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 lac ks the ability to facilitate semantic-level integration. This inability can caus e 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 rainf all in the South Esk river catchment in the North East of Tasmania, Australia.