Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB
Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB

FROST®-Server - An open source implementation of OGC SensorThings API

   
Locations of the data sources connected in API4INSPIRE
Water quality measuring stations on the left and right of the Rhine

Description of the project

Against the background of the requirements from numerous applications in the mega trend topic "Internet of Things", the Fraunhofer IOSB decided to develop a server for the Starndard SensorThingsAPI. The objective was to achieve high performance with low resource consumption and an openness that facilitates usability both in the research environment and in commercial applications.

Performance with low resource consumption and an openness that facilitates usability in both the research environment and commercial applications. The desire for openness led to the decision to design the implementation as open source software right from the start, in order to make the way as free as possible for innovation. The result is the FROST®-Server. The name is an acronym and stands for "Fraunhofer Open Source SensorThings API Server". But the name is also intended to suggest that your data is kept "fresh and available"

Meanwhile, the "SensorThings API" is recommended by the European Commission as "Good Practice" for the deployment of measurement data according to the INSPIRE guidelines: “OGC SensorThings API as an INSPIRE download service”

 

Function

  • Based on SensorThings API, an OGC standard (OGC is one of the most important international standardisation bodies for spatial data)
  • High performance
  • Low consumption of resources
  • Open Source -> Full transparency of the software (we have nothing to hide), openness to user extensions (things we didn't think about or which are not so important for us), open availability of the software guarantees long-term availability and enables strategic decisions (even if we don't feel like it anymore, a user can continue to maintain FROST® by himself)
  • Open Source: Find the FROST® GitHub Repository here

Fields of application

  • beAWARE: The EU project aims to develop an integrated solution for forecasting, early warning and emergency management of extreme weather events. In order to get a quick and precise overview of the extent and effects of heat waves, forest fires or floods, it is necessary to include very heterogeneous data in the evaluation: In addition to weather stations, postings in social media can also provide important information.
  • Smart City Hamburg: As part of its digital strategy, the Hanseatic City is bringing together a wide variety of data in the Urban Data Platform Hamburg. Recently, sensor data has also been included, for example on the utilisation of e-car charging stations or the availability of city bikes at the lending stations. The Urban Data Platform uses FROST® for handling this real-time data. https://geoportal-hamburg.de/Geoportal/geo-online/
  • Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minères (BRGM): The main public institution in France for geoscientific applications has a database of more than 136 million water quality measurements with about 1500 different chemical substances recorded at more than 18000 measuring points. The use of FROST® for the management and efficient access to these data is currently being studied. The results so far are very promising.
  • IoT Systems, Inc: FROST® is used in the commercial system of the company IoT System for the description of sensor data: the solution was first presented at the cloud conference AWS re: Invent. https://iotsyst.com/aws-reinvent/; https://iotsyst.com/sensorthings/
    Continuing education for vocational school teachers: The SensorthingsAPI standard and the FROST® implementation was used in the context of a further training for vocational school teachers. This further training took place in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Academy.

FROST® on GitHub

Here you will find the FROST® repository on GitHub:

 

Department ILT of Fraunhofer IOSB

Would you like to learn more about our projects in the field of Information Management and Control Technology (ILT)? Then visit the page of our ILT department and find out about other projects.

ILT department