FDRI Sensor Things API

This report summarises an investigation and implementation of an OGC Sensor Things API (STA) for the FDRI data service. The implementation used the Hydroserver 2 project's Python implementation as a shim over existing FDRI metadata APIs and observational data stored in Amazon S3. SensorThings is the best fitting open standard for the FDRI data but there are concerns regarding its data model limitations, implementation complexity, and usability. This has led us to adopt a dual strategy. We are offering a partial STA implementation in parallel with a tailored, simple REST API. The STA implementation offers some standards compliance and a route to exploiting future tools that might develop in the STA ecosystem whereas the REST API gives us complete coverage of the FDRI data model in an easy to use format.