IOT Tutorial

Data Modelling and Knowledge Engineering
for the Internet of Things

Wei Wang1, Cory Henson2, Payam Barnaghi1
Centre for Communication Systems Research, University of Surrey
Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University
Galway City, Ireland, October 8-12, 2012
http://knoesis.org/iot-tutorial-ekaw2012/
Part 1: Introduction
to Internet of Things
Image source: CISCO
Internet of Things
sensors and actuators embedded in physical

objects from containers to pacemakers are
linked through both wired and wireless networks to
the Internet.
When objects in the IoT can sense the environment,
interpret the data, and communicate with each
other, they become tools for understanding
complexity and for responding to events and
irregularities swiftly
source: http://www.iot2012.org/
Thing connected to the internet
Source: CISCO
Future Internet - A new dimension
55
Internet of Things - definition
A world where physical objects are seamlessly

integrated into the information network, and where
the physical objects can become active participants
in business processes.
Services are available to interact with these smart
objects over the Internet, query and change their
state and any information associated with them,
taking into account security and privacy issues. .
Source: Stephan Haller, Internet of Things: An integral Part of the Future Internet, SAP Research, 2009.
What Things can be connected?

Home/daily-life devices
Business and
Public infrastructure
Health-care
Sensor devices are becoming widely

available
- Programmable devices
- Off-the-shelf gadgets/tools
Application domain
Why is IoT important?
Observation and measurement data
Adapted from: W3C Semantic Sensor Networks, SSN Ontology presentation, http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/ssn/
Data is important and IoT will produce

lots of it!
Sensors and devices provide data about the physical world objects.
The observation and measurement data related to an object can be
related to an event, situation in the physical world.
The processing of turning this data into knowledge/ perception and
using it for decision making, automated control, etc. is another important
phase.
Huge amount of data related to our physical world that need to be
Published
Stored (temporary or for longer term)
Discovered
Accessed
Proceeded
Utilised in different applications
Turning Data into Wisdom
The Things
Embedded device + physical world objects

Sensor
nodes (e.g. SunSPOT, TelOSB, WASPmote).

Mobile devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets)
A set of these that provide information about (a
feature of interest of) a physical world object (e.g.
water level in a tank, temperature of a room).
Components related to Things
Physical world objects

e.g.
A room, a car, A person;
Feature of Interest
e.g.
Temperature of the room, Location of the car,

heart-rate of the person;
Sensors
e.g.
Temperature sensor, GPS, pulse sensor
Embedded device
e.g.
WASPmote, SunSPOT,
Sensors
Active & Passive Sensors

Energy Efficiency
Processing capabilities
Network communications
hardware
platforms
software platforms
RFID
Active Tags and Passive Tags

Applications: supply chain, inventory tracking, tools
collection, etc.
Limitations:
Technology
Reading range
Physical limitations
Interference
Security and Privacy
Hardware components of sensor

nodes
Controller
Memory
Communication device
Sensors (or actuators)
Power supply
Example: Radiation Sensor Board

(Libelium)
Waspmote
Source: Wireless Sensor Networks to Control Radiation Levels, David Gascn, Marcos Yarza, Libelium, April 2011.
Energy consumption of the nodes
Batteries have small capacity and recharging could

be complex (if not impossible) in some cases.
The main consumers of the energy are: the
controller, radio, to some extent memory and
depending on the type, the sensor(s).
A controller can go to:
active,
idle and sleep
A radio modem could turn transmitter, receiver, or

both on or off,
sensors and memory can be also turned on and off.
Beyond common sensors
Human as a sensor
e.g.
tweeting real world data and/or events
Virtual sensors
e.g.
Software agents generating data
Adapted from: The Web of Things, Marko Grobelnik, Carolina Fortuna, Joef Stefan Institute.
Actuators
[2]
Stepper Motor [1]
[3]
[4]
Image credits:
[1] http://directory.ac/telco-motion.html
[2] http://bruce.pennypacker.org/category/theater/
[3] http://www.busytrade.com/products/1195641/TG-100-Linear-Actuator.html
[4] http://www.arbworx.com/services/fencing-garden-fencing/
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)
Image source: Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks
Holger Karl, Andreas Willig, chapter 3, Wiley, 2005 .
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)gateway connection
Gateway
SunSpots
Directory server
Web user/application
Control channel
Information channel
Distributed WSN
What are the main issues?
Heterogeneity
Interoperability
Mobility
Energy efficiency
Scalability
Security
What is important?
Robustness
Quality of Service
Scalability
Seamless integration
Security, privacy, Trust
In-network processing
Mobile Ad-hoc Networks are supposed to deliver bits from

one end to the other
WSNs, on the other end, are expected to provide
information, not necessarily original bits
Gives addition options

E.g., manipulate or process the data in the network
Main example: aggregation
Applying aggregation functions to a obtain an average value of

measurement data
Typical functions: minimum, maximum, average, sum,
Not amenable functions: median
source: Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks
In-network processing- example

