In 1998, under the auspices of the international Committee for Earth Observing Satellites (CEOS), Dr. Mike Botts at the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville began development of an XML-based Sensor Model Language for describing certain properties of dynamic remote sensors. In 2000, SensorML was brought under the oversight of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) where it served as a catalyst for the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative. The continued development of SensorML has been supported by the Interoperability Program of OGC, as well as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US National GeoSpatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the US Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC), the US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), SAIC, Crystal Data International, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Oak Ridge National Labs, and NASA.

SensorML provides standard models and an XML encoding for describing any process, including the process of measurement by sensors and instructions for deriving higher-level information from observations. Processes described in SensorML are discoverable and executable. All processes define their own inputs, outputs, parameters, and method, as well as provide relevant metadata. SensorML models detectors and sensors as processes that convert real phenomena to data. A SensorML network under the control of Crystal Data International's ServerInSight can be used to create versatile, powerful and scalable networks of all types of sensors.