A sensing system includes a sensor assembly that is communicably connected to a computer system, such as a server or a cloud computing system. The sensor assembly includes a plurality of sensors that sense a variety of different physical phenomena. The sensor assembly featurizes the raw sensor data and transmits the featurized data to the computer system. Through machine learning, the computer system then trains a classifier to serve as a virtual sensor for an event that is correlated to the data from one or more sensor streams within the featurized sensor data. The virtual sensor can then subscribe to the relevant sensor feeds from the sensor assembly and monitor for subsequent occurrences of the event. Higher order virtual sensors can receive the outputs from lower order virtual sensors to infer nonbinary details about the environment in which the sensor assemblies are located.