Applying Symbolic Aggregate Approximation (SAX)
SAX Pattern (blue) with word length of 20 and a vocabulary of 10 symbols

over the original sensor time-series data (green)
Data-centric networking
In typical networks (including ad hoc networks), network

transactions are addressed to the identities of specific nodes
In a redundantly deployed sensor networks, specific source

of an event, alarm, etc. might not be important
A node-centric or address-centric networking paradigm
Redundancy: e.g., several nodes can observe the same area
Thus: focus networking transactions on the data directly

instead of their senders and transmitters ! data-centric
networking
Principal design change
source: Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks
Implementation options for

data-centric networking
Overlay networks & distributed hash tables (DHT)
Hash table: content-addressable memory
Retrieve data from an unknown source, like in peer-to-peer networking with efficient
implementation
Some disparities remain
Static key in DHT, dynamic changes in WSN
DHTs typically ignore issues like hop count or distance between nodes when performing a
lookup operation
Publish/subscribe
Different interaction paradigm
Nodes can publish data, can subscribe to any particular kind of data
Once data of a certain type has been published, it is delivered to all subscribes
Subscription and publication are decoupled in time; subscriber and published are agnostic
of each other (decoupled in identity);
There is concepts of Semantic Sensor Networks- to annotate sensor resources and

observation and measurement data!
Adapted from: Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks, Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks
IoT and Semantic technologies
The sensors (and in general Things) are increasingly being

integrated into the Internet/Web.
This can be supported by embedded devices that directly
support IP and web-based connection (e.g. 6LowPAN and
CoAp) or devices that are connected via gateway
components.
Broadening the IoT to the concept of Web of Things
There are already Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)

standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium
that are widely being adopted in industry, government and
academia.
While such frameworks provide some interoperability,
semantic technologies are increasingly seen as key enabler
for integration of IoT data and broader Web information
systems.
Semantics and IoT resources and

data
Semantics are machine-interpretable metadata (for mark-up), logical

inference mechanisms, query mechanism, linked data solutions
For IoT this means:
ontologies for: resource (e.g. sensors), observation and measurement
data (e.g. sensor readings), domain concepts (e.g. unit of measurement,
location), services (e.g. IoT services) and other data sources (e.g. those
available on linked open data)
Semantic annotation should also supports data represented using
existing forms
Reasoning /processing to infer relationships and hierarchies between
different resources, data
Semantics (/ontologies) as meta-data (to describe the IoT
resources/data) / knowledge bases (domain knowledge).
A Few Words
on
Semantic Web
34
SSW Introduction
Semantic Web
(according to Farside)
Concrete Facts
Resource Description Framework
lives in
General Knowledge
Web Ontology Language
has pet
is a
Person
has pet
Animal
is a
Now! That should clear up a few things around here!
Semantic Web Stack
Linked Open Data
Linked Open Data
~ 50 Billion Statements
SW is moving from academia

to industry
In the last few years, we have seen

many successes
Apple
Siri
Watson
Knowledge Graph
Google Knowledge Graph
Sensors and the Web
42
Sensors are ubiquitous
Sensors are small and inexpensive
Digitization of the physical world
Leading to
Improved situational
awareness
Advanced cyber-physical
systems / applications
Enabling the Internet of
Things
Enabling the Internet of Things

Situational awareness enables:
Devices/things to function and

adapt within their environment
Devices/things to work
together
Sensor systems are too

often stovepiped.
Closed centralized
management of sensing
resources
Closed inaccessible data
and sensors
We want to set this data free

With freedom comes responsibility
Discovery, access, and search

Integration and interpretation
Scalability
Drowning in Data
A cross-country flight from New York to Los Angeles on a Boeing
737 plane generates a massive 240 terabytes of data
- GigaOmni Media
Drowning in Data
In the next few years, sensor networks will produce 10-20
time the amount of data generated by social media.
- GigaOmni Media
Drowning in Data
Challenges
To fulfill this vision, there are difficult challenges to overcome such as the
discovery, access, search, integration, and interpretation of sensors and
sensor data at scale
Discovery
finding appropriate sensing resources and data sources
Access sensing resources and data are open and available
Search querying for sensor data
Integration
dealing with heterogeneous sensors and sensor data
Interpretation
translating sensor data to knowledge usable by people and

applications
Scalability
dealing with data overload and computational complexity

of interpreting the data
Solution
Semantic Sensor Web
Internet Computing, July/Aug. 2008

Uses the Web as platform for
managing sensor resources and data
Uses semantic technologies for
representing data and knowledge,
integration, and interpretation
Solution
Using standard Web services
OGC Sensor Web Enablement
Solution
Integration
Using shared domain models / data representation
W3C Semantic Sensor Networks
Solution
Interpretation
Abstraction converting low-level data to high-level knowledge
Machine Perception w/ prior knowledge and abductive reasoning
IntellegO Ontology of Perception
Solution
Scalability
Data overload sensors produce too much data
Computational complexity of semantic interpretation
Intelligence at the edge local and distributed integration and

interpretation of sensor data
SSW Adoption and Applications
Part 2: Semantic Modelling

for the Internet of Things
Image source: semanticweb.com; CISCO
60
Recall of the Internet of Things
A primary goal of interconnecting devices and

