Geospatial Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT)

A special issue of ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2018) | Viewed by 46303

Special Issue Editors


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Center for Geospatial Research, Department of Geography, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
Interests: GIScience and landscape ecology; remote sensing; geovisualization and geospatial analysis for human/animal–environment interactions
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Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Architecture, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
Interests: civil engineering; architecture; web-GIS; open source software; location-based services
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Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering and Surveying, University of Southern Queensland West Street, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
Interests: spatial data infrastructure (SDI); land administration; cadastre; IoT; citizen science; mixed method research; land use policy; catchment management; health informatics
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Guest Editor
School of Geographical & Earth Sciences, College of Science & Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Interests: GIScience; geodata science; urban Informatics; city and regional development
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Information and communication technologies (ICT), mobile devices location-aware sensors have triggered a new paradigm of the Internet of Things (IoT). A decade ago, the number of devices on the Internet exceeded the number of people on the planet, and, in 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council projected that IoT would be one of six disruptive civil technologies—as in “by 2025 Internet nodes might reside in everyday things – food packages, furniture, paper documents, and more”. More recently, the proliferation of low-cost sensors, reduced costs of cloud-computing resources and increasing accessibility of artificial intelligence (AI) and open-source machine learning platforms, have combined to propel advancements and applications of IoT and GIScience. Working Group 6 of the ISPRS Commission IV (WG IV/6), “Internet of Things, SDI and Spatial Decision Support”, proposes this Special Issue of the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, entitled, “Geospatial Applications of the Internet of Things” to exchange the latest developments in IoT, SDI and spatial decision support systems. With foci of innovative geospatial applications of the IoT, we encourage submissions from perspectives of the thing (e.g., the state-of-art in sensors network and integration), the semantic (e.g., representing, storing, sharing, interconnecting, searching, and organizing (geo)information generated by the IoT), and the solutions (e.g., smart and connected communities, ecological and agricultural applications, etc.). We encourage contributions on (but not limited to) the following themes: 

  • Theories, frameworks, and paradigms of geospatial applications of the IoT
  • Advancements in sensor networks and integration for geospatial applications
  • Geoinformation search, retrieval, sharing and representation from IoT, including multi-level spatial data infrastructure and web services
  • Spatial decision support systems with IoT
  • AI and machine learning with IoT
  • IoT, Big Data and Analytics: Challenges, solutions and potential
  • Geospatial applications of IoT in urban, ecological, health, business and agricultural systems
  • Geospatial education and capacity building efforts with IoT
  • Ethical and privacy considerations of IoT

Manuscripts for this exciting Special Issue should be submitted by 30 November 2018 for timely peer-review, selection and publication in the Open Access ISPRS IJGI.

