Live E! Project: establishment of infrastructure
sharing environmental information
Satoshi Matsuura†sato-mat@is.naist.jp
Shinichi Doi†
shini-do@is.naist.jp

Hiroki Ishizuka†††
isi@unl.im.dendai.ac.jp

Hideya Ochiai††
jo2lxq@hongo.wide.ad.jp

Shinichi Ishida††
ishida@hongo.wide.ad.jp

Masaya Nakayama††
nakayama@nc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Hiroshi Esaki††hiroshi@wide.ad.jp

Hideki Sunahara†suna@wide.ad.jp†Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology
8916-5 Takayama-cho, Ikoma-shi, Nara 630-0192, Japan††The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan†††Department of Information Systems and Multimedia Design School of Engineering,Tokyo Denki University 2-2 Kanda-Nishiki-Cho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-8457,JapanAbstract
The Live E! project is an open research consortium
among industry and academia to explore the platform toshare the digital information related with the earth and ourliving environment. We have getting a lot of low cost sensor
nodes with Internet connectivity. The deployment of broadband and ubiquitous networks will enable autonomous andglobal digital information sharing over the globe. In thispaper, we describe the technical and operational overview
of Live E! project, while discussing the objective, such aseducation, disaster protection/reduction/recovery or business cases, and goal of this project activity.

1. Introduction
Recent natural disaster, e.g., hurricane or global warming, or heat island effect in the metropolitan let increase theattention and interesting on grasping the detailed status ofspace. This is because, due to these disasters, our social lifeand business activity could be seriously degraded or sometimes be damaged. When we could realize the relationshipof cause and effect, it would be expected to reduce and protect the damage by these disasters. The structure change ofmetropolitans in the developed countries and rapid inflationof cities in Asian countries make complex and difficult torealize the real status and tendency of global weather system.

We have getting a lot of low cost sensor nodes with Internet connectivity. The deployment of broadband and ubiquitous networks will enable autonomous and global digital information sharing over the globe, using these sensor nodes.
When these wide variety of sensor nodes are autonomouslyconnected and the sensor information let available to all thenode on the Internet space, different types of sensor information, e.g., video or still image captured by Web camera, temperature, location, IR-image or chemical, can beintegrated for data analysis. Then, we will be able to create so wide variety of applications and possibilities. Whenthese sensor nodes are connected with broadband Internet,
these information can be available even in real-time fashion. We have realized and proposed the activity, called Live
E! Project [1], that is a sensor networks sharing all the digital information related with the at large status of the Earthfor any purpose and for anyone.
In this paper, we describes the technical and operational
overview of Live E! project, while discussing it’s objective,
such as education, disaster protection/reduction/recovery or
business cases, and goal of this project activity.

2. Live E! Project2.1. Overview of Live E! ProjectLive E! Project is a R&D consortium founded by WIDE
project and IPv6 Promotion Council, Japan. This project isaiming to establish the platform to share all digital informa-SOAP/HTTPU-Tokyo

Data synchronization

SOAP/HTTPnameTemperature
Humidity
Pressure
RainFallWindSpeed
WindDir

SOAP/HTTP
NAIST

unit
centigrade%hPa
mm/hm/sdegreenameaddress
location
ipAddr
ip6Addrlatitudelongitude
altitude

explanation
address of sensor
installation location
IPv4 address
IPv6 address
latitude of sensor
longitude of sensor
altitude of sensor

SOAP/HTTP

Table 1. unit & examples of profile data
2006/9/1

8Figure 1. integrate interface by SOAP/HTTP
tion, generated by sensor devices all over the world. Now,
these devices are installed and operated individually by eachorganization.
The information should be related with the live environmental information of the Earth. By sharing this digital information, we will be able to create new applications, which
can contribute to safety and effective space (environment).
Some applications, such as basic information for the protection of environment (e.g., a heat-island phenomena inmetropolitan), educational material, public service, publicsafety or business applications, could use the common digital information for different purposes. Figure 1 shows theoverview architecture of Live E! project. The working agendas of Live E! are installing a large number of sensors, combining every organization and individual to preserve global
environment, and contributing environmental problems, education and businesses.

disaster case is useful for proactive and reactive program. These are disaster protection, reduction, and recovery. For example, the detailed weather informationon the road or at the evacuation sites, the people could
take appropriate evacuation path. Also, none knows
the exact and detailed data on the heat-island effect at
metropolitan. We must grasp the real status of townwith large number of weather sensors.
(3) For Business caseThere are a lot of potential business applications, by
the use of weather information. One of example would
be effective taxi dispatching using the rainfall information. Dispatching the taxi cabs around the area, getting the rain, leads to higher income by the increaseof customer. The other example would be electricity
power company. Once they can operate total energy
control and management system, they could reduce
the amount of investments on the power generator orpower supplying system, which is very expensive facility for them. Seriously, they may start to think about
total portfolio for business investments.

