1. Introduction to the SenCore Service
1.1. Service Overview & Purpose
SenCore is a comprehensive sensor monitoring platform engineered for robust environmental intelligence. It is offered as a service within the Destination Earth (DestinE) Core Service Platform (DestinE Platform).
The platform provides a simplified, high-availability solution for real-time data ingestion, advanced analytics, and insightful data visualization for sensor networks. It is designed to scale and support sensor deployments across Europe and beyond, providing critical data for environmental monitoring.
The SenCore landing page, shown in Figure 1, summarizes the platform’s mission and provides high-level operational metrics, including the number of active stations, total data points processed, geographic coverage, and service uptime.
1.2. Core Platform Features
As illustrated in Figure 1, SenCore is built upon six foundational pillars to deliver a comprehensive monitoring solution:
- Real-Time Monitoring
Monitor environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, air quality, and other weather data in real-time across multiple, geographically dispersed locations.
- Multi-Protocol Support
Ingest data from a diverse range of sensor hardware using various protocols, including HTTP, MQTT, and CoAP, ensuring seamless integration with new and existing devices.
- Geospatial Analytics
Utilize advanced mapping and location-based analysis, empowered by PostGIS integration, to derive spatial data insights and visualize sensor distribution.
- Time Series Analytics
Perform powerful time-series data analysis using TimescaleDB for historical trend identification, anomaly detection, and forecasting.
- Enterprise Security
Employ robust, Keycloak-based authentication and authorization for secure access to sensitive environmental data, ensuring data integrity and user management.
- RESTful API
Leverage a comprehensive, standards-compliant RESTful API with Swagger/OpenAPI documentation for straightforward integration, automated development, and programmatic data extraction.
- Alerting System
Configure flexible, rules-based alerts to monitor critical environmental thresholds. Define alert conditions (e.g.,
temperature > 35°C) and receive notifications when sensor readings exceed specified limits.- Station Comparison
Compare data from multiple monitoring stations side-by-side with interactive time series charts, enabling regional analysis and cross-station validation.
- OGC SensorThings API
Access sensor data through the OGC SensorThings API v1.1, an open standard for IoT sensor data interoperability that enables seamless integration with other OGC-compliant systems.
- FTP Protocol Support
Ingest data via FTP with support for both push-based and pull-based data transmission models, accommodating a wider range of sensor hardware and data delivery workflows.
- Advanced Data Transformation & Validation Engine
Define complex multi-step processing workflows and enforce sophisticated validation rules to ensure data quality, integrity, and consistency upon ingestion. The engine can reject or flag records that fail checks for outliers, missing values, or logical constraints.
- Custom Field Mapping & Unit Conversion
Configure user-friendly custom field mappings during station setup and leverage a robust unit conversion engine capable of performing on-the-fly transformations for common measurements such as temperature (°C, °F, K) and pressure (Pa, bar).
- Semantic Data Interoperability
Standardize data interpretation across disparate sources by mapping proprietary sensor outputs to canonical vocabularies and ontologies. The platform provides a standardized vocabulary of 54 metrics across 6 domains for unified querying and integration.
- Group Management & Station Sharing
Create collaborative groups, invite members via shareable links, and share monitoring stations with group members. A dedicated “Shared with me” dashboard view enables browsing and interacting with shared content alongside owned stations.
- AI-Powered Reasoning Engine
Leverage an on-premise, self-hosted AI model to automatically analyze station measurements, detect statistical anomalies using Z-score-based confidence levels, and generate human-readable contextual reports with actionable insights.
- Multi-Channel Alerting (Slack Integration)
Extend the alerting system with Slack notifications for critical events. Configure Slack webhook URLs when creating alert rules to receive real-time notifications in dedicated Slack channels when measurements breach configured thresholds.
- ESA-Approved Mapping (GISCO Boundaries)
Comply with European Commission cartographic guidelines by displaying GISCO boundary layers and official EC toponyms on all map views, with mandatory disclaimer annotations as required by ESA.