A Workflow Model for Earth Observation Sensor Webs

An Earth science sensor web consists of a distributed collection of sensors, Earth science models, human scientists and information technologists, and data archives. The scientific use of the sensor web consists broadly of seeking to improve the understanding of natural processes occurring on the Earth’s surface or in the atmosphere. Sensor measurements serve to quantify aspects of these processes that allow Earth science models to make predictions of scientific and social value. The management problem for sensor webs considered here is the problem of reconfiguring the sensor web in order to answer new science questions. The notion of reconfiguration is used broadly here to describe a set of actions for retargeting sensors, querying databases for image data, or executing functions for analyzing acquired data. This paper describes a workflow model and architecture for a workflow management system for reconfiguring sensor webs.