SensorThings API allows developers to connect to various IoT devices and create innovative applications without needing to integrate the heterogeneous protocols of the different IoT devices, gateways, and services.

20 February 2018: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on the OGC SensorThings API, Part 2 - Tasking Core Candidate Standard. The OGC SensorThings API is a free and non-proprietary lightweight interface specification that simplifies and accelerates the development of Web-based Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

The OGC SensorThings API provides an open, geospatial-enabled, and unified way to interconnect the IoT devices, data, and applications over the Web. Part 1 was released in 2016 and allowed management and reception of observations or measurements made by IoT sensors. Part 2 provides a mechanism to tell the sensor/actuator what to do

Application developers can use this open standard to connect to various IoT devices and create innovative applications without needing to individually integrate the heterogeneous protocols of the different IoT devices, gateways, and services. System manufacturers can embed the OGC SensorThings API in their IoT hardware and software platforms so that the different platforms’ IoT devices can effortlessly connect with other servers that implement the standard. Because device location communication is useful in almost every IoT application, an open, lightweight, widely used standards-based location encoding is part of the SensorThings API.

This new standard is designed specifically for resource-constrained IoT devices and the Web developer community. The candidate standard follows REST principles and uses an efficient MQTT transport and the flexible OASIS OData URL conventions.

The candidate OGC SensorThings API Standard was designed to be compatible with a rich set of proven and widely-adopted open standards, such as the Web protocols and the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards, including the ISO/OGC Observation and Measurement Encoding Standard. Thus, the OGC SensorThings API is extensible and can be applied in both simple and complex use cases.

At a high level, the OGC SensorThings API provides two main functionalities: Sensing, and Tasking. Each function is handled by a part. The Sensing part, an official OGC standard since 2016, provides a standard way to manage and retrieve observations and metadata from heterogeneous IoT sensor systems.

This, the Tasking part, provides a standard way for parameterizing - also called tasking of - task-able IoT devices, such as sensors, actuators, drones, or even satellites.

The candidate ‘SensorThings API Part 2 – Tasking Core’ Standard is available for review and comment at portal.opengeospatial.org/files/77694. Comments are due by 22 March 2018 and should be submitted via www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/162  

About OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 525 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that ‘geo-enable’ the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful within any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org.

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