Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The research explained in this chapter elaborates on an architecture developed
with the aim of linking spaces and sensors (embedded in devices) in a loosely cou-
pled manner using a RESTful approach. The objective was making spaces aware of
devices, and making devices aware of spaces in a loosely coupled way (i.e. a state/
usage/function change in spaces would not have effect on sensors, similarly a loca-
tion/state/usage/function change in sensors would not have any effect on spaces). In
essence, the developed architecture enables the automatic assignment of sensors to
spaces depending on space geometry and sensor location. When a change in the loca-
tion of the device (that the sensor is mounted to) occurs, the device is automatically
updated with the information regarding its container space, in addition if the device
has moved from one space to another, the state of the previous and next spaces (and
the list of sensors contained in them) gets updated automatically. Once this real time
information about devices and spaces is available it can be used to facilitate emer-
gency and disaster response activities, building facility management, etc.
2 Background
As mentioned above, linking sensors and spaces via Internet requires appropriate
subdivision of spaces, sensor that can be located and interfaces which allow access
to the measurements of the sensors.
3 Cellular Spaces and Sensors
Many researchers have investigated approaches for indoor space subdivision
(Meijers et al.
2005
; Liu and Zlatanova
2012
; Brown et al.
2013
). A solid theoreti-
cal framework for establishing connection between sensors and spaces is presented
in OGC Discussion paper Requirements and Space-Event Modeling for Indoor
Navigation (Nagel et al.
2010
). As discussed the localization of moving subjects
and objects in 3D Spaces is one of the key issues of indoor navigation as there is
no absolute positioning method such as GPS available so far for indoor navigation.
Outdoor localization is possible through the use of GNSS (e.g. GPS), in fact it is
also necessary to know the boundary conditions of its outdoor location for many
application domains (ranging from traffic management to flight tracking).
Nagel et al. (
2010
) discusses the notion of cellular space to represent indoors.
The proposition is representing the covered space of 3D solid objects as decom-
posed or subdivided into a finite set of partitions, i.e. into 3D elements that will
be referred to as Cells. The Cellular Space itself is composed of cells, which rep-
resent the structurally smallest unit of the respective space. Cells can have dif-
ferent sizes or shapes and every cell of the respective space includes information
relevant for the navigation model. As stated by the discussion paper some indoor
navigation applications rely on a further spatial decomposition of rooms according