collecting/processing data from them is to create
situation awareness and enable applications,
machines, and human users to better understand
their surrounding environments.
The understanding of a situation, or context,
potentially enables services and applications to
make intelligent decisions and to respond to the
dynamics of their environments.
Barnaghi et al 2012, Semantics for the Internet of Things: early progress and back to the future
IoT challenges
Numbers of devices and different users and interactions required.
Heterogeneity of enabling devices and platforms
Challenge: Freshness of the data and supporting temporal requirements in accessing the
data
Ubiquity
Challenge: Processing and mining the data, Providing secure access and preserving and
controlling privacy.
Timeliness of data
Challenge: Efficiency in communications
Huge volumes of data emerging from the physical world, M2M and new
communications
Challenge: Interoperability
Low power sensors, wireless transceivers, communication, and networking for M2M
Challenge: Scalability
Challenge: addressing mobility, ad-hoc access and service continuity
Global access and discovery
Challenge: Naming, Resolution and discovery
IoT: one paradigm, many visions
Diagram adapted from L. Atzori et al., 2010, the Internet of Things: a Survey
Semantic oriented vision
The object unique addressing and the representation and

storing of the exchanged information become the most
challenging issues, bringing directly to a Semantic oriented,
perspective of IoT, [Atzori et al., 2010]
Data collected by different sensors and devices is usually
multi-modal (temperature, light, sound, video, etc.) and diverse
in nature (quality of data can vary with different devices
through time and it is mostly location and time dependent
[Barnaghi et al, 2012]
some of challenging issues: representation, storage, and
search/discovery/query/addressing, and processing IoT
resources and data.
What is expected?
Unified access to data: unified descriptions
Deriving additional knowledge (data mining)
Reasoning support and association to other entities and

resources
Self-descriptive data an re-usable knowledge
In general: Large-scale platforms to support discovery and
access to the resources, to enable autonomous interactions with
the resources, to provide self-descriptive data and association
mechanisms to reason the emerging data and to integrate it
into the existing applications and services.
Semantic technologies and IoT
There are already Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)

standards developed by the Open Geospatial
Consortium that are widely adopted.
While such frameworks provide certain levels of
interoperability, semantic technologies are seen as
key enabler for integration of IoT data and and
existing business information systems.
Semantic technologies provide potential support for:
Interoperability and machine automation

IoT resource and data annotation, logical inference, query and
discovery, linked IoT data
Identify IoT domain concepts
Users
Physical entities
Virtual entities
Devices
Resource
Services
Diagram adapted from IoT-A project D2.1
IoT domain concepts - Entity
Physical entities (or entity of interests): objects in the

physical world, features of interest that are of
interests to users (human users or any digital
artifacts).
Virtual
entities: virtual representation of the physical

entities.
Entities are the main focus of interactions between
humans and/or software agents.
This interaction is made possible by a hardware
component called Device.
Definition adapted from De et al, 2012, Service modeling for the Internet of Things
IoT domain concepts

Device, Resource and Service
A Device mediates the interactions between users and

entities.
The software component that provides information on the
entity or enables controlling of the device, is called a
Resource.
A Service provides well-defined and standardised
interfaces, offering all necessary functionalities for
interacting with entities and related processes.
Definition adapted from De et al, 2012, Service modeling for the Internet of Things
Other concepts need to considered
Gateways
Directories
Platforms
Systems
Subsystems
Relationships among them

And links to existing knowledge base and linked data
Dont forget the IoT data
Sensors and devices provide observation and measurement

data about the physical world objects which also need to be
semantically described and can be related to an event,
situation in the physical world.
The processing of data into knowledge/ perception and using
it for decision making, automated control, etc.
Huge amount of data from our physical world that need to be
Annotated
Published
Stored (temporary or for longer term)
Discovered
Accessed
Proceeded
Utilised in different applications
Semantics for IoT resources and data
Semantics are machine-interpretable metadata, logical inference

mechanisms, query and search mechanism, linked data
For IoT this means:

ontologies for: resource (e.g. sensors), observation and measurement
data (e.g. sensor readings), services (e.g. IoT services), domain concepts
(e.g. unit of measurement, location) and other data sources (e.g. those
available on linked open data)
Semantic annotation should also supports data represented using existing
forms
Reasoning/processing to infer relationships between different resources
and services, detecting patterns from IoT data
Characteristics of IoT resources
Extraordinarily large number

Limited computing capabilities
Limited memory
Resource constrained environments (e.g., battery
life, signal coverage)
Location is important
Dynamism in the physical environments
Unexpected disruption of services
Characteristics of IoT data
Stream data (depends on time)

Transient nature
Almost always related to a phenomenon or quality
in our physical environments
Large amount
Quality in many situations cannot be assured (e.g.,
accuracy and precision)
Abstraction levels (e.g., raw, inferred or derived)
Utilise semantics
Find all available resources (which can provide data)

and data related to Room A (which is an object in
the linked data)?
What is Room A? What is its location? returns location data

What type of data is available for Room A or that location?
(sensor category types)
Predefined Rules can be applied based on available

data
(TempRoom_A > 80C) AND (SmokeDetectedRoom_A position==TRUE)

FireEventRoom_A
Learning these rules needs data mining or pattern recognition techniques
Semantic modelling
Lightweight: experiences show that a lightweight ontology

model that well balances expressiveness and inference
complexity is more likely to be widely adopted and reused;
also large number of IoT resources and huge amount of data
need efficient processing
Compatibility: an ontology needs to be consistent with those
well designed, existing ontologies to ensure compatibility
wherever possible.
Modularity: modular approach to facilitate ontology evolution,
extension and integration with external ontologies.
Existing models for resources and data
W3C Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Groups

SSN ontology (mainly for sensors and sensor
networks, observation and measurement, and
platforms and systems)
Quantity Kinds and Units
Used
together with the SSN ontology

based on QUDV model OMG SysML(TM)
Working group of the SysML 1.2 Revision Task Force
(RTF) and W3C Semantic Sensor Network Incubator
Group
Existing models for services
OWL-S and WSMO are heavy weight models: practical use?

