Web sense

Australian scientists at CSIRO will lead an international initiative to develop standards for sharing information collected by sensors and sensor networks over the internet.

Dr Kerry Taylor and Amit Parashar of CSIRO’s ICT Centre are to co-chair the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Semantic Sensor Network incubator group.

The incubator group is developing an ontology for different types of sensing devices, and a new standard to enable sensors to interact using the web, in the W3C's XML format.

'Together, they will smooth the way for large-scale interoperation of sensors and sensor networks - an important step in enabling a world-wide web of environmental sensors,' Dr Taylor said.

'This will be especially important to environmental scientists working on problems in biodiversity, water and climate change.'

CSIRO co-chairs the incubator group with Wright State University and the Open Geospatial Consortium, a non-profit, international, voluntary consensus standards organisation that is leading the development of standards for geospatial and location-based services.