Web-Based GIS Through a Big Data Open

Source Computer Architecture for Real

Time Monitoring Sensors of a Seaport

Pablo Fernández, Jose M. Santana, Sebastián Ortega,

Agustín Trujillo, Jose P. Suárez, Jaisiel A. Santana,
Alejandro Sánchez and Conrado Domínguez

Abstract Numerous activities and processes of a wide nature occur in a modern

seaport. To name a few, goods, travelers transportation, fishing, rescue and pro-
tection agents and increasing demanding human habits around tourism. In the
paradigm of “The Internet of Things” we present “Puerto de la Luz” SmartPort a
solution for real time monitoring of sensor data in a seaport infrastructure. We
describe the computer architecture and the enriched Internet application that allows
the user to visualize and manage real-time information produced in the seaport
environment. The Big Data management is based on the FIWARE platform. The
entire system is implemented in the “Puerto de La Luz” seaport, in Las Palmas de

P. Fernández (&)
S. Ortega
J.P. Suárez
J.A. Santana
A. Sánchez

Division of Mathematics, Graphics and Computation (MAGiC), IUMA,
Information and Communication Systems, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,
Campus de Tafira, 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
e-mail: pablo.fernandez@ulpgc.es
S. Ortega
e-mail: mxmeater@gmail.com
J.P. Suárez
e-mail: josepablo.suarez@ulpgc.es
J.A. Santana
e-mail: jaisiel@gmail.com
A. Sánchez
e-mail: alemagox@gmail.com
J.M. Santana
A. Trujillo
Imaging Technology Center (CTIM), University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,
Campus de Tafira, 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
e-mail: josemiguel.santana@ulpgc.es
A. Trujillo
e-mail: agustin.trujillo@ulpgc.es
C. Domínguez
University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Juan de Quesada,
35001 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
e-mail: conradodt@ulpgc.es

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 41

I. Ivan et al. (eds.), The Rise of Big Spatial Data, Lecture Notes
in Geoinformation and Cartography, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45123-7_4
42 P. Fernández et al.

Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain. We remark the architecture for processing and
visualizing the streaming data coming from two sensors physically deployed on the
neighborhood of the seaport and underline new features to truly manage Big Data.

Keywords Open source
GIS
Big data
Seaport
Sensors
Web

1 Introduction

The fast growth of data is due to improvement in digital sensors, Internet facilities,
software and hardware that have evolved in the last 20 years. This advances allow
to collect and treat huge volume of data in a very efficient and fast way, using new
techniques and algorithms. According to Halevi and Moed (2012), the term Big
Data, first used by Roger Magoulas, includes all these concepts and processes. In
Emani et al. (2015) many Big Data technologies and definitions are described.
Sensors produce huge volumes of data continuously over time, and this leads to
new computational challenges to overcome, challenges of sensor data analytics and
the different areas of research in this context.
SmartPort is a visualization and data management system, supported by an
Internet web, that receives and shows the data of “Puerto de la Luz” seaport. In
Suárez et al. (2015a, b), a first introduction to the entire system can be found.
“Puerto de la Luz”, is one of the main seaports of Spain and the first of the
geographical area of West Africa. With more than 16 km. of docks, this seaport
serves as the crossroads between Europe, Africa and America.
Technologies and computer architectures, both software and hardware, are now
available allowing to mount a smart system in a seaport where officers and users can
exploit a huge amount of data. Recently, the Future Internet platform of the
European Community (FIWARE) architecture (Ramparany et al. 2014) has been
released as a platform that allows the validation of new concepts, technologies,
business models, applications and services in big scale. The University of Las
Palmas de Gran Canaria, as a partner of the FIWARE project, has the goal of
developing innovative projects using this new technology. This platform belongs to
the Program Future Internet Public Private Partnership (FI-PPP), which is a pro-
gram of public-private cooperation in the field of FI technologies, funded by the
European Commission involving more than 152 European companies and organi-
zations (Villaseñor and Estrada 2014).
In a general way, there are numerous sources of available data within a seaport
area. These sources can be grouped into two sets, depending on their nature. The
first set is composed of human made resources and seaport activities, including all
the human elements within the seaport. These elements are important for the seaport
authority who has to manage them. They are also important for the seaport users,
who could make use of them. A second set comprises the natural environment and
includes both static and dynamic parameters of the natural surroundings. See Suárez
et al. (2015a, b).
Web-Based GIS Through a Big Data Open Source Computer … 43

1.1 Computer and Sensor Architecture in “Puerto de la

Luz” Smartport

The sources where the acquisition of data is mainly focused are sensors connected
to the Internet. Currently the “Puerto de la Luz” seaport has deployed the Aandela
Instruments series 3791–3798 of water level sensor and Geonica Datamar-2000C
tide gauge. The seaport also has meteorological sensors such as Geonica PTH-4000
for air temperature and relative humidity, Geonica 05106 for wind speed and
directions, and Geonica 52203 for tipping bucket rain gauge.
We conducted the project through the following three requirements:
• Collecting the generated data source sensors.
• Analyzing and processing the measurements.
• Visualizing all these data in a 3D geospatial environment.
Figure 1 illustrates the system architecture of the “Puerto de la Luz” SmartPort
solution which integrates both backend and frontend components as server-side
applications and databases, FIWARE module, virtual globe and web visualization.

