Monitoring of a Transport Infrastructure via a Sensor-enabled SDI

Abstract

In the framework of the FP7 ISTIMES project (Integrated System for Transport Infrastructures Surveillance and Monitoring by Electromagnetic Sensing), we have designed a distributed, real-time, Web-based information system for sensor-based transport infrastructures monitoring applications. The overall aim of the ISTIMES project is to make critical transport infrastructures more reliable and safe, providing real-time, detailed information and imagery of the infrastructure status, to improve decision support for security stakeholders, by means of non-destructive electromagnetic monitoring, exploiting heterogeneous state-of-the-art insitu sensors and specific satellite measurements. From an ICT point of view, ISTIMES aims at the design of an open networked architecture capable of integrating measurements from a wide range of remote and in-situ sensors. Our main contributions have regarded: the formalization of system users and use-cases; the design of the service infrastructure, including peculiar value-added mediation services; the identification of the system components and of possible technological implementations. The ISTIMES system is a middleware framework founded on a Spatial Data Infrastructure, hence enabling the implementation of individual test-bed applications, customized to the transport infrastructure of interest. ISTIMES is an ideal test case for the Event Architecture paradigm, which naturally accommodates asynchronous events from disparate sources, e.g. a constellation of autonomous sensors deployed onto an infrastructure. Besides, ISTIMES constitutes a valuable real-world application for the current best practices and standards in multi-sensors, real-time monitoring systems, and its feedback may contribute to their future evolution.