Live E! Project: Sensing the Earth
Masaya Nakayama1, Satoshi Matsuura2 ,Hiroshi Esaki1 , and Hideki Sunahara2
1
The University of Tokyo,
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan
2
Nara Institute of Science and Technology,
8916-5 Takayama-cho, Ikoma-shi, Nara, 630-0192, Japan
nakayama@nc.u-tokyo.ac.jp, sato-mat@is.naist.jp,{hiroshi, suna}@wide.ad.jp
http://www.live-e.org

Abstract. The Live E! project is an open research consortium among industry and academia to explore the platform to share the digital information related with the earth and our living environment. We have getting a
lot of low cost sensor nodes with Internet connectivity. The deployment ofbroadband and ubiquitous networks will enable autonomous and global
digital information sharing over the globe. In this paper, we describe thetechnical and operational overview of Live E! project, while discussing
the objective, such as education, disaster protection/reduction/recovery
or business cases, and goal of this project activity.
Keywords: Live E!, sensor network, environmental information.

1

Introduction

Recent natural disaster, e.g., hurricane or global warming, or heat island eﬀect
in the metropolitan let increase the attention and interesting on grasping thedetailed status of space. 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 relationship of 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 inﬂation of cities in Asian
countries make complex and diﬃcult to realize the real status and tendency of
global weather system. As symbolized by Kyoto Protocol proposed by United
Nation in February of 2005, so called COP3, it is realized as the urgent andserious global agenda to reduce or to stop the global warming eﬀect.
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, using these sensor nodes. Whenthese wide variety of sensor nodes are autonomously connected and the sensor
information let available to all the node 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 be integrated for data analysis. Then,
K. Cho and P. Jacquet (Eds.): AINTEC 2006, LNCS 4311, pp. 61–74, 2006.
c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006


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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 (http://www.live-e.org), that is a sensor networks sharing
all the digital information related with the at large status of the Earth for any
purpose and for anyone. We expect that these digital information will be used forvarious purposes, e.g., educational material, public service, business cases, by the
deployment of eﬀective and safe physical space for all the human being.
Internet has been originally invented and developed to use and to share theexpensive high performance computers, remotely. In these days, the jobs executed at the computer were numerical calculation for particular work to provide
more eﬀective working environment for researchers. Digital information has thefollowing ﬁve primitives; generation, collection, circulation, processing, sharing.
Through these ﬁve primitives, the computer system can improve and innovate
the life-style of human being or the professional/commercial activities. Also, we
have realized that the ICT can contribute to improve and innovate the humanlife and industrial activities more eﬀective and safer.
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

Internet for Facility Networks

2.1

Challenges of Internet”Internet”, not ”The Internet”, is a logical architecture, that enable autonomous
circulation and sharing of digital information. The Internet should provide atransparent platform with the following characteristics.
(1) can use any data-link(2) can use any data distribution channel(3) can be used by anyone
This chrematistics (or could be said requirement) are truly critical for ubiquitous
networks. In the ubiquitous networks, there is huge number of device nodes (suchas sensor nodes), and it is desired all the digital information generated by thesedevice nodes should be available from any node on the Internet space and beable to be shared among all the nodes on the Internet space.
The Internet is the system where the computers are interconnected via any
type of data-link, so that the digital data is autonomously transferred from any
node to any other node on the Internet space, transparently. Any node on theInternet space should be able to use and process these data, autonomously. In
other words, the Internet is;(a) independent from application(b) independent from user(c) independent from data transmission infrastructure

