Special Issue on the Sensors, Observations, Actuators and the Web of Linked Data and Things

Special Issue on the Sensors, Observations, Actuators and the Web of Linked Data and Things

Scope

The rapid advancement and ubiquitous penetration of mobile networks, Web-based information creation and sharing, and software-defined networking technology enable us to sense, predict and control the physical world using information technology—on top of the resulting Internet of Things (IoT), business models and processes have been redesigned on the Web across a broad range of industries leading to the so-called Web of Things (WoT). To maximize its social and economic benefit, issues of interoperability, data and service mash-ups, the development of open platforms, and standardization on the application layer have to be addressed.

Pervasive connectivity, smart devices, for example in our homes, and demand for data testify to a WoT that will continue to grow by leaps and bounds. New devices are being developed and are becoming cheaper, making their integration into everyday objects ever more feasible, and as people buy into WoT technology, economies of scale lend themselves to the creation of ever more data-centric businesses. Instrumenting and connecting devices has massive potential to deliver value, but there is need for a coordinated effort when rolling out the next generation of self-reporting paradigms.

The capabilities of these networks of devices presents us with several new and complex challenges that need to be solved before data, device and service interoperability on the Web of Things can deliver their promised potential. Without connecting the data and its semantics that is generated by potentially billions of sensing, actuating and sampling devices, the users of the Web of Things will end up in silos of information that require different applications to access and use it. A description of the capabilities of these devices using semantic technologies may help in deciding how to communicate with the device and manage the data that is produced or the actions that can be performed. Besides the well researched area of cloud computing, new approaches such as edge computing and fog computing have been proposed to address parts of the scalability problem. The goal of these new approaches is to not transport all data but only relevant data across the Internet.

On the other hand, successfully interconnecting devices on the Web of Things will lead to a deluge of data that will present scalability problems to the data analysis and knowledge extraction and management. Further, issues around access to devices and privacy issues of what information can be shared in a highly interconnected Web of Things are also intensifying.

The focus of this special issue is to showcase novel approaches of applying semantic technologies to solve the problems of device and data integration mentioned above. The topics of interest for the special issue include (but are not limited to):

  • Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies for Web of Thing devices
    • Ontologies and data models for the description of mobile systems and applications, including autonomous systems and wearable, urban or sensory computing devices.
    • Representing and reasoning with things, capabilities, interaction patterns, services, and functions.
    • Representing and reasoning with devices’ context, users, domain
    • Ontologies and models for an WoT world (e.g. Ontologies for sensors, devices, features of interest, environment ontologies, etc.)
    • Discovery, status monitoring, configuration, and reconfiguration of things
    • Semantics for Advanced object identification, classification, and localization
  • Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies for Web of Things’ data
    • Processing and storage of observation and actuator data
    • Semantic reasoning and interpretation of data based on context and user data
    • Real-time decision making, event processing,
    • Dynamic annotation of WoT data
    • Geospatial semantics and data related to sensors, their observations, and actuators on the Web
  • Semantic technologies and Web of Things constraints and architectures
    • Lightweight processing and storage of sensor observartion and actuator data on constrained devices themselves
    • Fog- and Edge- computing leveraging Semantics and Linked Data technologies
  • Web of Things and Data applications and application development
    • Intelligent Environments using sensor and actuator systems
    • Semantic personalized intelligent services and applications based on user model
    • Rule-based or Goal-oriented programming of Web of Thing devices
    • Human-Object interaction, and end-user development
  • Semantic interoperability and standardization overcoming siloization of IoT systems
    • Interoperability and alignment among standards, ontologies, catalogues, related to sensors, actuators, and the web of things
    • Semantics and Open Platforms for Web of Data and Things
    • Semantic technologies helping constructing systems of IoT Systems
  • Coupling between semantics and other AI techniques for the Web of Things and Data (deep learning, multi-agent systems, etc.), including but not restricted to:
    • Data analysis and knowledge extraction and management
    • Ontology learning from real-word sensor observations
    • Semantics and Multi-Agent Systems for the Web of Things
  • Trust, privacy, and security in the Web of Things and Data
    • Processing and storage of device data on the blockchain
    • Co-operations and coordination among objects, social internet of things, trust among objects
    • Data transparency and user consent on the Web of Things and Data
    • Data provenance and trustworthiness of IoT devices
    • Semantic technology and IoT privacy by design
    • Privacy challenges arising from an IoT enabled Web of Data
  • Experience in sensor network applications of semantic technologies
    • Intelligent Environments using sensor and actuator systems
    • Novel applications of semantic sensor networks, physical/IoT-cyber-social data
    • Citizen sensors, participatory sensing and social sensing

Special issue editors

Please use swj-issue-soa@emse.fr to contact all editors.

Indicate in the cover letter that it is for the Sensors, Observations special issue.

Important dates

  • Paper submission deadline: December 14 2018
  • Envisioned First round notification: February 2019