Sensor Observation Service (SOS)


Sensor Observation Service (SOS) is a standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to support the exchange of sensor data. This service has been implemented in the GGIS using IstSOS, an OSGeo incubating project distributed under the GPL v2 license. SOS supports several queries:

  • GetCapabilities returns a description of the data available through the service, including a list of the well and monitoring data points and the monitoring variables.
  • GetObservation returns monitoring data (observations) associated with monitoring data points.
  • DescribeSensor provides a description of the well and monitoring data point (sensor), including the data providing institution, the coordinates of the data point and the availability of monitoring data.
  • GetFeatureOfInterest provides a description of the well and monitoring data point, similar to the DescribeSensor request.

These queries can be formulated as follow to query well and monitoring data from the GGIS,

  • https://ggis.un-igrac.org/istsos?service=SOS&version=1.0.0&request=getcapabilities&api-key=eefb07d625f53b6f5d69a9c8cd30c89714a47253
  • https://ggis.un-igrac.org/istsos?service=SOS&request=GetObservation&version=1.0.0&offering=measurement&procedure=bc.mon.59381&observedProperty=urn:ogc:def:parameter:x-igrac:1.0:Level%20Measurement:Water%20level%20elevation%20a.m.s.l.&responseFormat=text/xml;subtype=%22om/1.0.0%22&procedureDescriptionFormat=http://www.opengis.net/sensorML/1.0.1&api-key=eefb07d625f53b6f5d69a9c8cd30c89714a47253
  • https://ggis.un-igrac.org/istsos?service=SOS&version=1.0.0&request=DescribeSensor&procedure=bc.mon.59381&outputFormat=text/xml;subtype=%22sensorML/1.0.1%22&api-key=eefb07d625f53b6f5d69a9c8cd30c89714a47253
  • https://ggis.un-igrac.org/istsos?service=SOS&version=1.0.0&request=getFeatureOfInterest&FeatureOfInterestId=bc.mon.59381&api-key=eefb07d625f53b6f5d69a9c8cd30c89714a47253

where bc.mon.59381 is the name of the well and monitoring data point and eefb07d625f53b6f5d69a9c8cd30c89714a47253 is the key provided by IGRAC. Keys are provided to partner institutions on request (ggis@un-igrac.org).

Example of monitoring data obtained with the GetObservation request:

GetObservation