Live E! Project: Sensing the Earth

63

This means that the Internet satisfy the requirements of ”Commons” discussed in[1]. The Internet should not have any exclusiveness related with the informationexchange.
Internet has experienced major three innovations in the past, and is now exploring the fourth. Past innovations are open global network with TCP/IP, easier
use with WWW and professional application with Web Service. The fourth innovation is broadband and ubiquitous. Broadband includes always-on environment,
and the ubiquitous means the Internet accommodates embedded devices, suchas sensor nodes or actuator nodes.
The facility networks is a kind of embedded network for some particular purpose or for some particular application, while having a strong interaction withthe real and physical objects. Since the facility network has a lot of interaction
with physical objects, it is said that the network must be dependable. People
starts to realize that, in order to build dependable facility network, the network
should be operated autonomously and with multi-vendor environment (i.e., open
system). Open and autonomous system can provide the alternatives for users.
Providing the alternatives to the users leads a competition among vendors fortechnology improvement and cost reduction, and leads the service continuation
capability as a result.
Some of the challenges of the Internet discussed in this paper is (1) how toaccommodate wide variety of and large number of sensor/actuator nodes into
the Internet space, and (2) identify new applications using the weather sensor
nodes deployed in the Live E! project.
2.2

Facility Networking with TCP/IP

Facility networking includes factory automation, building automation or home
automation, which is the integration of diﬀerent type of networks, such as sensor network, control network or security network. Especially the role of sensor
networking and actuator networking has the important role for the near futurefacility networking architecture. The facility networking would be toward theintegration of real-space and cyber-space using common IP technology.
We have worked with the industry so that the TCP/IP technology, especiallythe IPv6, is applied to the basic protocol to be shared by various systems infacility networking. Since they have used proprietary technologies for each company and for each sub-systems, they are interested in the IP-Centric system, toachieve highly cost-eﬀective system operation. We had the world ﬁrst interoperability testing among building automation components with IPv6 transport,
using the BACnet [2] and LonWorks [3], in 2004, as shown in ﬁgure 1. And, in
2006, we have achieved the world ﬁrst interoperability of management and control of system components across these diﬀerent systems using the Web service
over IPv6 infrastructure.
With applying the open technology such as TCP/IP, the system components
can be easily replaceable, while achieving the remote monitoring and controlling.
For the business operation of ”facility”, the cost of human labor due to maintenance and the cost of component replacement, modiﬁcation, improvement and64

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Fig. 1. Interoperability Test in 2004

upgrade occupy a large portion in their ﬁnancial portfolio. The remote monitoring and control capability by the TCP/IP contributes to the reduction ofrequired human labors, and the multi-vendor environment due to the open networking with the TCP/IP technology contributes to the total cost reductionof system components management by the availability of alternative products.
Based on these observation, we have realized that the facility networking industry will be able to enjoy the technical and economical beneﬁts by the adoptionof TCP/IP technology.
When we consider the application of and role of sensor networking in the facility networking, there are a lot of potential roles for their eﬀective operationand management. Let consider the application of energy saving in the building
automation. In general, the energy cost in the operation of building system (andin the at large facility networks) is extremely large. Especially in Japan, theenergy cost is about 1/3, regarding all the life-time cost of building system, that
includes the initial designing building system, construction and daily maintenance cost. As well as the beneﬁt of energy saving activity from the view pointof economical portfolio for the land-lords, we have another reason why we must
perform the energy saving in the facility networking. In 1997, the United Nation
has adopted the international energy saving program, so called Kyoto Protocol
in COP3 [4]. This is global agenda to preserve the healthy earth by the improvement of global worming eﬀect. One of the important agenda of this program is to
reduce the energy consumption by every single oﬃce or factory. For example, inJapan, the energy saving program has been applied to all the large scale facility,that has more than 2,000 square-meters footprint. These facilities must reduce
the energy consumption 10%-20%, as a government regulation.
We have got some private reports from some private companies. They try toenergy saving at their computer room, using the temperature sensors, to successLive E! Project: Sensing the Earth65

Fig. 2. Energy saving at HQ of Matsushita Works

reducing about 40% electricity. Also, at the 24th ﬂoor high recent building systemwith a lot of glasses, it is reported that 18% reduction of electricity and 6.1%
reduction of CO2 consumption has been achieved, using sensors and actuators,
which are interconnected with open networking protocol, such as TCP/IP. Thisis shown in ﬁgure 2.
As discussed above, the sensor and actuator networks are not separated or
isolated network, anymore. They are interconnected to each other, and they aregoing to be networked with the usual information network and with the Internet,in order to achieve more cost eﬀective and functional rich system operation, as
well as to generate new function or services. The larger sharing of sensor information among various facility networks leads to better and more cost eﬀective
and attractive system operation.

