an e-Infrastructure for new scientific communities.
On one hand, ICT technology is still not present at the
appropriate level today. On the other hand, it is required to improve
the communities’ daily work. The DORII project focuses
on groups of scientific users with experimental equipment and
instrumentation that are currently not or only partially integrated
in the European e-Infrastructures.
The GEO Grid [12] Project integrates virtually a wide variety
of data sets, such as satellite imagery, geological data, and
ground sensed data. The integration is enabled by Grid technology,
and data can be accessed and processed on user demand
through standardized Web services interfaces on basic
OGSA services. GEO Grid is based on four layers: hardware,
virtual storage, application and data services, and user interface.
However, the GEO Grid project does not integrate sensors
into the Grid. The Cowbridge project [13] tries to predict
and manage flooding in a river valley. The system incorporates
an adaptive, resilient sensor network that feeds real-time sensor
data to a computationally intensive flood-prediction algorithm
running on a general-purpose computational cluster in a customized
Grid middleware environment. Also, this system enables
real-time prediction of flooding, including detailed predictions
of what areas flooding will most likely affect. It also
provides timely alerts to local stakeholders when it perceives
an imminent flooding. An interesting technical aspect of this
system is that it supports selectively and dynamically assigning
computation tasks to either the sensor network itself or the remote
cluster. This approach evolves wired sensor networks only
raising new challenges such as power management, sensors discovery,
communications safety, and routing protocols.
Sensors Anywhere (SANY) Project [14] deals with sensor
networks research for environmental applications, and tries to
improve the interoperability of in-situ sensors and sensor networks.
This project aims to allow quick and cost-efficient reuse
of data and services from currently incompatible sources in
future environmental risk management applications. To achieve
this goal they: (i) specified a standard open architecture for
fixed and moving sensors and SNs; (ii) developed and validated
reusable data fusion and decision support service building
blocks and a reference implementation of the architecture;
and (iii) tried to contribute to future standards applicable to
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES).
SANY does not focus on the resources utilization of the grid
computing such as our proposed infrastructure.
In our architecture, we propose a new approach in order to
integrate wireless sensor networks with a grid infrastructure,
developing a fully interconnect cyberimplementation which
successfully involves more than one different applications of
these new technologies. The usage of this cyberimplementation
aims to achieve better performance than the mentioned networks
monitoring and predicting environmental changes while
it will support engineering researchers to have more accurate
results about geophysics phenomena in real-time