Process over things (PoT). A model-based approach for the specification of IoT-aware business processes

IoT-aware business processes are gaining momentum as part of a global effort to exploit the potential of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in the Business Process Management (BPM) area. The canonical lifecycle of a Business Process (BP) consists of several phases, from modeling and analysis down to implementation, monitoring and optimization. The availability of widely used standard notations for BP modeling, such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), enables business analysts to specify their BPs and then allow IT developers to get the corresponding implementations. Introducing IoT technologies from the BP specification and design phase proves to bring significant improvements in terms of BP analysis and implementation on the one hand and difficulties on the other hand, in order to deal with the complexity and heterogeneity of such technologies. This research project proposes an approach named Process over Things (PoT), which aims at overcoming such difficulties by using a standardized ontology to deal with IoT interaction at BP specification and design time. The proposed approach presents a BPMN extension to address the IoT ontology in the BPMN model explicitly, yet being independent of the specific ontology implementation. As part of the research project, the author has implemented a technology, denoted as PoT Broker, to fill the gap between the BP execution platform and the IoT devices access layer. The PoT Broker introduces a significant level of automation when implementing IoT-aware BPs using the specific IoT ontology. This thesis describes both the architecture of the proposed approach and its evaluation by use of a case study dealing with the application to a weather alert system.