Minimal service model
Deprecated
Procedure-Oriented Service Model (POSM) and Resource-Oriented
Service Model (ROSM): two different models for different service
technologies
Defines Operations and Messages
No profile, no grounding
SAWSDL: mixture of XML, XML schema, RDF and OWL

hRESTS and SA-REST: mixture of HTML and reference to a
semantic model; sensor services are not anticipated to have
HTML
W3CS SSN ontology
Diagram adapted from SSN report
Some existing IoT models and ontologies
FP7 IoT-A projects Entity-Resource-Service ontology

A
set of ontologies for entities, resources, devices and

services
Based on the SSN and OWL-S ontology
FP7 IoT.est projects service description framework

A
modular approach for designing a description

framework
A set of ontologies for IoT services, testing and
QoS/QoI
Technology independent modelling for services
IoT-A resource model
IoT-A resource description
IoT-A service model
IoT-A service description
Service modelling in IoT.est
Diagrams adapted from Iot.est D3.1
IoT.est service profile highlight
ServiceType class represents the service technologies: RESTful

and SOAP/WSDL services.
serviceQos and serviceQoI are defined as subproperty of
serviceParameter; they link to concepts in the QoS/QoI
ontology.
serviceArea: the area where the service is provided; different
from the sensor observation area
Links to the IoT resources through exposedBy property
Future extension:
serviceNetwork, servicePlatform and serviceDeployment

Service lifecycle, SLA
Linked data principles

using
URIs as names for things: Everything is

addressed using unique URIs.
using HTTP URIs to enable people to look up those
names: All the URIs are accessible via HTTP
interfaces.
provide useful RDF information related to URIs
that are looked up by machine or people;
including RDF statements that link to other URIs to
enable discovery of other related concepts of the
Web of Data: The URIs are linked to other URIs.
Linked data in IoT
Using URIs as names for things;

- URIs for naming M2M resources and data (and also streaming data);
Using HTTP URIs to enable people to look up those names;

-
Web-level access to low level sensor data and real world resource
descriptions (gateway and middleware solutions);
Providing useful RDF information related to URIs that are looked up by

machine or people;
- publishing semantically enriched resource and data descriptions in the
form of linked RDF data;
Including RDF statements that link to other URIs to enable discovery of
other related things of the web of data;
- linking and associating the real world data to the existing data on the
Web;
Linked data layer for not only IoT
Images from Stefan Decker, http://fi-ghent.fi-week.eu/files/2010/10/Linked-Data-scheme1.png; linked data diagram: http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/
Creating and using linked sensor data
http://ccsriottb3.ee.surrey.ac.uk:8080/IOTA/
Sensor discovery using linked sensor data
Semantics in IoT - reality
If we create an Ontology our data is interoperable
Ontology mapping
Reference ontologies
Standardisation efforts
Semantic data will make my data machine-understandable and my system will be

intelligent.
Reality: there are/could be a number of ontologies for a domain
Reality: it is still meta-data, machines dont understand it but can interpret it. It still does need
intelligent processing, reasoning mechanism to process and interpret the data.
Its a Hype! Ontologies and semantic data are too much overhead; we deal with
tiny devices in IoT.
Reality: Ontologies are a way to share and agree on a common vocabulary and knowledge; at
the same time there are machine-interpretable and represented in interoperable and re-usable
forms;
You dont necessarily need to add semantic metadata in the source- it could be added to the
data at a later stage (e.g. in a gateway);
Part 3: Semantic Sensor Web

and
Perception
Image source: semanticweb.com; CISCO
93
Introducing the Sensor Web
What is the Sensor Web?
Sensor Web is an additional layer connecting sensor networks

to the World Wide Web.
Enables an interoperable usage of sensor resources by
enabling web based discovery, access, tasking, and alerting.
Enables the advancement of
cyber-physical applications through
improved situation awareness.
Why is the Sensor Web important?
In general
Enable tight coupling of the cyber and physical

world
In relation to IoT
Enable shared situation awareness (or context)

between devices/things
Bridging the Cyber-Physical Divide
Psylerons Mind-Lamp (Princeton U),

connections between the mind and the
physical world.
MITs Fluid Interface Group: wearable
device with a projector for deep
interactions with the environment
Neuro Sky's mind-controlled headset to

play a video game.
FitBit Community allows the

automated collection and
sharing of health-related data,
goals, and achievements
Foursquare is an online application which

integrates a persons physical location and
social network.
Community of enthusiasts that share experiences of
self-tracking and measurement.
Tweeting Sensors
sensors are becoming social
How do we design the Sensor Web?
Integration through shared semantics
Interpretation through integration of heterogeneous