3

Live E! Project

3.1

Overview of Live E! ProjectLive E! Project [5] is a R&D consortium founded by WIDE project and IPv6
Promotion Council, Japan. This project is aiming to establish the platform toshare all digital information, generated by sensor devices all over the world.
Now, these devices are installed and operated individually by each organization.
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

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DB
DB
DB
DB

Live
Live E!
E! Overlay
Overlaynetwork
network

IPv4/IPv6
IPv4/IPv6network
networkSensorSensorCameraFig. 3. Overview architecture of Live E! projectapplications, 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 in metropolitan), educational material, public
service, public safety or business applications, could use the common digital
information for diﬀerent purposes. Figure 3 shows the overview architecture ofLive E! project. The followings are the working agenda of Live E! project.
(1) By the installation of larger number of digital sensor nodes, the environmental information can be richer and ﬁner, i.e, connectivity is own rewards.
(2) Every individual and every organization should recognize all has the responsibility on the preservation and improvement of global environmentand should think all must contribute.
(3) We could give away the ownership on the digital (raw) data for the public,
and let them available for all the people on the Internet or on the globe.
(4) Educate and encourage the interesting on the science and technology throughthe participation on the program and using the data for educational program.
3.2

Live E! Deployment with Digital Weather Stations

The related original work would be back in 2001, when the WIDE project with
Yokogawa Electric Corp.(http://www.yokogawa.com/) had developed a temperature node with IPv6 protocol stack, called i-node (http://www.i-node.co.jp/).
We have realized that the weather station with Internet connectivity has thefollowing three application areas with single device.
(1) For Educational Material
Weather information data is useful data for education and for research on
geophysics. There are wide variety of educational program on geophysics,

Live E! Project: Sensing the Earth

SOAP/HTTP

U-Tokyo

Data synchronization

SOAP/HTTP

67

SOAP/HTTP

NAIST

SOAP/HTTP

Fig. 4. integrate interface by SOAP

related with the weather system, from the elementary school to the college.
Actually, in Live E! project, we have worked on the educational programin the elementary school in Minato-ku in Metropolitan Tokyo, and on theengineering program in some high schools collaborating with university in
Hiroshima.
(2) For Public Service, e.g., disaster reduction/recovery
Weather information is very important and critical information for the case ofdisaster. In these days, we have a lot of natural disasters, such as ﬂooding or
earth-quake. Grasping the detailed information for the disaster case is usefulfor proactive and reactive program. These are disaster protection, reduction,and recovery. For example, the detailed weather information on the road orat 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 town with large number ofweather sensors.
In the ﬁscal year of 2006, Live E! project will deploy the Internet weather
sensors for public service at Minato-ku in metropolitan Tokyo [6] and at
Kurashiki-city in Okayama. Kurashiki-city [7] is focusing on the disasterprotection and reduction, against the ﬂooding due to heavy rain. Minato-ku
is focusing on the disaster protection and reduction against some natural
disasters (e.g., ﬂooding or earth-quake), and focusing on the understanding
the detail of heat-island eﬀect of metropolitan Tokyo.
(3) For Business case
There are a lot of potential business applications, by the use of weather
information. One of example would be eﬀective taxi dispatching using therainfall information. Dispatching the taxi cabs around the area, getting therain, leads to higher income by the increase of 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 investmentson the power generator or power supplying system, which is very expensive
facility for them. Seriously, they may start to think about total portfolio forbusiness investments.

