"In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies--even our dreams." (Neil Gross: Interview with Terry Murray in Business Week, August 1999)

Ten years later, the low-cost miniaturized sensors and wireless sensor nodes are on a way to become truly ubiquitous, but the vision of a fully fledged electronic skin is still a remote dream.

This session takes a holistic view at the sensor web, in order to (1) analyze the capabilities and limitations of currently available and upcoming sensor web infrastructures; (2) identify the factors that are still limiting the usability of the sensor related data and services; and (3) discuss the possibilities for efficient (re-) use of already installed and future sensors in different application domains.

The presentations range from novel sensors; over software, frameworks and working examples for large sensor service networks; to data discovery, fusion, and semantic interoperability of data and services