During this workshop over 50 participants, representing 15 countries, presented and discussed selleck catalog their recent research. The workshop provided a broad overview of state-of-the-art research in a broad range of application fields: oceanography, air quality, biodiversity and vegetation, health, tourism, water management, and agriculture. In addition the workshop identified the future research challenges.One of the outcomes of the workshop was a special issue in the journal Sensors with contributions presented at the workshop. This editorial of the special issue aims to provide an overview of the discussions held during the workshop. It highlights the ideas of the authors and participants of the workshop about directions of future research for further development of sensor-webs for ��sensing�� spatial phenomena.

The ��big�� question was are we already able to sense a changing world? And if the answer is positive, then what are we going to sense and for what?Current progressBefore answering the above noted questions, it is good to reflect on what we have encountered and accomplished already. Therefore we might look at sensor webs Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries for environmental Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries monitoring as a multi leveled system (Figure 1). The general aim of a sensor web is to Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries inform users about the condition of the spatial-temporal aspects of the physical environment. At the bottom of Figure 1 physical measurement is done by either an in-situ or a mobile sensor [1]. At this level research is mainly conducted by physical sensor research aiming at creating accurate, robust, energy-efficient and reliable measuring devices.

For the domain of environmental sciences the work done at this level needs to be taken for granted. Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries The second layer deals with the design and implementation of sensor webs. To cover a certain geographical extent or multifaceted domain, sensors might be coupled into a sensor network. Sensors in such a network should be able to exchange information efficiently and effectively. Research here focusses on the design of scalable, fault tolerant and cost efficient network topologies consisting of sets of static or mobile sensors [2]. The third layer offers the concepts, methods, and tools to enable access to data. Research here is concerned with methods to make accessible the often large quantities of sensor data through unified or interoperable interfaces.

Databases optimized to handle often real-time spatial temporal data is current important fields of research. At the fourth level research is concerned with analytical techniques and tools to generated knowledge from the often Anacetrapib large amounts of sensor data. Novel approaches like data mining, specialized query languages, etc. need to be further developed. Especially the connection with geographical information systems (GIS) needs attention. Additional analytical, cartographic visualization techniques more are necessary to analyze and visualize the processed sensor data.