2.2. Live E! deployment
We have realized that the weather station with Internet
connectivity has the following three application areas withsingle device.
(1) For Educational Material
Weather information data is useful data for educationand for research on geophysics. There are wide variety of educational program on geophysics, related withthe weather system, from the elementary school to thecollege. Actually, in Live E! project, we have workedon the educational program in the elementary schoolin Minato-ku in Metropolitan Tokyo, and on the engineering program in some high schools collaboratingwith university in Hiroshima.
(2) For Public Service, e.g., disaster reduction/recovery
Weather information is very important and critical information for the case of disaster. In these days, wehave a lot of natural disasters, such as flooding or
earth-quake. Grasping the detailed information for the

2.3. Data normalization and access method
In order to share sensing data with every organizationand individual, first we need to normalize data format andaccess method. In this sub-section we introduce our data
format with some examples.
The weather information is expressed by XML and transferred among the servers and clients using the SOAP. Thesensor is not defined by node, but is defined by each sensor function. A typical internet weather station has multiple sensors in a single station in it, which sensors are temperature, humidity, pressure, rainfall, wind-speed and winddirection. This typical weather station has 5 objectives defined by XML. Each objective has their own profile information, such as location, sensor type, IP address or name.
As shown in Table 1, we basically adopt MKS-systemon our platform. If a new kind of sensor is installed, project
member will define its name and the unit (recently, we installed CO2 sensors, illumination sensors, acceleration sensors and other sensors). By SOAP web-services, we create agetCurrentDataAll()- get current data from all sensors
getCurrentDataByAreaRect( x1, y1, x2, y2 )- get data generated in paticular region
getDataByTimespan( sensorID, startTime, endTime )- get data by time-span
getCurrentDataByType( sensorType )- get current data of specific sensor type
getProfileAll()- get all profile data
getProfileByType( sensorType )- get profile data of specific sensor type
putData( xmlDocument )- put sensing data
setProfile( xmlDocument )- set profile data

Table 2. examples of SOAP web-services

user interface (Figure 1). As databases aresynchronized between two locaitons, users can select web services which
they want to use.
As the table 1 shows, we also provide attribute information of sensors called ”profile data”. We normalize and provide sensing data and profile data as XML document. Application creators freely combine sensing data with profile
data to meet each requirement.
Example web-services we prepared are shown in Table 2.
Here, we introduce an example way to retrieve sensor data.
The most popular web-service is ”getCurrentDataAll()”. By
this function, user gets current data generated by all sensors.
Following Perl script is an example code to do it.Of course,
any language and operating system can access to sensor data
by using SOAP.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use encoding ’UTF-8’, STDOUT => ’shiftjis’;use SOAP::Lite;$service = SOAP::Lite -> service(’http://example.com/axis/DataProvider?wsdl’);$currentData = $service->GetCurrentDataAll();
print $currentData;

Figure 2 shows the result XML documnets when above
example Perl script executed. We standardized XML format. Using other SOAP web-services, user always receives
data as same XML format. Defining the name of webservices and XML format contributes to create application
easily. In addition, as the above XML documents shows, wedefine a sensor-group. Sensor-group organizes individualsensors. In above XML document, class of sensor-group is”combinedSensor”. This sensor-group organizes a multiple
sensor as one of sensors. We define a new class of sensorgroup for several purposes. For example, class of ”zipCode”
is to manage a particular area, and class of ”highAccuracy”
is to pick up high performance sensors. Of course, we cre-᧲੩ㇺᢥ੩඙ᒎ↢<sensorGroup address="2-11-16 " class="combinedSensor" id="livee.org/WXT510/03000005c3a2/" latitude="35.712194" location=""longitude="139.76775" sensorModel="WXT510" sensorVendor="vaisala"><sensor id="live-e.org/WXT510/03000005c3a2/Temperature" sensorType="Temperature"><value time="2006-07-25T19:37:33.0000000+09:00">25.8</value></sensor><sensor id="live-e.org/WXT510/03000005c3a2/Humidity" sensorType="Humidity"><value time="2006-07-25T19:37:33.0000000+09:00">73.3</value></sensor><sensor id="live-e.org/WXT510/03000005c3a2/Pressure" sensorType="Pressure"><value time="2006-07-25T19:37:33.0000000+09:00">1009.4</value></sensor><sensor id="live-e.org/WXT510/03000005c3a2/RainFall" sensorType="RainFall"><value time="2006-07-25T19:37:33.0000000+09:00">0</value></sensor><sensor id="live-e.org/WXT510/03000005c3a2/DayRainFall" sensorType="DayRainFall"><value time="2006-07-25T19:37:33.0000000+09:00">0.64</value></sensor><sensor id="live-e.org/WXT510/03000005c3a2/WindDir" sensorType="WindDir"><value time="2006-07-25T19:37:33.0000000+09:00">174</value></sensor><sensor id="live-e.org/WXT510/03000005c3a2/WindSpeed" sensorType="WindSpeed"><value time="2006-07-25T19:37:33.0000000+09:00">0.9</value></sensor></sensorGroup>᧲ᄢᖱႎၮ⋚䉶䊮䉺䊷

