Geosensor data representation using layered slope grids

Abstract

Environmental monitoring applications are designed for supplying derived and often integrated information by tracking and analyzing phenomena. To determine the condition of a target place, they employ a geosensor network to get the heterogeneous sensor data. To effectively handle a large volume of sensor data, applications need a data abstraction model, which supports the summarized data representation by encapsulating raw data. For faster data processing to answer a user's queries with representative attributes of an abstracted model, we propose such a data abstraction model, the Layered Slopes in Grid for Sensor Data Abstraction (LSGSA), which is based on the SGSA. In a single grid-based layer for each sensor type, collected data is represented by slope directional vectors in two layered slopes, such as height and surface. To answer a user query in a central monitoring server, LSGSA is used to reduce the time needed to extract event features from raw sensor data as a preprocessing step for interpreting the observed data. The extracted features are used to understand the current data trends and the progress of a detected phenomenon without accessing raw sensor data. © 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.