SENSOR WEB SERVICES FOR EARLY FLOOD WARNINGS BASED ON SOIL MOISTURE PROFILES

As result of improved computing and communication capabilities, the use of sensors and sensor networks for environmental monitoring has gained considerable importance in the recent years. For an interoperable integration of sensor data like sensor descriptions, sensor measurements and alarm events, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) started the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative and proposed several specifications in respect to a geospatial sensor web. First implementations of SWE software frameworks are available. In this paper, we present the results of the recent WEBBOS project. Its objective was to build up a system for early flood warnings by measuring soil moisture profiles. The use of soil moisture profiles is motivated by the fact that traditional approaches like the observation of water gauges are suitable for the prediction of large-river flooding but not for smaller drainage areas. We describe the architecture of our system and how it is built up by using existing software components to a large extent. Our special focus is on the incorporation of 3D soil moisture profiles into the SWE data model, on the integration of the new OGC Sensor Event Service, and on the development of a flexible web client for mapping and other visualization purposes