Figure 2. example of reply as XML document

ate new web-services by combining several classes. Sensorgroup improves a creativeness of raw sensing data.
Here, we introduce some of our applications created by
SOAP web-services. Figure 3 shows the example of data
displaying. On the web site, user can search each place fordetailed data, which are graph of sensors, XML (or CVS)
data and pictures of web cameras. And, with Google Earth,we show the status of clouds and path information of a typhoon with sensor data. Live E! Project doesn’t observe
cloud and typhoon. Collaborating with other organizations,our project provides these data. We enhance the collaboration with others.
We also provide educational materials. We made a infomation viewer displaying real time sensor data. Students ofelementary school constantly check and record the data of
this viewer. Students will plot a graph with these data anddiscuss the difference of daily weather and local climate,and compare climate of home town with other place. Students will take interest in science with such actual experiences.
We have installed more than 100 stations and letthem on-line. Some of stations have installed in Philippine by the collaboration with ASTI, or have installedin Thailand by the collaboration with PSU. For dense
installation of weather sensors, we collaborate with
Minato-ku in metropolitan Tokyo. Several sensors are installed at some elementary schools at Minato-ku andKurashiki-city in Okayama. We will install about 30 stations in this fiscal year of 2006. By this installation,
Minato-ku can have about 2 km mesh weather station network. And Kurashiki-city is focusing on the disaster protection and reduction against the flooding due to heavyrain.

Effective multiattribute search

Application
layer multi-cast

Past Data

Current Data

Location
Based P2P
networks

Wireless AdHoc Sensor
networks

Figure 3. data displaying

2.4. Future enhancement of Live E!
• XML based Publish/Subscribe system
The more sensor devices and users increase, the moredata and queries should be processed. The most popular web-service is ”getCurrentDataAll()”. Users arevery interested in real time data. In order to provide
this web-service stable, we create XML based PublishSubscribe system. This system don’t store archived
data but only provide current data. If users register for
subscribing data, they constantly receive current dataof all sensors from one of XML router. From now, wewill try to set up of an application layer multicast basedon user requirements to provide all web-services stable.
• Integration with InternetCAR system
WIDE project has long time worked on the R&D activity, where automobiles connect to the Internet. Automobiles can be realized as the mobile sensor node,
running on the surface of the earth. We are now integrating the ”InternetCAR” into our platform [2]. Inaddition, we are trying to use ad-hoc network for sensors not having the connectivity to the internet. Patrolnodes (ex. Post office cars, garbage trucks or buses)
gather the sensing data via ad-hoc network [3].
• Support small nodes
There are lots of microcomputers not having the ability to translate XML document. In order to integratelots of data created by microcomputers generate, we
study about XML translational machinery [4].
• Scalable and autonomous data collection system
The current system is a kind of client-server system.
This is just fine for small scale system. However, thesystem must come up with the increase of sensors andthe increase of type of sensors. Distributed and autonomous management and operation is mandatory.

Huge archive

P2P Decentralized storage
Location andTime BasedP2P networks

Redundanttransmissionsof sensor data

Figure 4. next Live E! architecture
We are studying about geographical location based
peer-to-peer network [5].
As shown in Figure 4, next phase we focus on scarable andautonomous data collection and provision. We are evaluating the requirements of future sensor network, and integrate
several kinds of researches.

3. Conclusion
The Live E! project is an open research consortium
among industry and academia to explore the platform toshare the digital information related with the earth andour living environment. Using the low cost weather sensor
nodes with Internet connectivity, we deployed the nationwide sensor network. The network has accommodate morethan 100 station, and has two of dense installation. The application of this weather station network is for disaster protection/reduction/recovery and for educational material forvarious level of students.

References[1] Live E! Project, http://www.live-e.org/[2] Shinichi Doui, Satoshi Matsuura, Hideki Sunahara: An Infrastructure for Environmental Information Gathered by Fixedpoint and Mobile Sensors, DICOMO2006, IPSJ SymposiumSeries Vol.2006, No.6, 801 – 804.
[3] Hiroki Ishizuka, Kenji Sasaki, Satoshi Matsuura, Makoto
Kamiya, Hideki Sunahara, Hiroshi Esaki: Collecting Adaptive Data for Isolated Wireless Sensors with Patrol Nodes inLive E!, Proceeding of FMUIT2006, 249 – 253.
[4] Hideya Ochiai, Hiroshi Esaki: The Application of XMLTranslator for a Large-Scale Sensor Node Network, IEICE
2006, A-21-5.
[5] MATSUURA Satoshi and FUJIKAWA Kazutoshi and SUNAHARA Hideki: Mill: Scalable Area Management for P2P Network based on Geographical Location, Proceedings Euromedia 2006, 46 – 52.