Abstract
Web technologies are currently regarded as key enabling factors for the Internet of Things (IoT), and substantial effort is being dedicated to bringing sensors and data from the real world to the Web. In addition, rule-based automation mechanisms are expected to play a significant role in the effective integration of the physical world with the virtual world by leveraging a trigger-action paradigm. Although several rule engines are already available, limited effort has been devoted to rule-based solutions that are tailored to the IoT and consider rule configurability and extensibility according to application requirements. In this work, we propose a RESTful rule management framework for IoT applications that satisfies these requirements. The framework is centered around a resource-based graph, which enables the uniform representation of things (e.g., sensors and domain entities) and rules as URI-addressable resources. We describe the design and implementation choices of the main rule management features (rule scheduling, activation and RESTful operations for managing rules at various levels of configurability and extensibility). Finally, we present a case study and performance evaluation results regarding the use of this rule management framework in a set of school buildings that were part of a real-world IoT deployment that was realized within the Horizon 2020 GAIA research project, with the objective of promoting energy -saving behaviors in school communities.
Highlights
T HE Internet of Things (IoT) is currently producing a very large amount of raw data via continuous collection by sensors
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION Hereafter, we report on testing activities that were conducted to evaluate the performance of the rule engine that was configured and run for the case study within the Green Awareness in Action (GAIA) project
Rule-based approaches can substantially simplify the ways in which we define the interaction between these two domains and there is often substantial overlap of such definitions in real-life applications; web-based rule management frameworks have a role to play in this domain
Summary
T HE Internet of Things (IoT) is currently producing a very large amount of raw data via continuous collection by sensors. RESTful Web exposure of physical objects satisfies the basic requirements for making representations of things accessible to clients through Web standards, in many cases, mechanisms are needed for automating reactive behaviors upon the occurrence of specified conditions (e.g., one could be interested in being notified if the average temperature at a location exceeds a specified threshold) In this context, rule-based approaches are expected to play a significant role in the IoT, since, as stated by Perera et al in [9] “they are the easiest and simplest way to model human thinking and reasoning in machines".
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