Center for Embedded Network Sensing

At CENS, practices for data handling vary widely across research groups and projects. The lack of a common set of policies and procedures affects the entire data production life cycle: from data acquisition, for sensor data get encoded in different (possibly incompatible) formats to data dissemination. Internal circulation is performed via shallow methods such as email communication or static FTP transmission. This sort of data management setting does not stimulate data exchange, indicating the need for a common infrastructure capable of enforcing interoperability. We propose adoption of standard, XML-based formats, such as SensorML and EML, to encode sensor data instances and describe detector information; compliance to standard formats enables data reuse across different projects and guarantees long-term preservation. Moreover, we envision utilization of interoperable protocols, such as OAI-PMH, to encapsulate data objects onto an application-independent framework and thus ease collection and dissemination with external research institutions.,#8194;,#8194;,#8194;