A Hierarchically Structured Worldwide Sensor Web Architecture

Environmental sensing is seen as key to understanding the physical processes that affect our lives. The collection of such data is used to enhance the decision making processes of governments, organizations and society as a whole in their future interactions with the planet. In order to be able to generate a global picture of the effects a physical phenomenon may have it is necessary to generate a framework which is capable of networking sensing devices on a global scale. This paper presents an initial overview of a framework to facilitate the worldwide networking of a wide variety of sensing device types into a Worldwide Sensor Web.