Canonical Sensor Ontology Builder Based on ISO/IEC 11179 for Sensor Network Environments: A Standardized Approach

The advancement of sensor technology has led to an explosive increase in sensors. It causes semantic heterogeneity problems, and much research has focused on sensor ontology building to solve the problems. However, there are still remaining several issues, and one of the most critical issues is about a method for progressive and dynamic concepts management and reuse of sensor ontology. This paper proposes an ontology generation system based on ISO/IEC 11179–MDR (metadata registry). The proposed system is referred to as the Canonical Sensor Ontology Builder (CaSOB) and can create ontologies by reusing the common concepts registered in a canonical sensor ontology concept registry, an MDR. This paper defines a mapping model and processes to create ontology with the concepts registered in an MDR. Our proposal provides many advantages such as high standardization, consistent concept usage, and easy semantic exchange. Therefore, CaSOB facilitates the high quality sensor ontology creation and reduces the costs of sensor ontology integration and system development.