CFP: Special issue on Semantic Sensing at the Journal of Web Semantics

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Call for Papers: Special Issue on Semantic Sensing
                 Journal of Web Semantics

Editors: 
- Harith Alani (Open University)
- Oscar Corcho (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
- Manfred Hauswirth (DERI)


Motivation
----------
The areas of social media, mobile communication networks, pervasive
environments, and Internet of Things are currently converging towards
novel integrated communication environments to deliver information in a
context-dependent form whenever and wherever the user needs it. In future
communication systems, sensors will become a central information provider
about the user's physical environment, which needs to be integrated with
the user's preferences, the user's online communication channels and
social connections along with any relevant information from Web-based
information systems. We use the term sensor here to refer to any device
that supplies time-dependent information about the real world, including
human-generated information.

Semantic technologies are becoming increasingly popular for providing
descriptive and structured integration layers for the heterogenous sensor
networks and other information sources mentioned above. Semantics are used
to describe, map, and reason over the data from these sources by turning
the data into machine processable and sharable structured knowledge.

On the scientific side this vision requires research into
information-driven integration of sensing technologies, self-organization,
large-scale stream information management - all with semantics as a core
building block to support optimal use of these information sources but
also to enable simple and flexible cross-layer integration on a technical
level. This knowledge layer on top of the Internet of Things is a critical
enabler for the Sensor Web.

However, until now the virtual world of information sources and activities
in the real world are still largely disconnected: Knowledge accessible on
the Web (the virtual world) may influence activities in the real world and
vice versa. However, these influences are usually indirect and not
immediate, usually only by means of custom-built, closed applications.
Several challenges arise at different layers:
- On the networking side, this requires IP-based access to smart objects
and sensors (Internet-connected Objects) as a unifying network layer which
is already being addressed by significant efforts, e.g., CoAP, 6LoWPAN,
and ROLL.
- On the distributed systems/middleware layer, self-organization
mechanisms along with flexible service abstractions to cut the cost and
complexity of application development are necessary.
- At the database and Web layers, data access is essential with support
for semantics and stream processing, as future communication systems
depend on the efficient, machine-supported access to time-dependent
information. Specifically, this requires flexible platforms to connect
information coming from Internet-connected Objects and mobile devices into
the Web, for example, by means of the linked data paradigm, to serve as
the basis for semantic knowledge management approaches which equally take
into account the virtual and physical side, specifically addressing the
strong time-dependency of information and the resource constraints of the
information producers and consumers. A particular challenge here is that
the semantic layers need to take into account the resource constraints of
the underlying sensing layers.
- At the user interface layers, dynamic data coming from information
sources, and their connections to other information sources, have to be
visualised effectively in order to support decision making.


Topics of Interest
------------------
The topics of interest for this special issue include but are not limited
to the following:
* Approaches for efficiently producing and processing stream data
* Linked stream data
* Stream reasoning
* RESTful and linked data approaches for semantic data streams
* Opportunistic sensing with semantics
* RDF/Linked Data storage and processing on sensors and mobile devices
* Pub-/sub-systems and middleware for semantic sensing application
* Semantic cloud sensing
* Semantic integration of sensor data with online data
* Semantic sensing user interfaces


Important Dates:
---------------
We will review papers on a rolling basis as they are submitted and
explicitly encourage submissions well before the final deadline.

Submission deadline:    20 December 2011
Notification:           31 March 2012
Final version submitted:31 May 2012
Publication:     Fall 2012


Guide for authors: http://bit.ly/nmt9aT




-- 

Oscar Corcho
Ontology Engineering Group (OEG)
Departamento de Inteligencia Artificial
Facultad de Informática
Campus de Montegancedo s/n
Boadilla del Monte-28660 Madrid, España
Tel. (+34) 91 336 66 05
Fax  (+34) 91 352 48 19

Received on Wednesday, 27 July 2011 07:50:12 UTC