Sensor interoperability for disaster management

This paper describes how to use sensor information in international disaster management operations. The focus is on enabling sensor interoperability by using standardized interfaces. For this work the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Observation Service (SOS) is used to exchange sensor information between different systems. Further individual sensor values have to be interpreted to bring benefit to commanders in disaster operations. We are proposing a Sensor Fusion Engine to combine sensor data stemming from heterogeneous sources and provide a condensed output in different standard formats and protocols. An example of such a format is the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) which is a standardized interface used in disaster operations. Real world deployments in large scale disaster exercises have shown the applicability of the approach.