data and reasoning with prior knowledge

W3C SSN ontology and Semantic Annotation
Semantic Perception/Abstraction
Linked Open Data as prior knowledge
Scale through distributed local interpretation
intelligence at the edge
Role of OGC SWE
Vision of Sensor Web
Quickly discover sensors (secure or public) that can meet my

needs location, observables, quality, ability to task
Obtain sensor information in a standard encoding that is
understandable by me and my software
Readily access sensor observations in a common manner, and in a
form specific to my needs
Task sensors, when possible, to meet my specific needs
Subscribe to and receive alerts when a sensor measures a
particular phenomenon
Principles of Sensor Web
Sensors will be web accessible
Sensors and sensor data will be discoverable
Sensors will be self-describing to humans and software (using a
standard encoding)
Most sensor observations will be easily accessible in real time

over the web
OGC SWE Services
Sensor Observation Service (SOS)
Sensor Planning Service (SPS)
task sensors or sensor systems
Sensor Alert Service (SAS)
access sensor information (SensorML) and sensor observations (O&M
asynchronous notification of sensor events (tasks, observation of

phenomena)
Sensor Registries
discovery of sensors and sensor data
OGC SWE Services
OGC SWE Languages
Sensor Model Language (SensorML)
Models and schema for describing sensor characteristics
Observation & Measurement (O&M)
Models and schema for encoding sensor observations
OCG SWE Observation
We want to set this data free

With freedom comes responsibility

Integration and interpretation
Semantic Sensor Web
OGC Sensor Web

Enablement
RDF
OWL
Sensor Web + Semantic Web

Semantic Web
Sensor Web
The web of data where web content is processed by

machines, with human actors at the end of the chain.
The web as a huge, dynamic, evolving database of

facts, rather than pages, that can be interpreted and
presented in many ways (mashups).
The internet of things made up of Wireless Sensor

Networks, RFID, stream gauges, orbiting satellites,
weather stations, GPS, traffic sensors, ocean buoys,
animal and fish tags, cameras, habitat monitors,
recording data from the physical world.
Fundamental importance of ontologies to describe the

fact that represents the data. RDF(S) emphasises
labelled links as the source of meaning: essentially a
graph model . A label (URI) uniquely identifies a
concept.
OWL emphasises inference as the source of meaning:
a label also refers to a package of logical axioms
with a proof theory.
Today there are 4 billion mobile sensing devices plus

even more fixed sensors. The US National Research
Council predicts that this may grow to trillions by 2020,
and they are increasingly connected by internet and
Web protocols.
Record observations of a wide variety of modalities:
but a big part is time-series of numeric measurements.
Usually, the two notions of meaning fit.
The Open Geospatial Consortium has some web-service

standards for shared data access (Sensor Web
Enablement).
Goal to combine information and services for

targeted purpose and new knowledge
Goal is to open up access to real-time and archival

data, and to combine in applications.
So, what is a Semantic Sensor Web?

Reduce the difficulty and open up sensor networks by:
Allowing high-level specification of the data collection process;

Across separately deployed sensor networks;
Across heterogeneous sensor types; and
Across heterogeneous sensor network platforms;
Using high-level descriptions of sensor network capability; and
Interfacing to data integration methods using similar query and
capability descriptions.
To create a Web of Real Time Meaning!
W3C SSN Incubator Group

SSN-XG commenced: 1 March 2009
Chairs:
Amit Sheth, Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University
Kerry Taylor, CSIRO
Amit Parashar Holger Neuhaus Laurent Lefort, CSIRO
Participants: 39 people from 20 organizations, including:
Universities in: US, Germany, Finland, Spain, Britain, Ireland

Multinationals: Boeing, Ericsson
Small companies in semantics, communications, software
Research institutes: DERI (Ireland), Fraunhofer (Germany), ETRI (Korea),
MBARI (US), SRI International (US), MITRE (US), US Defense, CTIC
(Spain), CSIRO (Australia), CESI (China)
W3C SSN Incubator Group
Two main objectives:

The development of an ontology for describing
sensing resources and data, and
The extension of the SWE languages to support
semantic annotations.
Sensor Standards Landscape
SSN Ontology
OWL 2 DL ontology
Authored by the XG
participants
Edited by Michael Compton
Driven by Use Cases
Terminology carefully tracked
to sources through annotation
properties
Metrics
Classes: 117
Properties: 148
DL Expressivity: SIQ(D)
SSN Ontology http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ssnx/ssn
SSN Use Cases
SSN Use Cases
SSN Ontology
Stimulus-Sensor-Observation
The SSO Ontology Design Pattern is developed following the principle of minimal
ontological commitments to make it reusable for a variety of application areas.
Introduces a minimal set of classes and relations centered around the notions of stimuli,
sensor, and observations. Defines stimuli as the (only) link to the physical environment.
Empirical science observes these stimuli using sensors to infer information about
environmental properties and construct features of interest.
SSN Ontology Modules
SSN Ontology Modules
SSN Sensor
A sensor can do (implements) sensing: that is, a sensor is any entity that can follow a
sensing method and thus observe some Property of a FeatureOfInterest.
Sensors may be physical devices, computational methods, a laboratory setup with a
person following a method, or any other thing that can follow a Sensing Method to
observe a Property.
SSN Measurement Capability

