Seminar on ‘OGC standards for Sensor Networks’

11 April 2008
CSRD/SSS/JNU
A seminar on theme ‘OGC standards for Sensor Networks’ was held on 11 April 2008. It was organized by Centre for the study of Regional Development with support of Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi. Over the period, Sensor Web Enablement has become a content development workflow for spatial data infrastructures (SDI’s). Seeing its importance for generating information regarding earth process across various scales, there is need for understanding design prototypes of SWE in Indian scenario.
Sub themes:
A. OGC standards for sensor enabled systems/environment.
B. Current trends in OGC based sensor network
C. Case Studies/Applications for SWE
D. Policy and standards issues

Objective of the seminar was to understand and to explore areas of participation in OGC related test bed standards, activities (OWS3, OWS4, and OWS5) and Sensor Web Enablement. Implementation of conceived/inclusive prototypes.

About 300 participants took part in this seminar. Institutional affiliations were Delhi University, NSIT, NPL, MRPC, NTRO, CSIR-Delhi, Kumaun University-Nainital, IIRS (NRSA)-Dehradun, TEHRI-Delhi, Rajasthan University, Jamia Milia Islamia University, IISc- Banglore, IIT-Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Department of Science and Technology. Participants were of multidisciplinary in nature namely from computers, geography, community health and other disciplines of social sciences. In inaugural session, Dr. R. Shiva Kumar, Head-NRDMS, DST presented inaugural lecture on OGC activities and its requirement for global observation of climate as well as local events. Chair of inaugural session Prof. B.B. Bhattacharya, Vice-Chancellor, JNU, emphasized on how space technology is exploring unknown locations and their economic significance. Prof. R.K. Sharma welcomed the guests and participants of the seminar.

Eight talks were delivered in four technical sessions apart from inaugural lecture by Dr. R. Shiva Kumar. In first session on ‘OGC Standards and Current Trends for Sensor Web Enablement’ lead talk was presented by Prof. B.N. Jain, deputy Director, IIT-D on topic ‘Target tracking using energy constraints for sensor network‘. He talked about sensors, their ability to detect target, tracking a fleet of vehicles based on the presence target in vicinity and route activation in no time. He also stressed upon technologies to track mobile target by using RFID, wired sensor network and GPS technology. Energy constraints/backup for sensor was discussed regarding bandwidth, range, interferences and density of sensors. Prof. Jain also discussed about applications namely sensors for monitoring environment, locate sources of polluters/pollutants, predicting disasters, monitor and predict landslides in rail corridors. Dr. K. R. Murli Mohan, Director, NSDI-DST delivered his lecture on ‘OGC standards for sensor network’. He stressed on adapting OGC standards and architecture for SWE. Dr. Sameer Saren- IIRS(NRSA) talked about ‘Web-GIS services in distributed systems’ where he shared his views on distributed web services given for interoperability, data dissemination and analysis. Mr. Uttam Kumar from IISc-Banglore talked on ‘Sensors and Networks for Geospatial Data’.

In second session, three papers presented, one by Dr. Milap Punia, CSRD,JNU, he talked on ‘Sensor web enablement for traffic and perceptional studies’. He shared his views on use of SWE for traffic monitoring in real time, so one can plan his/her route in wee hours. Generating volunteered information about elderly crime vulnerability for crime perception studies through geographic locations and their shared narrative. Dr. M.P.S. Bhatia-NSIT on ‘Machine learning application in sensor network’.

Prof. Harlan J. Onsrud form Mein University, USA shared his views on ‘Ethics and privacy perspectives of sensor Networks’. Prof. Harlan is also President of the University Consortium for GIscience. He elaborated his views on How can privacy be protected in ubiquitous spatial computing environments? Confidentiality, anonymity. He also talked about use of passive RFID in retail marketing and ethical issues with some other possibilities. Competing privacy protection vision is generally enforced by, big brother (government surveillance), Surveillance by corporate elite, Pervasive methods, are sensor environment are morally defensible? Moreover, raminification of technology to society.

Active participation from all sections of academics insured an inclusive acceptance and urgent requirement of theme of seminar. Since it’s well established and discussed in seminar about relevance of OGC standards for sensor networks and future requirement and for content building in NSDI through network of sensors. The objectives of the seminar were overwhelmingly accepted.