An Ontological Representation of Time Series Observations on the Semantic Sensor Web

Time series observations are a common method of collecting sensor data. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) provides a standard representation for time series observations within the Observations and Measurements language, and therefore is in heavy use on the Sensor Web. By providing a common model, Observations and Measurements (O&M) facilitates syntax-level integration, but lacks the ability to facilitate semantic-level integration. This inability can cause problems with interoperability between disparate sensor networks that may have subtle variations in their sensing methods. An ontological representation of time series observations could provide a more expressive model and resolve problems of semantic-level interoperability of sensor networks on the Semantic Sensor Web. In this paper, such an ontology model is proposed, as well as a real-world use case from sensor networks currently measuring rainfall in the South Esk river catchment in the North East of Tasmania, Australia.