Collects together measurement properties (accuracy, range, precision, etc) and the
environmental conditions in which those properties hold, representing a specification of a
sensor's capability in those conditions.
SSN Observation
An Observation is a Situation in which a Sensing method has been used to estimate or calculate a
value of a Property.
Links to Sensing and Sensor describe what made the Observation and how; links to Property and
Feature detail what was sensed; the result is the output of a Sensor; other metadata gives the
time(s) and the quality.
Different from OGCs O&M, in which an observation is an act or event, although it also provides
the record of the event.
Alignment with DOLCE
What SSN does not model

Sensor types and models
Networks: communication, topology

Representation of data and units of measurement
Location, mobility or other dynamic behaviours
Animate sensors
Control and actuation
Semantic Annotation of SWE

Recommended technique
via Xlink attributes requires
no change to SWE
xlink:href - link to
ontology individual
xlink:role - link to
ontology class
xlink:arcrole - link to
ontology object
property


Abstraction
Abstraction provides the ability to interpret and synthesize information in a way
that affords effective understanding and communication of ideas, feelings,
perceptions, etc. between machines and people.
Abstraction
People are excellent at abstraction; of
sensing and interpreting stimuli to
understand and interact with the world.
The process of interpreting stimuli is
called perception; and studying this
extraordinary human capability can
lead to insights for developing effective
machine perception.
Abstraction
conceptualization
of real-world
observe
perceive
real-world
Fundamental Questions
What is perception, and how can we
design machines to perceive?
What can we learn from cognitive

models of perception?
Is the Semantic Web up to the task of
modeling perception?
What is Perception?
Perception is the act of

Abstracting
Explaining
Discriminating
Choosing
What can we learn from Cognitive

Models of Perception?
Ulric Neisser (1976)
Richard Gregory (1997)
A-priori background knowledge is a key enabler

Perception is a cyclical, active process
Is Semantic Web up to the task of

modeling perception?
Representation
Heterogeneous sensors, sensing, and observation records
Background knowledge (observable properties,
objects/events, etc.)
Inference
Explain observations (hypothesis building)
Focus attention by seeking additional stimuli (that
discriminate between explanations)
Difficult Issues to Overcome

Perception is an inference to the best explanation
Handle streaming data
Real-time processing (or nearly)
Both people and machines are capable of observing qualities,

such as redness.
Observer
observes
Quality
* Formally described in a sensor/ontology (SSN ontology)
The ability to perceive is afforded through the use of

background knowledge, relating observable qualities to entities
in the world.
Quality
inheres in
Entity
* Formally described in
domain ontologies
(and knowledge bases)
With the help of sophisticated inference, both people and

machines are also capable of perceiving entities, such as apples.
Perceiver
perceives
Entity
the ability to degrade gracefully with incomplete information

the ability to minimize explanations based on new information
the ability to reason over data on the Web

fast (tractable)
Perceptual Inference
Abductive Logic (e.g., PCT)
Deductive Logic (e.g., OWL)
high complexity
(relatively) low complexity
minimize
explanations
tractable
degrade gracefully
Perceptual Inference
(i.e., abstraction)
Web reasoning
The ability to perceive efficiently is afforded through the cyclical

exchange of information between observers and perceivers.
Observer
sends
observation
sends
focus
Perceiver
Traditionally called the

Perceptual Cycle
(or Active Perception)
Neissers Perceptual Cycle
Cognitive Theories of Perception
1970s Perception is an active, cyclical process of

exploration and interpretation.
- Nessiers Perception Cycle
1980s The perception cycle is driven by background

knowledge in order to generate and test hypotheses.
- Richard Gregory (optical illusions)
1990s In order to effectively test hypotheses, some

observations are more informative than others.
- Norwichs Entropy Theory of Perception
Key Insights
Background knowledge plays a crucial role in perception; what we know
(or think we know/believe) influences our perception of the world.
Semantics will allow us to realize computational models of perception
based on background knowledge.
Contemporary Issues
Internet/Web expands our background knowledge to a global scope;
thus our perception is global in scope
Social networks influence our knowledge and beliefs, thus influencing our
perception
Integrated together, we have an general model capable of

abstraction relating observers, perceivers, and background
knowledge.
Observer
sends
observation
observes
sends
focus
Perceiver
Quality
inheres in
perceives
Entity
Ontology of Perception as an extension of SSN

Provides abstraction of sensor data through perceptual
inference of semantically annotated data
Prior Knowledge
W3C SSN Ontology
Bi-partite Graph
Prior knowledge conformant to SSN ontology (left),

structured as a bipartite graph (right)
Semantics of Explanation
Explanation is the act of accounting for sensory observations (i.e.,
abstraction); often referred to as hypothesis building.
Observed Property: A property that has been observed.
ObservedProperty ssn:observedProperty.{o1}
ssn:observedProperty.{on}
Explanatory Feature: A feature that explains the set of observed
properties.
ExplanatoryFeature ssn:isPropertyOf.{p1}
ssn:isPropertyOf.{pn}
Semantics of Explanation
Example
Assume the properties elevated blood pressure and
palpitations have been observed, and encoded in RDF
(conformant with SSN):
ssn:Observation(o1), ssn:observedProperty(o1, elevated blood pressure)
ssn:Observation(o2), ssn:observedProperty(o2, palpitations)
Given these observations, the following ExplanatoryFeature

