Environmental data available to all

A new scheme aims to unite environmental research data from around the world, making information accessible to and from many new sources. The project, SANY (Sensors Anyhwere), is funded by the European Union and aims to allow the data to flow freely regardless of its source.

The project hopes that simplifying the way that the information can be accessed and contributed will allow data from other sources, rather than simply institutional sources, to be utilised. SANY collects information from sensors dotted all over the world on land or in sea, air or space, and pools the data into a single resource. Schemes already in process that are making the most of SANY include water bacteriological water monitors on Polish beaches, microbial contamination monitors on shellfish in Cornwall, UK, and geo-hazard sensors for underground construction on a new metro line in Barcelona, Spain.

The project uses ‘service-orientated’ architecture, where applications can be built out of modular services accessed over the Internet. Project Co-ordinator Denis Havlik of the Austrian Institute of Technology explains: “The SANY Sensor Service Architecture (SensorSA) allows everybody who makes environmental observations to advertise them over standardised service interfaces. Anybody who needs environmental data can go and search for it – or look in a catalogue – and retrieve it using standardised methods.”

(Source: ICT Results)

For further information, contact Christian Nielsen at Christian.Nielsen@esn.eu

Published: Monday, 16th November 2009

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