Title: A geographic information system framework for data visualisation in wireless sensor networks

Authors: Bo Sun; Md Abu Shufean; Frank Sun

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX 77710, USA ' Department of Computer Science, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX 77710, USA ' Department of Computer Science, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX 77710, USA

Abstract: There is an increasing need to effectively and efficiently manage the huge amount of data collected by a wireless sensor network (WSN). Geographic information system (GIS) turns out to be a desirable solution to address this problem by archiving and presenting data over a large range of time scales and geographical area. We report our initial effort to interconnect our deployed prototype WSN and ArcGIS - a popular GIS to provide an infrastructure for making maps and geographic information available. Specifically, we present the details about converting files in technical data management streaming (TDMS) format to files utilises by ArcGIS. To enable the real time display of collected sensor data, we further store the collected data in a PostgreSQL database. A GIS application is developed to manage and represent data. Finally, we develop a web based map application for remote researchers to access collected sensor readings.

Keywords: GIS; geographical information system; WSNs; wireless sensor networks; visualisation; remote sensing; file conversion; technical data management streaming; TDMS format; ArcGIS; data representation; maps.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2015.071385

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2015 Vol.19 No.1, pp.51 - 61

Received: 15 Jan 2015
Accepted: 21 Jan 2015
Published online: 24 Aug 2015 *

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