class is constructed:
ExplanatoryFeature ssn:isPropertyOf.{elevated blood pressure}
ssn:isPropertyOf.{palpitations}
Given the KB, executing the query ExplanatoryFeature(?y) can

infer the features, Hypertension and Hyperthyroidism, as
explanations:
ExplanatoryFeature(Hypertension)
ExplanatoryFeature(Hyperthyroidism)
Semantics of Discrimination
Discrimination is the act of deciding how to narrow down the multitude of
explanatory features through further observation.
Expected Property: A property is expected with respect to (w.r.t.) a set of
features if it is a property of every feature in the set.
ExpectedProperty ssn:isPropertyOf.{f1} ssn:isPropertyOf.{fn}
NotApplicable Property: A property is not-applicable w.r.t. a set of features if it

is not a property of any feature in the set.
NotApplicableProperty ssn:isPropertyOf.{f1}
ssn:isPropertyOf.{fn}
Discriminating Property: A property is discriminating w.r.t. a set of features if it

is neither expected nor not-applicable.
DiscriminatingProperty ExpectedProperty NotApplicableProperty
Semantics of Discrimination
Example
Given the explanatory features from the previous example,
Hypertension and Hyperthyroidism, the following classes are
constructed:
ExpectedProperty ssn:isPropertyOf.{Hypertension}
ssn:isPropertyOf.{Hyperthyroidism}
NotApplicableProperty ssn:isPropertyOf.{Hypertension}
ssn:isPropertyOf.{Hyperthyroidism}
Given the KB, executing the query DiscriminatingProperty(?x)

can infer the property clammy skin as discriminating:
DiscriminatingProperty(clammy skin)


Efficient Algorithms for IntellegO

Use of OWL-DL reasoner too resource-intensive for use in resource
constrained devices (such as sensor nodes, mobile phones, IoT devices)
Runs out of resources for problem size (prior knowledge) > 20 concepts
Asymptotic complexity: O(n3) [Experimentally determined]
To enable their use on resource-constrained devices, we now describe

algorithms for efficient inference of explanation and discrimination.
These algorithms use bit vector encodings and operations, leveraging apriori knowledge of the environment.

Bit Vector Encoding
Semantic (RDF) Encoding
Lower
Lift
First, developed lifting and lowering

algorithms to translate between RDF
and bit vector encodings of
observations.

Explanation Algorithm
Utilize bit vector operators to efficiently

compute explanation and discrimination
Explanation: Use of the bit vector AND
operation to discover and dismiss those features
that cannot explain the set of observed
properties
Discrimination Algorithm
Discrimination: Use of the bit vector AND

operation to discover and indirectly assemble
those properties that discriminate between a set
of explanatory features. The discriminating
properties are those that are determined to be
neither expected nor not-applicable

Evaluation: The bit vector encodings and algorithms yield significant and necessary
computational enhancements including asymptotic order of magnitude improvement, with
running times reduced from minutes to milliseconds, and problem size increased from 10s
to 1000s.
Adoption of SSN
SSN Applications
Linked Sensor Data

Linked Sensor Data
(~2 Billion Statements)
Sensor Discovery Application

Query w/ location name to find nearby sensors
SSN Applications
Applications of SSN
Weather
Rescue
Healthcare
SSN Application: Weather
50% savings in sensing resource

requirements during the detection of a
blizzard
Order of magnitude resource

savings between storing observations vs.
relevant abstractions
SSN Application: Fire Detection

Weather Application
SECURE: Semantics-empowered Rescue Environment

(detect different types of fires)
DEMO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in2KMkD_uqg
SSN Application: Health Care

MOBILEMD: Mobile app to help reduce re-admission
of patients with Chronic Heart Failure

Passive Monitoring Phase
Observed Symptoms
Abnormal heart rate
Clammy skin
Possible Explanations
Panic Disorder
Hypoglycemia
Hyperthyroidism
Heart Attack
Septic Shock
Passive Sensors heart rate, galvanic skin response

Active Monitoring Phase
Are you feeling lightheaded?
yes
Are you have trouble taking deep breaths?

yes
Do you have low blood pressure?
Observed Symptoms
Abnormal heart rate

Clammy skin
Lightheaded
Trouble breathing
Low blood pressure
Possible Explanations
Panic Disorder
Hypoglycemia
Hyperthyroidism
Heart Attack
Septic Shock
yes
Have you taken your Methimazole
medication?
no
Active Sensors blood pressure, weight scale, pulse oxymeter
Future work
Creating ontologies and defining data models are not enough
Designing lightweight versions for constrained environments
tools to create and annotate data

Tools for publishing linked IoT data
think of practical issues
make it as much as possible compatible and/or link it to the other
existing ontologies
Linking to domain knowledge and other resources
Location, unit of measurement, type, theme,