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Table 1. Normalized name & unit

Table 2. Examples of proﬁle data

name
unit
Temperature
Humidity
PressurehPa
RainFall mm/h
WindSpeed m/s
WindDir

nameexplanation
address
address of sensor
location name of installation location
IPv4 address
ipAddr
IPv6 address
ip6Addrlatitude of sensor
latitudelongitude of sensor
longitude
altitude of sensor
altitude

Table 3. examples of SOAP web-services
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

3.3

Data Normalization and Access Method

In last section, we show the eﬀectiveness of facility networking with TCP/IP.
The reason why the facility network can improve energy conservation is that we
access to all building information seamlessly on this network. In order to expand
this success into the sensor network, ﬁrst we need to normalize a data format
and access method. In this sub-section we introduce our data format with someexamples.
The weather information is expressed by XML and transferred among theservers and clients using the SOAP. The sensor is not deﬁned by node, but isdeﬁned 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 wind-direction. 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-system on 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

Live E! Project: Sensing the Earth69

and other sensors). By SOAP web-services, we create a user interface (Figure4). When user program provides the name of sensor function to web-service, it
can access all of sensing data without any conversion. As whole databases aresynchronized between two locaitons, users can select web services which theywant to use.
As the table 2 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 tomeet each requirement.
Example web service we prepared are shown in Table 3. 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 andoperating 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 5 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 web-services
and XML format contributes to create application easily. In addition, as theabove XML documents shows, we deﬁne a sensor-group. Sensor-group organizes
individual sensors. 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 sensor-group for several purposes. For example, class of”zipCode” is to manage a particular area, and class of ”highAccuracy” is topick up high performance sensors. Of course, we create new web-services bycombining several classes. Sensor-group improves a creativeness of raw sensing
data.
Here, we introduce some of our applications created by SOAP web-services.
Figure 6 shows the example of data displaying. On the web site, user can searcheach place for detailed data, which are graph of sensors, XML (or CVS) dataand pictures of web cameras.
We also provide educational materials. We made a weather information viewer
called weather checker (Figure 7). This viewer displays real time data of eachplace. Students of elementary school constantly check and record the data of thisviewer. Students will plot a graph with these data and discuss the diﬀerence ofdaily weather and local climate, and compare climate of home town with otherplace. Students will take interest in science with such actual experiences.

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東京都文京区弥生<sensorGroup address="
2-11-16 " class="combinedSensor" id="live"e.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>

東大情報基盤センター

Fig. 5. Example of reply as XML document

Fig. 6. web page providing weather information at each place

Live E! Project: Sensing the Earth71

Fig. 7. weather information viewer

Figure 8 shows another application which displays weather information. Thisapplication shows the status of clouds and path information of a typhoon withsensor data. Live E! Project doesn’t observe cloud and typhoon. Collaboratingwith other organizations, our project provides these data. Just one organization
never collects all kinds of information. We enhance the collaboration with others.
As shown in ﬁgure 3, the sensors are connected to the IPv4 and IPv6 dualstack network with multicasting capability. The sensor information can be simultaneously deliver to multiple nodes, that want to get the sensor information, without requesting the copying data at the sensor node. Topping on the
IPv4/IPv6 multicast-capable IP network, the Live E! overlay network is deﬁned. The live E! overlay network has the distributed database system acrossthe nation-wide Japan. This is for load balancing and for robust data management against some system failure. Also, as shown in the ﬁgure, this system has
already included Web camera for obtaining the live video information and thesound information from the network.
We have installed more than 100 stations and let them on-line. Some of stations have installed in Philippine by the collaboration with ASTI [8], or haveinstalled in Thailand by the collaboration with PSU [9].
For dense installation of weather sensors, we collaborate with Minato-ku inmetropolitan Tokyo. Several sensors are installed at some elementary schools at
Minato-ku. We will install about 30 stations in this ﬁscal year of 2006. By thisinstallation, Minato-ku can have about 2 km mesh weather station network.
3.4

Future Enhancement of Internet Weather Station System– XML based Publish/Subscribe system
The more sensor devices and users increase, the more data and queries should
be processed. The most popular web-service is ”getCurrentDataAll()”. Users
are very interested in real time data. In order to provide this web-service