1.2 Managing Context Data with the Orion FIWARE

Component

Every time the sensors read newer values, they are sent to the Orion Context
Broker. Orion Broker uses a Publish/Subscribe requests, providing the NGSI9 and
NGSI10 interfaces. Using these interfaces, clients can perform several operations:
• Registering context producer applications, e.g. a temperature sensor within a
room.
• Updating context information, e.g. send temperature updates.

Fig. 1 “Puerto de la Luz”

SmartPort computer and
sensor architecture
44 P. Fernández et al.

• Being notified when changes on context information take place (e.g. the tem-
perature has changed) or with a given frequency (e.g. get the temperature each
minute).
• Querying context information. The Orion Context Broker stores context infor-
mation updated from applications, so queries are resolved based on that
information.

2 Managing Big Data with the Cosmos Fiware Component

Cosmos is an implementation of the Big Data GE, allowing the deployment of

private computing clusters based on Hadoop ecosystem. Current version of Cosmos
is capable of:
• I/O operations regarding Infinity, a persistent storage cluster based on Hadoop
Distributed File System (HDFS).
• Creation, usage and deletion of private computing clusters based on MapReduce
and SQL-like querying systems such as Hive or Pig.
• Manage the platform, in many aspects such as services, users, clusters, etc. from
the Cosmos API or the Cosmos CLI.
Cygnus, as part of Cosmos, is a component devoted to receiving context data
from Orion Context Broker GE and storing it in a HDFS, see Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 Cosmos big data connection in SmartPort

Web-Based GIS Through a Big Data Open Source Computer … 45

We upload all the data in chronological order to Orion and relying on Cygnus for
sending the data to Cosmos. The solution that is implemented consists in adding
data to Cosmos using the WebHDFS API. To preserve system security in the
front-end application, the Cosmos instance is only accessible from machines within
the same network. Then, making requests directly from the client was dismissed
and thus, another abstraction layer was necessary.
The technologies and techniques used to process and store the data allow to
achieve high data availability and ensure that the whole system is scalable.
However, some technologies like Hive or Hadoop imply a performance trade off, as
showed in Suárez et al. (2015a, b). The proposed architecture minimizes the impact
of these modules by integrating intermediate layers. This way the data transactions
achieve the speed that the interactive user interface demands.

3 Real-Time Ships Location Tracking Through Automatic

Identification System (AIS)

SmartPort offers the possibility to visualize ships in the surroundings of the seaport.
The source information that allows displaying the location of ships is provided by
the Automatic Identification System (AIS) data streaming which is recollected and
provided by the seaport authority. In Fig. 3 two web interfaces of SmartPort are
shown: (a) perspective view and (b) top view of Las Palmas Puerto de la Luz
seaport.
The AIS system protocol defines a set of messages that are sent by the ships
using a VHF transceiver and later displayed by information systems located in the
own ships or shore stations.
AIS technology has proven to be helpful for different scenarios:
• Automated identification and discovery of neighboring ships position
• Complementing radar sensors in avoiding collisions between ships.
• Monitoring fleets, for example, by seaport authorities.
• Ships traffic services.
• Maritime rescue and security.
In the case of SmartPort, the seaport authority has given access to a web data
stream of AIS messages. The service feeds the stream with AIVDM/AIVDO text
messages known as sentences. The following message is an example:
!AIVDM,1,1,B,177KQJ5000G?tÒK>RA1wUbN0TKH,0*5C

In SmartPort the AIS stream is received by a custom Python script which opens
the HTTP stream and starts decoding the sentences as they arrive. The decoding of
each sentence is done by a Python script provided by the GPSD developers tools.
Once the sentence is decoded, the main script saves it in a parsed stream in order to
have it accessible for possible comparisons with the backed up raw stream. After
46 P. Fernández et al.

Fig. 3 Two web interfaces of SmartPort: a perspective view and b top view of Las Palmas Puerto
de la Luz seaport
Web-Based GIS Through a Big Data Open Source Computer … 47

the packet is backed up, the script sends a push request to the Orion GE instance in
order to publish it as context data, see for example:

At this point, messages are accessible as context data in the Orion GE instance,
allowing the front end to easily query the data of interest. Full architecture of
SmartPort’s AIS processing is shown at Fig. 4.
The type of messages are dependent of the data being transmitted and the
category of the ship that is transmitting, having large ships a distinct set of mes-
sages than the smaller ones.
From the AIS stream, we capture, among other variables, the following data:
• International Maritime Organization (IMO) ID
• Origin
• Destination
• Ship type
• Ship dimensions
• Last known location
• Estimated time of arrival
48 P. Fernández et al.

