StarFL – A new Metadata Language for Sensor Descriptions: Or: Why do we need yet another metadata language for sensor descriptions?

An ever-increasing number of sensor resources are being exposed via the World Wide Web. Discovery, selection and use of these sensors and their observations require a robust sensor information model, but the homogenous description of sensor metadata is a complex and difficult task. Currently, the only available robust model is SensorML, which is intentionally designed in a very generic way. Due to this genericness, interoperability can hardly be achieved without the definition of application profiles that further constrain the use and expressiveness of the root language. So far, such SensorML profiles have only been developed up to a limited extent. This work describes a new approach for defining sensor metadata, the StarFL model. This language follows a more restrictive approach and incorporates concepts from the recently published Semantic Sensor Network Ontology to overcome the key issues users are experiencing with SensorML. StarFL defines a restricted vocabulary and model for sensor metadata to achieve a high level of interoperability and a straightforward reusability of sensor descriptions.