The template for a Semantic SensorThings API with the GloSIS use case

Abstract

Since 2016 the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has embarked on a new specification paradigm for web access to geo-spatial data. Moving on from the SOAP/XML pattern underlying the many web services it specified earlier, the OGC has since issued novel standards based on ReST API specifications such as OpenAPI and OData. In tandem, data encoding formats considered in the OGC’s standards have been greatly expanded. This new direction has greatly aligned the OGC’s work with the Semantic Web, the collection of specifications for data on the web based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) issued by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).In this context, this communication explores the SensorThings API specification as means to serve environmental data in standardised fashion. With concrete examples, it demonstrates how the adoption of the Semantic Web in Spatial Data Infrastructures opens up a fresh approach to the development and deployment of data services, especially those in which domain data is deeply structured. Two use cases are reviewed herewith: the GloSIS web ontology for soil data exchange and the Iliad Ocean Digital Twin.