Dr. Marguerite Madden
Dr. Giuseppina Vacca
Dr. Dev Raj Paudyal
Dr. Mingshu Wang
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 7419 KiB  
Article
Low-Power LoRa Signal-Based Outdoor Positioning Using Fingerprint Algorithm
by Wongeun Choi, Yoon-Seop Chang, Yeonuk Jung and Junkeun Song
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(11), 440; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7110440 - 9 Nov 2018
Cited by 61 | Viewed by 8197
Abstract
Positioning is an essential element in most Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Global Positioning System (GPS) chips have high cost and power consumption, making it unsuitable for long-range (LoRa) and low-power IoT devices. Alternatively, low-power wide-area (LPWA) signals can be used for simultaneous [...] Read more.
Positioning is an essential element in most Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Global Positioning System (GPS) chips have high cost and power consumption, making it unsuitable for long-range (LoRa) and low-power IoT devices. Alternatively, low-power wide-area (LPWA) signals can be used for simultaneous positioning and communication. We summarize previous studies related to LoRa signal-based positioning systems, including those addressing proximity, a path loss model, time difference of arrival (TDoA), and fingerprint positioning methods. We propose a LoRa signal-based positioning method that uses a fingerprint algorithm instead of a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) proximity or TDoA method. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the accuracy and usability of the fingerprint algorithm for large areas in the real world. We estimated the locations using probabilistic means based on three different algorithms that use interpolated fingerprint RSSI maps. The average accuracy of the three proposed algorithms in our experiments was 28.8 m. Our method also reduced the battery consumption significantly compared with that of existing GPS-based positioning methods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geospatial Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT))
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29 pages, 1935 KiB  
Article
Geospatial IoT—The Need for Event-Driven Architectures in Contemporary Spatial Data Infrastructures
by Matthes Rieke, Lorenzo Bigagli, Stefan Herle, Simon Jirka, Alexander Kotsev, Thomas Liebig, Christian Malewski, Thomas Paschke and Christoph Stasch
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(10), 385; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7100385 - 25 Sep 2018
Cited by 31 | Viewed by 8118
Abstract
The nature of contemporary spatial data infrastructures lies in the provision of geospatial information in an on-demand fashion. Although recent applications identified the need to react to real-time information in a time-critical way, research efforts in the field of geospatial Internet of Things [...] Read more.
The nature of contemporary spatial data infrastructures lies in the provision of geospatial information in an on-demand fashion. Although recent applications identified the need to react to real-time information in a time-critical way, research efforts in the field of geospatial Internet of Things in particular have identified substantial gaps in this context, ranging from a lack of standardisation for event-based architectures to the meaningful handling of real-time information as “events”. This manuscript presents work in the field of event-driven architectures as part of spatial data infrastructures with a particular focus on sensor networks and the devices capturing in-situ measurements. The current landscape of spatial data infrastructures is outlined and used as the basis for identifying existing gaps that retain certain geospatial applications from using real-time information. We present a selection of approaches—developed in different research projects—to overcome these gaps. Being designed for specific application domains, these approaches share commonalities as well as orthogonal solutions and can build the foundation of an overall event-driven spatial data infrastructure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geospatial Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT))
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22 pages, 2935 KiB  
Article
Geospatial Analysis and the Internet of Things
by Andreas Kamilaris and Frank O. Ostermann
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(7), 269; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7070269 - 10 Jul 2018
Cited by 41 | Viewed by 9421
Abstract
As the Internet of Things (IoT) penetrates our everyday lives, being used to address a wide variety of real-life challenges and problems, the location of things becomes an important parameter. The exact location of measuring the physical world through IoT is highly relevant [...] Read more.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) penetrates our everyday lives, being used to address a wide variety of real-life challenges and problems, the location of things becomes an important parameter. The exact location of measuring the physical world through IoT is highly relevant to understand local environmental conditions, or to develop powerful, personalized and context-aware location-based services and applications. This survey paper maps and analyzes the IoT based on its location dimension, categorizing IoT applications and projects according to the geospatial analytical methods performed. The survey investigates the opportunities of location-aware IoT, and examines the potential of geospatial analysis in this research area. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geospatial Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT))
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15 pages, 10944 KiB  
Article
A Scalable Architecture for Real-Time Stream Processing of Spatiotemporal IoT Stream Data—Performance Analysis on the Example of Map Matching
by Marius Laska, Stefan Herle, Ralf Klamma and Jörg Blankenbach
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(7), 238; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7070238 - 21 Jun 2018
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 7253
Abstract
Scalable real-time processing of large amounts of data has become a research topic of particular importance due to the continuously rising amount of data that is generated by devices equipped with sensing components. While existing approaches allow for fault-tolerant and scalable stream processing, [...] Read more.
Scalable real-time processing of large amounts of data has become a research topic of particular importance due to the continuously rising amount of data that is generated by devices equipped with sensing components. While existing approaches allow for fault-tolerant and scalable stream processing, we present a pipeline architecture that consists of well-known open source tools to specifically integrate spatiotemporal internet of things (IoT) data streams. In a case study, we utilize the architecture to tackle the online map matching problem, a pre-processing step for trajectory mining algorithms. Given the rising amount of vehicle location data that is generated on a daily basis, existing map matching algorithms have to be implemented in a distributed manner to be executable in a stream processing framework that provides scalability. We demonstrate how to implement state-of-the-art map matching algorithms in our distributed stream processing pipeline and analyze measured latencies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geospatial Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT))
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15 pages, 2479 KiB  
Article
A Low-Cost Collaborative Location Scheme with GNSS and RFID for the Internet of Things
by Changfeng Jing, Shouqing Wang, Mingshu Wang, Mingyi Du, Lei Zhou, Tiancheng Sun and Jian Wang
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(5), 180; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7050180 - 9 May 2018
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 5871
Abstract
The emergence and development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted growing attention to low-cost location systems when facing the dramatically increased number of public infrastructure assets in smart cities. Various radio frequency identification (RFID)-based locating systems have been developed. However, most [...] Read more.
The emergence and development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted growing attention to low-cost location systems when facing the dramatically increased number of public infrastructure assets in smart cities. Various radio frequency identification (RFID)-based locating systems have been developed. However, most of them are impractical for infrastructure asset inspection and management on a large scale due to their high cost, inefficient deployment, and complex environments such as emergencies or high-rise buildings. In this paper, we proposed a novel locating system by combing the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) with RFID, in which a target tag was located with one RFID reader and one GNSS receiver with sufficient accuracy for infrastructure asset management. To overcome the cost challenge, one mobile RFID reader-mounted GNSS receiver is used to simulate multiple location known reference tags. A vast number of reference tags are necessary for current RFID-based locating systems, which means higher cost. To achieve fine-grained location accuracy, we utilize a distance-based power law weight algorithm to estimate the exact coordinates. Our experiment demonstrates the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed scheme with sufficient accuracy, low cost and easy deployment on a large scale. The proposed scheme has potential applications for location-based services in smart cities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geospatial Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT))
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18 pages, 28842 KiB  
Article
A Wireless Sensor Network Framework for Real-Time Monitoring of Height and Volume Variations on Sandy Beaches and Dunes
by Alessandro Pozzebon, Alessandro Andreadis, Duccio Bertoni and Carmine Bove
ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2018, 7(4), 141; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7040141 - 4 Apr 2018
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5398
Abstract
In this paper, the authors describe the realization and testing of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) framework aiming at measuring, remotely and in real time, the level variations of the sand layer of sandy beaches or dunes. The proposed framework is based on [...] Read more.
In this paper, the authors describe the realization and testing of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) framework aiming at measuring, remotely and in real time, the level variations of the sand layer of sandy beaches or dunes. The proposed framework is based on an innovative low cost sensing structure, able to measure the level variations with a 5-cm degree of precision and to locally transfer the acquired data through the ZigBee protocol. The described sensor is integrated in a wider ZigBee wireless sensor network architecture composed of an array of sensors that, arranged according to a grid layout, can acquire the same data at different points, allowing the definition of a dynamic map of the area under study. The WSN is connected to a local Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) gateway that is in charge of data processing and transmission to a cloud infrastructure through a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) connection. Data are then stored in a MySQL database and made available any time and anywhere through the Internet. The proposed architecture has been tested in a laboratory, to analyze data acquisition, processing timing and power consumption and then in situ to prove the effectiveness of the system. The described infrastructure is expected to be integrated in a wider IoT architecture including different typologies of sensors, in order to create a multi-purpose tool for the study of coastal erosive processes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Geospatial Applications of the Internet of Things (IoT))
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