Linked-data
URIs and naming
Some of the open issues
Efficient real-time IoT resource/service

query/discovery
Directory
Indexing
Abstraction of IoT data

Pattern extraction
Perception creation
IoT service composition and compensation

Integration with existing Web services
Service adaptation
Selected references
Payam Barnaghi, Wei Wang, Cory Henson, Kerry Taylor, "Semantics for the Internet of Things: early progress and back to the future", (to appear)
International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems (special issue on sensor networks, Internet of Things and smart devices), 2012.
Atzori, L., Iera, A. & Morabito, G. , The Internet of Things: A survey, Computer Networks, Volume 54, Issue 15, 28 October 2010, 2787-2805.
Suparna De, Tarek Elsaleh, Payam Barnaghi , Stefan Meissner, "An Internet of Things Platform for Real-World and Digital Objects", Journal of
Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience, vol 13, no.1, 2012.
Suparna De, Payam Barnaghi, Martin Bauer, Stefan Meissner, "Service modelling for the Internet of Things", in Proceedings of the Conference on
Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), pp.949-955, Sept. 2011.
Cory Henson, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, and Amit Sheth, An Efficient Bit Vector Approach to Semantics-based Machine Perception in ResourceConstrained Devices, In: Proceedings of 11th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2012), Boston, Massachusetts, USA, November 11-25,
2012.
Cory Henson, Amit Sheth, and Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Semantic Perception: Converting Sensory Observations to Abstractions, IEEE Internet
Computing, Special Issue on Context-Aware Computing, March/April 2012.
Cory Henson, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit Sheth, An Ontological Approach to Focusing Attention and Enhancing Machine Perception on the
Web., Applied Ontology, vol. 6(4), pp.345-376, 2011.
Payam Barnaghi, Frieder Ganz, Cory Henson, Amit Sheth, Computing Perception from Sensor Data, In proceedings of the 2012 IEEE Sensors
Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, October 28-31, 2012.
Michael Compton et al, The SSN Ontology of the W3C Semantic Sensor Network Incubator Group, Journal of Web Semantics, 2012.
Harshal Patni, Cory Henson, and Amit Sheth , Linked Sensor Data, in Proceedings of 2010 International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies
and Systems (CTS 2010), Chicago, IL, May 17-21, 2010.
Amit Sheth, Cory Henson, and Satya Sahoo , Semantic Sensor Web IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 12, no. 4, July/August 2008, pp. 78-83.
Wei Wang, Payam Barnaghi, Gilbert Cassar, Frieder Ganz, Pirabakaran Navaratnam, "Semantic Sensor Service Networks", (to appear) in
Proceedings of the IEEE Sensors 2012 Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, October 2012.
Wang W, De S, Toenjes R, Reetz E, Moessner K, "A Comprehensive Ontology for Knowledge Representation in the Internet of Things", International
Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition and Management in the Internet of Things (KAMIoT 2012) in conjunction with IEE IUCC-2012, Liverpool, UK.
Liverpool. 25-27 June, 2012.
Some useful links related to IoT
Internet of Things, ITU
http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/publications/internetofthings/InternetofThings_summary.pdf
IoT Comic Book
http://www.theinternetofthings.eu/content/mirko-presser-iot-comic-book
Internet of Things Europe, http://www.internet-of-things.eu/
Internet of Things Architecture (IOT-A)
W3C Semantic Sensor Networks
http://www.iot-a.eu/public/public-documents
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/ssn/XGR-ssn-20110628/
Kno.e.sis Semantic Sensor Web Group
http://knoesis.org/projects/ssw

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Data Modelling and Knowledge Engineering

for the Internet of Things

Image source: CISCO

sensors and actuators embedded in physical

Thing connected to the internet

Future Internet - A new dimension

Internet of Things - definition

A world where physical objects are seamlessly

What Things can be connected?

Sensor devices are becoming widely

Why is IoT important?

Observation and measurement data

Data is important and IoT will produce

Turning Data into Wisdom

Embedded device + physical world objects

nodes (e.g. SunSPOT, TelOSB, WASPmote).

Components related to Things

Physical world objects

A room, a car, A person;

Temperature of the room, Location of the car,

Temperature sensor, GPS, pulse sensor

Active & Passive Sensors

Active Tags and Passive Tags

Hardware components of sensor

Example: Radiation Sensor Board

Energy consumption of the nodes

Batteries have small capacity and recharging could

idle and sleep

A radio modem could turn transmitter, receiver, or

Beyond common sensors

tweeting real world data and/or events

Software agents generating data

Stepper Motor [1]

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)gateway connection

What are the main issues?

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks are supposed to deliver bits from

Gives addition options

Main example: aggregation

Applying aggregation functions to a obtain an average value of

In-network processing- example

SAX Pattern (blue) with word length of 20 and a vocabulary of 10 symbols

In typical networks (including ad hoc networks), network

In a redundantly deployed sensor networks, specific source

A node-centric or address-centric networking paradigm

Redundancy: e.g., several nodes can observe the same area

Thus: focus networking transactions on the data directly

Principal design change

Implementation options for

Overlay networks & distributed hash tables (DHT)

Hash table: content-addressable memory

Some disparities remain

Static key in DHT, dynamic changes in WSN

Different interaction paradigm

There is concepts of Semantic Sensor Networks- to annotate sensor resources and

IoT and Semantic technologies

The sensors (and in general Things) are increasingly being

Broadening the IoT to the concept of Web of Things

There are already Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)

Semantics and IoT resources and

Semantics are machine-interpretable metadata (for mark-up), logical

Now! That should clear up a few things around here!

Semantic Web Stack