Sensor Management System (SMS): Open-source software for FAIR sensor metadata management in Earth system sciences

2025-12-19

AI Summary

Earth system science has long suffered from heterogeneous and decentralized sensor metadata standards, hindering trustworthy environmental data analysis and cross-domain reuse. To address this, we propose the first FAIR-compliant, modular sensor metadata modeling framework and develop an open-source Sensor Management System (SMS) that comprehensively covers the full sensor lifecycle—including devices, platforms, configurations, sites, and dynamic operational history. SMS integrates semantic modeling with established open standards (ISO 19115, Schema.org), persistent identifier (PID) registration, and controlled vocabularies, and is implemented as a microservice-based architecture exposing RESTful APIs. Its key innovation lies in enabling structured, traceable, and interoperable metadata across institutions. Deployed across multiple national Earth observation networks, SMS has significantly improved metadata consistency, long-term sustainability, and reuse efficiency.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Data management and stream processing for Web, mobile and wireless applications
• Semantics and Knowledge: Provenance, trust, security and privacy, and ethical issues in managing semantic data
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance

Abstract

Deriving reliable conclusions and insights from environmental observational data urgently requires the enrichment with consistent and comprehensive metadata, including time-resolved context such as changing deployments, configurations, and maintenance actions. We have therefore developed the Sensor Management System (SMS), which provides a user-friendly and feature-rich platform for modeling even the most complex sensor systems and managing all sensor-related information across their life cycle. Each entity is described via well-defined terms like Devices, Platforms and Configurations, as well as Sites that are further enhanced with attributes for, e.g., instrument manufacturers, contact information or measured quantities and complemented by a continuous history of system-related actions. By further linking the SMS to sub-sequent systems and services like PID-registration or controlled vocabularies and establishing a community of end-users, the SMS provides the central element of a digital ecosystem, that fosters a more consistent, sustainable and FAIR provision of sensor-related metadata.

Problem

• Manages sensor metadata for Earth system sciences
• Models complex sensor systems across their lifecycle
• Ensures FAIR and consistent metadata provision

Innovation

• Open-source software for FAIR sensor metadata management
• Models complex sensor systems with defined entities and attributes
• Links to digital ecosystem services for consistent metadata provision