FAIR Sensor Ecosystem: Long-Term (Re-)Usability of FAIR Sensor Data through Contextualization

The long-term utility and reusability of measurement data from production processes depend on the appropriate contextualization of the measured values. These requirements further mandate that modifications to the context need to be recorded. To be (re-)used at all, the data must be easily findable in the first place, which requires arbitrary filtering and searching routines. Following the FAIR guiding principles, fostering findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data, in this paper, the FAIR Sensor Ecosystem is proposed, which provides a contextualization middleware based on a unified data metamodel. All information and relations which might change over time are versioned and associated with temporal validity intervals to enable full reconstruction of a system's state at any point in time. A technical validation demonstrates the correctness of the FAIR Sensor Ecosystem, including its contextualization model and filtering techniques. State-of-the-art FAIRness assessment frameworks rate the proposed FAIR Sensor Ecosystem with an average FAIRness of 71%. The obtained rating can be considered remarkable, as deductions mainly result from the lack of fully appropriate FAIRness metrics and the absence of relevant community standards for the domain of the manufacturing industry.