Geosensor Networks: A New Framework for Spatial Analysis

In two recent decades، three main trends of the ubiquitous wireless communication networks technology development، the miniaturization of storage and computing platforms، and developments of new sensors and materials used in the sensors have significantly influenced the field of geospatial information sciences (GIS). These three trends have changed the monitoring methods of environmental phenomena and the ways their information are processed. Moreover، other technology developments have added new significant capabilities in modern geoscience field. This technology، so-called geosensor networks، is the special applications of wireless sensor network technology in geographic fields that detect، monitor، and track environmental phenomena and processes. Both real time aspects and improving spatiotemporal resolution has created new research challenges in environment modeling، monitoring، and processing of information. In this paper، firstly geosensor networks is introduced and the issues and challenges are expressed. Then، considering energy constraints in these networks، decentralized computation system is introduced. Using algorithms based on these computation systems improves energy consumption of network. Finally، the information processing in the network has been described، including in-network storage and processing and data abstraction.