S-TEN D2.1: Contents and Introduction


Ontology for self-describing networks	S-TEN D2.1

Cover page
Table of contents
1 Introduction
2 Terminology
3 Physical things

4 Temporal part and time
5 Observation and measurement
6 Information
7 Physical quantity, property and scale
8 What is possible

A SensorML
B Weather station example
C PML
D Computer interpretable listing
Index

0.1 Sources

The aim is to reuse wherever possible, existing ontologies (including the ScadaOnWeb ontology), to take concepts from information models in existing ISO and IEC standards, e.g.:

ISO 10303 - STEP;
IEC 61970 - EPRI-CIM; and
ISO 15926 - EPISTLE.

and to consider industry standards such as WITSML Website Information Transfer Standard Markup Language (http://www.witsml.org) and other research projects including the SensorML project (http://vast.uah.edu/SensorML/index.html).

1 Scope

This document specifies an ontology for describing a physical network. This ontology can be used by intelligent devices to publish information about their existence and state. This ontology encompasses measurements made by sensors within a network and the storage and processing of measurements. This ontology is intended to enable the use of inferencing to support activities carried out upon a network, including operations and maintenance.

The scope of the ontology includes:

physical objects

A network is made up of physical objects. Information about these objects includes:

what it is;
what it is connected to;
where it is (e.g. input from GPS);
what it does;
what it measures (if it is a measurement device);
what the quality of the measurement is (if it is a measurement device).

activities

An activity can be:

a manufacturing or processing activity performed by a physical object within a network as part of its normal operation;
a measurement activity performed by a measurement device;
a control, maintenance or measurement activity performed by a person

The information about any activity, can include:

what it is;
the performer, which can be a person or device; and
other physical objects which participate in the activity, particularly the inputs and outputs.

An input or output can be an information object.

information

It is necessary to record information about both information objects and their information contents.

NOTE Information about information is tricky, but is dealt with within the Semantic Web environment by "named graphs".

2 Terminology

The following terminology is used.

0.1.1 physical thing
thing that exists in space and time

0.1.2 physical object
physical thing that consists of a sufficiently large number of interacting particles to be within the domain of classical physics

NOTE 1 A physical object can be a physical asset, which is defined by an asset management activity. A physical object can be a system, which is defined by an operations management activity.

NOTE 2 A physical object can be an activity. An activity consists of periods in the life of several physical objects, one of which is the performer.

0.1.3 system
physical object that is defined by an operations management activity

0.1.4 artefact
physical object that has been manufactured

0.1.5 device
physical object that is intended to perform a function

0.1.6 intelligent device
device that has a computer as a part

0.1.7 server
intelligent device that publishes information on a network

0.1.8 sensor-server system
system that contains sensors; that is a server; and that publishes information obtained by the sensors

0.1.9 measurement history server
server that publishes a history of measurements

0.1.10 information object
physical thing that bears a pattern which can be interpreted

NOTE A URL identifies an information object.

0.1.11 information content
class that consists of all information objects that have the same interpretation

NOTE The same information content can be published with more than one URL.

0.1.12 measurement result
information content that is obtained from one or more sensors.

NOTE A measurement result can be obtained by processing raw data from sensors.