SensorThings API

SensorThings API^[1] is an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard providing an open and unified framework to interconnect IoT sensing devices, data, and applications over the Web. It is an open standard addressing the syntactic interoperability and semantic interoperability of the Internet of Things. It complements the existing IoT networking protocols such CoAP, MQTT, HTTP, 6LowPAN. While the above-mentioned IoT networking protocols are addressing the ability for different IoT systems to exchange information, OGC SensorThings API is addressing the ability for different IoT systems to use and understand the exchanged information. As an OGC standard, SensorThings API also allows easy integration into existing Spatial Data Infrastructures or Geographic Information Systems.

OGC SensorThings API has two parts: (1) Part I - Sensing and (2) Part II - Tasking. OGC SensorThings API Part I - Sensing was released for public comment on June 18, 2015.^[2] The OGC Technical Committee (TC) approves start of electronic vote on December 3, 2015, and the SensorThings API Part I - Sensing passed the TC vote on February 1, 2016. The official OGC standard specification was published online on July 26, 2016. In 2019 the SensorThings API was also published as a United Nation's ITU-T Technical Specification.^[3]

OGC SensorThings API Part II - Tasking Core was released for public comment on February 20, 2018,^[4] and it passed the TC vote on June 1, 2018. The official OGC standard specification for the SensorThings API Part II - Tasking Core was published online on January 8, 2019.

In order to offer a better developer experience, the SensorThings API Part II - Tasking Core Discussion Paper was published online on December 18, 2018. The Tasking Core Discussion paper provides 15 JSON examples showing how SensorThings API Part II - Tasking Core can be used.