SensorMap: Browsing the Physical World in Real-Time

Background
Geo-centric web interfaces such as Windows Live Maps (also known as Windows Live Local, based on the Microsoft Virtual Earth technology at http://local.live.com) and Google Maps (see http://maps.google.com) are useful for visualizing spatially and geographically related data such as locations, neighborhoods, weather, traffic, etc. Desires to augment these interfaces with additional useful information have led people to create custom applications that overlay their own data on top of browsable maps. Examples of such applications overlay housing information (http://www.housingmaps.com) and crime-rate data (http://www.chicagocrime.org/map/) on Google Maps, locations of vehicles (http://jprestonsystems.2mydns.com/vemap.aspx?name=demoacct2) and pod casters (http://www.podlook.com/map.aspx) on Microsoft Virtual Earth, weather data on custom maps (http://www.wunderground.com), etc. Such applications became possible after Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth published useful APIs to overlay location data on their maps.

We envision publishing and querying real-time data (e.g., from sensors) over such geo-centric web interfaces. Existing solutions, although useful for writing the simple applications mentioned above, have several drawbacks in achieving this vision. First, publishing even a single stream of data as a useful service is a non-trivial task. Much useful data is not being published yet because the data owners do not have enough programming expertise, or publishing it requires too much effort. Second, the existing applications are mutually incompatible. No single map can show both the housing information and the crime-rates in an area. Third, existing solutions do not provide useful primitives such as querying live sensors based on keywords or location and aggregating the results in useful ways.

The SensorMap project at Microsoft Research aims to address these challenges by providing a common platform and set of tools for data owners to easily publish data and for users to make useful queries of the live data sources. The SensorMap platform transparently provides mechanisms to archive and index data, to process queries, and to aggregate and present results on geo-centric web interfaces such as Microsoft Virtual Earth, etc. We believe that such a platform will encourage the community to publish more live data on the Web, and will also encourage users to build more useful services based on it.

With the publication of this RFP, the SensorMap platform is being made available to researchers worldwide to publish their sensor data, which will raise the profile and accessibility of their research, and will help to evolve the platform’s capabilities according to the research requirements of the sensing community at large.

Goals & Objectives
The goal of this RFP is to establish a compelling portfolio of research projects that leverage the SensorMap platform to build an open and diverse community of sensor data publishers/consumers and to develop shared infrastructure and tools for data publishing, data management, and data querying and visualization.

As of fall 2006, the SensorMap platform has been available for a few months in alpha status, showing data feeds from a number of sensing research projects to illustrate its functionality and provide enough diversity to demonstrate “proof of concept”. To take the project further, the main driver will be new data feeds and new ways of using sensors and sensor data world wide.

There are hundreds of sensing research projects in progress (or projects with data feeds available) across the research community, but it is a non-zero cost to publish these feeds in SensorMap today. A simple challenge is that not all the feeds are available on the public Internet. Even when sensor feeds are published, they are not published in a common format or with standard semantics, making it almost impossible for a computer system to automatically parse and process the data. We need to prove that SensorMap is compatible with the vast majority of interesting data feeds, and to enhance it where necessary.

Microsoft Research will therefore partner with the academic community to support selected projects awarded under this RFP to build infrastructure support and tools to simplify publishing data to SensorMap and querying it in useful ways and to build new services or mash up existing ones to make SensorMap data more useful. The awards made will cover the work required to do this, and provide certain limited funds for non-work items. We are not concerned about whether the sensing data so published is based on established sensor networks projects, or on new projects, however, the sensor data we will look for in proposed projects should be compelling to the sensor networks community at large and this will factor into our ultimate selection – our complete project selection criteria is summarized later in this document.

