Sensor web in practice: building productive systems

Sensors are becoming an increasingly important basis for many applications such as environmental monitoring, public security, risk monitoring, disaster management, traffic management and health. As most sensors rely on manufacturer-specific interfaces, users have to deal with a large number of heterogeneous data formats and access mechanisms to sensor data. Due to this variety the flexible integration of sensors into application systems is a challenging task. Facilitating this integration is the aim of the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) framework of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Based on real-world use cases, this article shows how the SWE framework can be applied in practice. Finally, this article gives an outlook on future developments.