Sensing technologies for Homeland Security in cloud environments

Homeland security is a crucial problem for our society, still waiting for a comprehensive and effective solution. On the one hand, the level of security of a territory is increased by deploying several monitoring cameras and sensors able to detect meaningful events. On the other hand, all these monitoring and alerting systems deployed by different companies or organizations are independent from each other. An integration mechanism is still missing, but it can represent a very strategic approach to provide strong Homeland Security services. Cloud Computing may provide a valid support to merge contributions of several heterogeneous sensing infrastructures interconnected through the Internet. In this work we introduce a new Cloud architecture able to virtualize different types of sensing infrastructures in virtual sensing elements, logically belonging to Cooperating Clouds. It represents a very flexible solution, which offers seamless, secure and advanced services to support Homeland Security. The description of a Use-Case, that is the Transportation of Dangerous Goods, helps us to better describe our Cloud architecture, highlighting its features and peculiarities.