A Comparative Study in the Standardization of IoT Devices Using Geospatial Web Standards

Although billions of devices are embedded in the World Wide Web through the Internet of Things, there is still a lack of a common, interoperable way to connect them and make them interact seamlessly. IoT has also found its way into the spatial web. Environmental monitoring and sensing platforms connected over the web by wireless sensor networks are now a common way to monitor natural phenomena. This study compares two open Web Standards (OGC's Sensor Observation Service and SensorThings API) from the geospatial point of view. An IoT platform, called SEnviro, is used to integrate and evaluate implementations for each standard and contrast their qualitative and quantitative traits. The results of the study show that the SensorThings API proves to be the adequate Web Standard for IoT applications in terms of interoperability. It outperforms the contesting Web Standard in terms of flexibility and scalability, which strongly impacts on developer and user experience.