Describing the Internet of Things with an Ontology: The SusCity Project Case Study
Authors
Abstract
The Internet of Things comprises a network of physical objects, like sensors and actuators, collecting and exchanging data. Given the importance of the information exchanged in these environments, the communication infrastructure becomes a critical point that needs to be managed optimally, while providing high-performance levels to end users. To guarantee the correct interaction between the different procedures intended for the optimization of the communication infrastructure, a standard and flexible representation of the data related to the network is necessary. Many of the services could be monitored through the web, thus using standard Web languages with a rich expressive power, such as the languages used in the Semantic Web, would allow for the reification of interoperable descriptions.This is one of the main challenges faced by the SusCity project, which aims at the realization of the Smart City paradigm in Lisbon, Portugal, by designing a dashboard to monitor smart building, transportation, and smart grids. This paper presents an ontology for the Internet of Things infrastructure tailored to the needs of the SusCity project. Furthermore, different kinds of evaluations were performed to corroborate the correctness of this ontology, including potential infrastructure optimization objectives like low latency and high resilience.