Sponsored by:



  

  

1st International Workshop on the Semantic Sensor Web
(SemSensWeb 2009)
June 1st, 2009
Heraklion, Crete, Greece

Collocated with ESWC 2009
31/5 - 4/6, 2009
Heraklion, Crete, Greece


Workshop Programme

The workshop will take place in the conference room called "Clio".

Objectives

Millions of sensors are currently been deployed in sensor networks around the globe and are actively collecting an enormous amount of data. Together with legacy data sources, specialized software modules (e.g., modules performing mathematical modeling and simulation) and current Web 2.0 technologies such as mashups, deployed sensor networks give us the opportunity to develop unique applications in a variety of sectors (environment, agriculture, health, transportation, surveillance, public security etc.). The terms Sensor Internet, Sensor Web and Sensor Grid have recently been used to refer to the combination of sensor networks and other technologies (Web, service-oriented, Grid and database) with the view of addressing this opportunity.

Previous Sensor Internet, Sensor Web and Sensor Grid proposals make very little use of semantics (e.g., they do not use semantic annotations, metadata, ontologies etc.) and, in fact, whenever these proposals do refer to semantic concepts, they do so in an unprincipled and non-systematic way. On the contrary, the use of explicit semantics for Web and Grid resources as pioneered by many Semantic Web and Semantic Grid projects enables us to overcome the heterogeneity of data and resources, and to improve tasks like data sharing, service discovery and composition etc.

In this workshop, we would like to explore whether the core ideas and technologies of the Semantic Web can also be applied to sensor networks to allow the development of an open information spacewhich we call the Semantic Sensor Web. The Semantic Sensor Web unifies the real and the virtual world by integrating sensor technologies and Semantic Web technologies. Recent discussions of the Semantic Sensor Web include the papers:

Participants of the workshop are expected to address the following research questions that are fundamental for the realization of the Semantic Sensor Web:

  • What extensions are needed to established Semantic Web data models and languages (e.g., RDF, SPARQL, OWL etc.) so that we can deal with sensor data and meta-data? How do we model the temporal, spatial and thematic dimensions that arise in sensor networks?
  • What are appropriate ontologies for describing sensors, their processes and  products? What are appropriate languages and tools for semantic annotation of sensors? How can we leverage existing standards developed by the Sensor Web Enablement Working Group of the Open Geospatial Consortium such as SensorML (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sensorml) or the W3C Geospatial Incubator Group (http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/geo/)?
  • What are appropriate principles and architectures for the semantics-based integration of sensor networks? What kind of middleware is appropriate for supporting the proposed architectures?
  • What are appropriate techniques and tools for semantic-based data management over heterogeneous data streams coming from autonomously deployed sensor networks? Can we apply semantic data integration techniques as we know it from database and Semantic Web research? How do these techniques interact with existing ways of processing (continuous) queries over sensor networks e.g., in-network data processing?
  • How do we develop open, scalable and fault-tolerant resource discovery mechanisms for the Semantic Sensor Web? Is there a role for successful technologies such as P2P networks and publish/subscribe systems here?
  • Is it possible to combine existing techniques for developing mashupswith semantic technologies and sensor networks to allow the flexible and rapid development of decision support systems for target application sectors? What are appropriate high-level APIs that ease the rapid development of such mashups? Can we build on already deployed tools such as SensorMap?
  • What are interesting applications of Semantic Sensor Web in target sectors such as environment, agriculture, health, transportation, surveillance, public security etc.?

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Data models and languages for the Semantic Sensor Web
  • Architectures and middleware for the Semantic Sensor Web
  • Ontologies and rules for the Semantic Sensor Web
  • Annotation tools for the Semantic Sensor Web
  • Semantic data integration of heterogeneous sensor network data streams
  • Registries for the Semantic Sensor Web
  • Mashup technologies for the Semantic Sensor Web
  • Semantic Sensor Web applications

Submissions

We invite two kinds of submissions:         
  • Research papers. These should not exceed 15 pages in length.
  • Demos. Deployed technologies (sensors, middleware and mashups) are important if the Semantic Sensor Web is to be realized. We therefore strongly encourage the submission of demos, and the presentation of demos related to research papers (a separate demo paper does not need to be submitted in this case, but the research paper should clearly discuss the demo to be presented).
    Demo papers should not exceed 5 pages in length.

Submissions should be formatted according to the Lecture Notes in Compute Science guidelines for proceedings available at http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0 .

Papers should be submitted in PDF format. Submission is now open :
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=semsensweb2009

At least one author of each accepted paper or demo must register for the workshop. Information about registration will appear soon on the ESWC 2009 Web page.

Workshop Proceedings

CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Volume 468, available at http://www.ceur-ws.org/Vol-468.

Important Dates

  • Paper and demo submission:              March 8, 2009
  • Notification of acceptance/rejection:     April 4, 2009
  • Camera-ready version due:                  April 18, 2009

Workshop Chairs

  • Oscar Corcho, Ontology Engineering Group, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
  • Manfred Hauswirth, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Galway
  • Manolis Koubarakis, Department of Informatics & Telecommunications, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Program Committee

Michael Compton, CSIRO
Dave de Roure, University of Southampton
Alvaro Fernandes, University of Manchester
Asun Gomez-Perez, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
Dimitrios Gunopoulos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Stathes Hadjiefthymiades, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Vana Kalogeraki, University of California, Riverside
Werner Kuhn, University of Muenster
Srdjan Krco, Ericsson
Kirk Martinez, University of Southampton
Sebastian Michel, EPFL
Norman Paton, University of Manchester
Amit Sheth, Wright State University
Ingo Simonis, Geospatial Research & Consulting
Heiner Stuckenschmidt, University of Mannheim
Kerry Taylor, CSIRO ICT Centre
Andreas Wombacher, University of Twente
Kai-Uwe Sattler, TU Illmenau

Sponsorship

The workshop is supported by the following projects:
CONET (FP7, INFSO-ICT-224053), PECES (FP7, FP7- 224342-ICT-2007-2), SemsorGrid4Env(FP7-ICT-223913).