An ECA-based Semantic Architecture for IoT Building Automation Systems

The Internet of Things (IoT), with its plethora of smart objects and technologies, allows to realize smart environments in several scenarios. However, the existing solutions are strictly intended for specific applications and their customization is often limited to what developers have considered at the design and implementation time. So, the integration of new functionalities requires significant changes by developers, while common users cannot make personalizations by themselves. For these reasons, this work deals with the definition of a novel rule-based semantic architecture for the easy implementation of building automation applications in an IoT context. Applications are structured as an Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rule and the layered architecture separates high-level semantic reasoning aspects from low-level execution details. The proposed architecture is also compared with main state-of-the-art solutions and a standard-based implementation framework is suggested. The last aspect is treated by referring to standardized guidelines and widely-accepted platforms, in order to make the proposal more attractive and robust.