The expected contributions to the sensor networks research field through this effort are as follows:

• A proven, widely-known and widely-used Internet portal for sensor data publication, querying, and visualization
• A set of tools available for the research community to publish data and build applications around SensorMap
• A critical mass of diverse, compelling, representative sensor data feeds, published through SensorMap, actively maintained for ongoing research community interest, encouraging new sensor data projects to add their own feeds in due course (outside of the scope of this RFP)
• Feedback and refinements to the Microsoft Research SensorMap to maximize its utility for the sensing and network embedded systems research communities
• Experience with the platform for maximizing its utility for the consumers and users of sensing data, especially scientific users, government users, and the general public

Awards
The total amount available under this request for proposals (RFP) is $700, 000. Microsoft Research anticipates making approximately 10 project awards averaging $50,000, with a maximum of $70,000 for any single award. Such awards include any necessary hardware and supplementary costs such as project-associated travel, including mandatory attendance at a technology training event to be held at a US university in March-April 2007. All awards will be made in $US. Awards are generally made as unrestricted gifts to the host institution. Outside the United States other local restrictions may apply to the terms of the award. For current policy regarding non-US countries, please refer to http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/faq.aspx.

For all awards, payment of indirect costs (“overhead”) is not permitted and should not be included in the proposed budget.

Because local costs vary widely across geographies, Microsoft will take into account the reasonableness of the amount requested in any proposal in light of local costs, and reserves the right to fund proposals at an amount lower than requested if appropriate.

Awards under this program are for one year only, but may be renewable at the sole discretion of Microsoft Research.

Eligibility
Conditions of eligibility listed below will be strictly adhered to, so please read them carefully. Proposals not meeting all these criteria will not be considered.

1. The proposing institution must be an accredited baccalaureate-granting college or university (or international equivalent) with non-profit status. All qualifying institutions are eligible without regard for geographic location.
2. An institution will be awarded a maximum of one gift per RFP, regardless of the number of proposals submitted from the institution. However, collaborative proposals embracing multiple groups across the organization are encouraged.
3. Proposals that are incomplete, inaccurate, request funds in excess of the maximum award available, or are otherwise not responsive to the terms and conditions of this RFP will, at the sole discretion of Microsoft Research, be excluded from consideration.
4. Proposals from or on behalf of persons participating in the evaluation process for this RFP will not be considered.
5. Proposals should evidence a commitment to make all results arising from a funded project (including all intellectual property in those results) broadly available by either: (i) dedicating such results to the public domain; or (ii) making the results (e.g. software systems and tools) available under a non-restrictive license that allows modification and redistribution without any significant restrictions or conditions, such as the BSD license available at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html. Proposals should further evidence willingness to contribute any resulting curriculum material to the MSDN Academic Alliance Repository at http://www.msdnaacr.net/curriculum/facetmain.aspx. A courtesy acknowledgement to the support supplied by Microsoft Research would be appreciated in any publications arising from the research.

Submission Process
Proposals will be accepted in electronic form only at http://microsoft.redwhale.com. Proposals submitted to Microsoft will not be returned. Microsoft cannot assume responsibility for the confidentiality of information in submitted proposals. Therefore, proposals should not contain information that is confidential, restricted or sensitive. Microsoft reserves the right to make public proposals that receive awards, except those portions containing budgetary or personally identifiable information.

The submission process includes two parts.

1. Brief summary and contact information. Applicants must provide full contact information for principal investigators, amount requested and a brief abstract. This information will be submitted through a web form as part of the submission process.
2. Complete proposal containing full detail on the proposed project. 7 pages maximum, 10pt. font or larger, double-spaced, in either Microsoft Word or PDF/XPS format.

Proposals should address each of the items listed below under separate numbered headings.

