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The German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) is built upon a complex sensor data infrastructure. To best fulfill the demand for a long living system, the underlying software and hardware architecture of GITEWS must be prepared for future modifications both of single sensors and entire sensors systems. The foundation for a flexible integration and for stable interfaces is a result of following the paradigm of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The Tsunami Service Bus (TSB) – our integration platform in GITEWS – realizes this SOA approach by implementing the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards and services. This paper focuses on architectural and implementation aspects of the TSB. Initially, the general architectural approach in GITEWS by SOA and SWE is presented. Based on this conception, the concrete system architecture of GITEWS is introduced. The sensor integration platform TSB is then discussed in detail, following by its primary responsibilities and components. Special emphasis is laid on architectural transparency, comprehensible design decisions, and references to the applied technology.

One major problem many hypotheses regarding the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), face is what we might call "the why question": why would this particular neural feature, rather than another, correlate with consciousness? The purpose of the present paper is to develop an NCC hypothesis that answers this question. The proposed hypothesis is inspired by the cross-order integration (COI) theory of consciousness, according to which consciousness arises from the functional integration of a first-order representation of an external stimulus and a second-order representation of that first-order representation. The proposal comes in two steps. The first step concerns the "general shape" of the NCC and can be directly derived from COI theory. The second step is a concrete hypothesis that can be arrived at by combining the general shape with empirical considerations.