An interoperable approach for Sensor Web provenance

The Sensor Web is evolving into a complex information space, where large volumes of sensor observation data are often consumed by complex applications. Provenance has become an important issue in the Sensor Web, since it allows applications to answer "what", "when", "where", "who", "why", and "how" queries related to observations and consumption processes, which helps determine the usability and reliability of data products. This paper investigates characteristics and requirements of provenance in the Sensor Web and proposes an interoperable approach to building a provenance model for the Sensor Web. Our provenance model extends the W3C PROV Data Model with Sensor Web domain vocabularies. It is developed using Semantic Web technologies and thus allows provenance information of sensor observations to be exposed in the Web of Data using the Linked Data approach. A use case illustrates the applicability of the approach.