Sensor Web is a revolutionary concept of achieving a collaborative, coherent,
consistent, and consolidated sensor data collection, fusion and distribution system.
Sensor Webs can perform as an extensive monitoring and sensing system that provides
timely, comprehensive, continuous and multi-modeobservations. This new earth
observation system opens up a new avenue to fast assimilation of data from
varioussensors (both in situ and remote) and to accurate analysis and informed
decision making. One of the drivingforces is the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)
Initiative by the Open Geospatial Consortium. Since it started itswork in 2001, the
SWE working group has developed specifications which are now in the final stages of
becoming OGC specifications. 
The Sensor Web Group of the free and open source software initiative 52°North is
directly involved in the specification process and provides the complete suite of OGC
SWE services, encodings,clients and sensor web specific data rendering engines.

This presentation addresses the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) process by the Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and its implementation as free and open source software.
We will show the latest developments in the standardization process and  how the
different SWE services and encodings integrate
in mainstream web-based geospatial solutions like web map or catalogue services. The
work is driven and coordinated by the open source 
initiative 52°North (http://www.52north.org), which works in close cooperation with
the Sensor Web Alliance (http://www.sensorweb-alliance.org) and the Meraka Institute
of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (South Africa).