Earth Observation Sensor Web: An Overview

In recent years, one of the major advances in Earth observation has been the development and realization of the concept of the Earth Observation Sensor Web. This concept has emerged from advances in sensor, communication, and information technologies to meet the demands for timely and pertinent data and information for supporting applications in the societal benefit areas of Earth observation. One consensus view of the sensor web is a coordinated observation infrastructure composed of a distributed collection of resources - e.g., sensors, platforms, models, computing facilities, communications infrastructure - that can collectively behave as a single, autonomous, taskable, dynamically adaptive and reconfigurable observing system that provides raw and processed data, along with associated metadata, via a set of standards-based serviceoriented interfaces.