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Fig. 8. data displaying on google earth

stable, we create XML based Publish-Subscribe system (Figure 9). This system don’t store archived data but only provide current data. If users registerfor subscribing data, they constantly receive current data of all sensors.
– 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 [10]. In addition, we are trying to use ad-hoc
network for sensors not having the connectivity to the internet. Patrol nodes(ex. Post oﬃce cars, garbage trucks or buses) gather the sensing data via
ad-hoc network [11].
– Support small nodes
There are lots of microcomputers not having the ability to translate XML
document. In order to integrate lots of data created by microcomputers
generate, we study about XML translational machinery [12].
– Scalable and autonomous data collection and distribution system
The current system is a kind of client-server system. This is just ﬁne for small
scale system. However, the system must come up with the increase of sensors
and the increase of type of sensors. Distributed and autonomous management
and operation is mandatory. We are studying about geographical location
based peer-to-peer network [13].
We are evaluating the requirements of future sensor network, and integrate several kinds of researches.

Live E! Project: Sensing the Earth73

publisher

subscriber
Live E! DB
Live E! DB
Live E! DB
Live E! DB

IP network

Fig. 9. XML based publish/subscribe system

4

Conclusion

The Live E! project is an open research consortium among industry and academia to explore the platform to share the digital information related with theearth and our living environment. Using the low cost weather sensor nodes with
Internet connectivity, we deployed the nation-wide sensor network. The network has accommodate more than 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 for various level of students.

Acknowledgment
The authors thanks to all the organization and peoples contributing to the Live
E! project. These are; WIDE project sponsor organizations, NiCT/JGN, Netone
Systems Co.Ltd, Echelon Japan KK, WeatherNews Inc., NTT Neo-mate, Wilcom
Japan Ltd., IRI Ubiteq Inc., NTT East Corp., Matsushita Electric Works Ltd.,
Cisco Systems Japan K.K., Dai-Dan Co.Ltd., Uchida Yoko Co.Ltd., INTEC Inc.,
Shimizu Corp., Yamatake Corp., OBIS Corp., and Mitubishi Research Institute
Inc.

References
1. Lawrence Lessig, ”The future of Ideas; The Fate of the Commons in a Connected
World” Random House Inc., ISBN 0375505784, November 2002.
2. Home Page of BACnet, http://www.bacnet.org/
3. Home Page of Lon Mark, http://www.lonmark.org/
4. Kyoto Protocol by United nation, http://www.cop3.org/
5. Home Page of Live E! Project, http://www.live-e.org/
6. Minato-ku, Tokyo, http://www.city.minato.tokyo.jp/
7. Kurashiki-City, http://www.city.kurashiki.okayama.jp/

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8. ASTI (Advanced Science and Technology Institute),
http://www.asti.dost.gov.ph/
9. PSU (Prince of Songkla University), http://www.psu.ac.th/
10. Shinichi Doui, Satoshi Matsuura, Hideki Sunahara: An Infrastructure for Environmental Information Gathered by Fixed-point and Mobile Sensors, Multimedia,
Distributed, Cooperative and Mobile Symposium(2006), IPSJ Symposium Series
Vol.2006, No.6, 801 – 804.
11. Hiroki Ishizuka, Kenji Sasaki, Satoshi Matsuura, Makoto Kamiya, Hideki Sunahara, Hiroshi Esaki: Collecting Adaptive Data for Isolated Wireless Sensors with
Patrol Nodes in Live E!, International Workshop on Future Mobile and UbiquitousInformation Technologies, Proceeding of FMUIT2006, 249 – 253.
12. Hideya Ochiai, Hiroshi Esaki: The Application of XML Translator for a Large-Scale
Sensor Node Network, IEICE 2006, A-21-5.
13. MATSUURA Satoshi and FUJIKAWA Kazutoshi and SUNAHARA Hideki: Mill:
Scalable Area Management for P2P Network based on Geographical Location,
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