Fig. 4 AIS data stream handling architecture

• Data Terminal Equipment (DTE)

• Positioning information
• Message type
• Positioning information
• Last transmission
Given this information, the SmartPort frontend renders different 3D models
based on the ship type and scales it based on its dimensions (Fig. 5). From the
positioning, we can also detect the ship orientation and replicate it in the model
representation.
Web-Based GIS Through a Big Data Open Source Computer … 49

Fig. 5 The draft of a 3D model of cargo ship

4 Interaction Between the Back-End and the Front-End

of Smartport

The front-end of Smart Port is developed using HTML5 based technologies.

HTML5 brings a richer experience to the user due to all its new possibilities and
one of the most remarkable is the canvas element, which allows to draw graphics on
a web page.
One of the most important interactions of the front-end application are the
requests to the back-end of SmartPort. In order to create an interactive solution, the
communication between the client and the server has been developed using AJAX
(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) (see sample code below), allowing us to
exchange data without reloading the page. This substantially increases the speed
and usability of the application.

Since some application components are located inside different iframes, they
need to exchange information between them, we have developed a small
JavaScript API called iframeCommunicationAPI that simplifies this process.
50 P. Fernández et al.

In order to use this API, each element that could receive messages must register
an input with an action that will be performed when a message arrives. Once an
input is registered, an element can send a message to it specifying the target iframe
name, the target input name and the data to be transmitted.

4.1 GIS Based Visualization and Sensor Data Output

via Web

One of the main requirements of Smart Port is the visualization of seaport-related

geographic information. To accomplish some of those requirements we use the
Glob3 Mobile library as a JavaScript component which is compatible with browsers
that support HTML5 (including mobile devices). Glob3 Mobile provides an
easy-to-use API that allows to interact with the virtual 3D globe, see Trujillo et al.
(2013), Suárez et al. (2015a, b). For some components such as the alert manager,
which do not need the 3D capabilities of the Glob3 Mobile library, we use Leaflet
2D mapping library due to its performance and simplicity (Fig. 6).
Another important feature of Smart Port is the graphical visualization of the
historical data from sensors. For that purpose we used the Highstocks library, which
allows to render interactive timeline charts easily.
Some interesting features provided by the library are:
• selecting time ranges
• selecting different zoom levels
• comparing different sensors
• exporting to different file formats

Fig. 6 Leaflet map in Alert manager

Web-Based GIS Through a Big Data Open Source Computer … 51

Fig. 7 Sample of historical wind speed data from a sensor

• calculating average values (Fig. 7)

We noticed that some modules of the application, like the alert notification,
could have a large list of elements; therefore, in order to facilitate the interaction
with them, we use the List.js library. List.js allows to add dynamic behavior to
HTML lists. Besides, another main functionalities are searching and sorting items;
applying filters and pagination.

5 Smartport in Action

Although SmartPort is still under development, a release candidate version is

currently being used by the Puerto de la Luz Port Authority as a Decision Support
System (DSS). All the information from AIS and sensors, as well as external
services like WMS, is gathered in a unified service, a virtue highlighted by the
ap-plication users. In the past, Smartport components either were not properly
supported or had support in separated applications.
A new functionality is the representation of the vessels in the 3D map and the
georeferentiation of their data. This provides an interactive and intuitive overview
of the port status to technicians in their day-to-day work, showing the number of
ingoing and outgoing vessels, as well as providing real-time information about the
environmental conditions around them.
It is worth noting the utility of visualizing the sensors historic data. This is
achieved via graphs and exporta-ble files, which afterwards are used by the tech-
nicians to make queries about the state of the port sensors based on temporal data
series.
At the time of taking decisions, thanks to the alert system, technicians are
capable of deciding on the need-ed actions to take upon. For example, in the case of
a current direction change, or when an alert for very high waves persists on time,
the port can easily identify the trend and notify to the vessels the need to change
their location.
In Fig. 8, we can see the complete interface of the application that is accessible
to the port technicians.
52 P. Fernández et al.

Fig. 8 Full display of SmartPort application

6 Conclusions

SmartPort is a system able to handle, manage and visualize geographic data. Thanks
to the functionality of generating graphs, we have the capability to obtain a history
of data from sensors of the Puerto de la Luz de las Palmas GC. This is extremely
useful, since the quick access to all the information generated by sensors allows us
to analyze, look for patterns, and in a close the future, foresee possible situations
that require some action by the port. We would like to highlight the alert manager; a
system that allows to monitor and display sensor information, and take live deci-
sions when a sensor takes a certain value. We have done specific systems for static
or dynamic data in the latter case with Big Data solutions such as Hadoop, inte-
grated into the GE Cosmos and implementing a specific high efficient architecture.
One of the next steps in the application is to improve the analytical features. We
consider it essential to give intelligence to the implementation and to continue the
steps towards a geographic decision-making application.

Acknowledgments This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and
Competitiveness (MINECO) Project RTC-2014-2258-8, by the European Commission FP7 Project
“FIWARE: Future Internet Core Platform” FP7-2011-ICT-FI 285248 and by FP7 Grant
Agreement No. 632893 Project “Future Internet, Core. FI-Core”. The second author wants to thank
Agencia Canaria de Investigación, Innovación y Sociedad de la Información, for the grant
“Formación del Personal Investigador-2012 of Gobierno de Canarias”.
Web-Based GIS Through a Big Data Open Source Computer … 53

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