[generic-sensor] Questions on the draft Generic Sensor API

To Whom it May Concern -

The Open GeoSpatial Consortium (OGC) and W3C have a long and strong history
of collaboration. The following is submitted in the spirit of this
collaboration and by way of context.

Since 2000, the OGC Membership has been working on and deploying a range of
standards for accessing, tasking, describing, and sharing geospatially
enabled sensors. The sensor types range from satellites to IoT accessible
devices and includes both dynamic and in-situ sensors and actuators. (see
https://www.ogc.org/node/698). At the heart of these standards is an ISO
Standard  typically referred to as Observations and Measurements(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_and_Measurements)

One of the most recent additions to the suite of OGC sensor focused
standards is
SensorThings API Part 1: Sensing Version 1.1 (
https://docs.ogc.org/is/18-088/18-088.html)

The OGC SensorThings API provides an open, geospatial-enabled and unified
way to interconnect the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, data, and
applications over the web. At a high level the OGC SensorThings API
provides two main functionalities and each function is handled by a part.
The two parts are the Sensing part and the Tasking part. The Sensing part
provides a standard way to manage and retrieve observations and metadata
from heterogeneous IoT sensor systems.

Another OGC activity that might be of interest is the current OGC GeoPose
standards work. The draft OGC GeoPose standard describes an interoperable
way to express, record, and share the position and orientation of objects
across diverse applications, users, devices, services, and platforms.

A comment: I really like and appreciate the section on privacy and
security. I believe that the OGC SensorThings standards group will also be
very interested in those sections of the document.

A comment: Minor, but I think that in the Scope you should be even more
clear as to the focus of the Generic API. For example, I suspect many in
the geospatial community would categorize real time imagery (including
video) collected from say a drone is using a device sensor.

A question: Have you considered datastreams?

An observation: There are definitely terminology differences between what
is used in the Generic API and what is used in ISO TC211 and the OGC. For
example, tasking in the OGC world includes concepts such as tasking a
satellite or a drone. While the terminology may be conceptually the same at
an abstract level, having a crosswalk between the W3C Generic API work and
OGC SensorThings (and other OGC sensor standards) might be useful for the
broader community.

A thought: I think that it might be very interesting and beneficial to
consider how SensorThings and the Generic API align and could perhaps work
together in certain use cases and or work/flows.

Happy New Year!

Cheers

Carl Reed, PhD
Former Standards Director and CTO, OGC
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