1. Problem Statement: What is the problem or curriculum area addressed by the proposal and why is it important? What is the potential contribution to the field of the project if successful? Cite relevant work in the field as appropriate.
2. Expected outcomes: What tangible assets, if any, will be created or produced as a result of the proposed project? How will the results of this project be disseminated to others?
3. Schedule: When is the project to be completed? What milestones will be used to measure progress of the project and when will they be completed? (If the project described is part of a larger ongoing research program, estimate the time for completion of this project only).
4. Use of Funds: Provide a high-level budget ($US) describing how the award will be used, including purchases of hardware or software, salaries, and other costs. Please note that, because awards are made as unrestricted gifts, Microsoft policy prohibits the payment of indirect cost (“overhead”). Note that budgets should include provision for attendance at a planned training event to be held in March/April 2007 in the U.S.
5. Dissemination and Evaluation: How will the results of this project be evaluated (if appropriate), and how will they be disseminated to others? Under what general license terms will the results be made available?
6. Other Support: Including other contributions to this project (cash, goods or services), if any, but not including such things as use of university facilities otherwise provided on an ongoing basis. Please note: authors of winning proposals will be required to submit an original letter on department letterhead certifying the commitment of any additional or matching support described in the proposal.
7. Qualifications of Principal Investigator: Include a brief description of any relevant prior research, teaching, publication or other professional experience. A detailed vita or list of publications is not required.

Selection Process and Criteria
All proposals received will be reviewed by Microsoft Research and eligible proposals will be evaluated by a panel of subject-matter experts chosen by Microsoft Research. Based on evaluations by the review panel, Microsoft Research will select the most worthy proposals for funding. Microsoft Research reserves the right to fund winning proposals at an amount greater or less than the amount requested, up to the stated maximum amount for individual awards. Due to the volume of submissions, Microsoft Research cannot provide individual feedback on proposals that are not funded.

Authors (including co-investigators) of winning proposals will be required to grant Microsoft permission for the use of their name, image, institutional affiliation and related professional information in press releases or other forums for publication of their award.

All proposals will be evaluated based upon the following criteria:

1. Well-defined goals and objectives that, if achieved, have the potential to significantly impact real-world data collection and management, sensors and sensor networks, and the use of sensors in education and scientific research.
2. Potential for wide dissemination and use of intellectual property created, including specific plans for publications, software distribution, conference presentations, distance learning, etc., as well as plans to distribute content in multiple formats or languages.
3. Ability to complete the project, including the adequacy of resources available, reasonableness of timelines, and number and qualifications of identified contributors.
4. Qualifications of principal investigator, including previous history of work in the area, successful completion of previous funded projects, teaching awards, and books published, etc.
5. The new sensor data to be presented in SensorMap should stretch the capability of the infrastructure in order to raise the state of the art. This will force the selection of a wide diversity of projects in terms of the specific nature of the data feed per project.
6. The new sensor data to be presented in SensorMap should be compelling to the wider sensor network community, as judged by the Microsoft internal reviewers. This will be a subjective evaluation based on the expected impact of the proposed sensor data in terms of its relevance to a wide community of interest, its degree of technical ingenuity and novelty, its degree of potential impact on the sensor network community, and its potential societal impact.

Schedule and Deadlines

Additional Resources

• http://research.microsoft.com/nec/senseweb/- SensorMap home page
• http://atom.research.microsoft.com/sensormap/ - SensorMap current prototype
• http://research.microsoft.com/nec/publications/SensorMap_WSW2006.pdf - SensorMap introductory paper
• http://research.microsoft.com/nec/msrsense/ - Microsoft Research Sense sensor networks toolkit
• http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16781&ch=infotech - Microsoft's Plan to Map the World in Real Time, Technology Review, May 8, 2006
• http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=706 - How to Build a Smart World, by Suzanne Ross of Microsoft Research News
• http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/sensorws2005/ - Microsoft Research Sensor Networks Workshop 2005, October 10-11, 2005, Woodinville, Washington
• http://www.cs.washington.edu/mssi/2006/index.html - 2006 Summer Institute on the World-Wide Sensor Web
• http://www.sensorplanet.org/wsw2006/ - First workshop on World-Sensor-Web (WSW’2006)

Please address any questions to erpinq@microsoft.com. Please put “SensorMap” in the subject line of your e-mail message to ensure a prompt and proper response.

Microsoft Word version of this document