Biblio

IoT systems continue to grow in scale and exhibit similarities to complex systems seen in nature and biology: Systems are composed of heterogeneous entities (mobile devices, servers, sensors, data items, databases, etc.) coordinated in a Cloud environment forming a digital eco-system. Properties of such systems include variety, emergent outcome, self-organisation, etc. The scale of IoT systems, and the disparity in the capabilities of the devices on the market, means there needs to be a unifying model to enable a secure and assured interaction among those `things'. The authors propose conceptual designs for an efficient architecture, run-time decision models using assured models for such an interaction in a digital eco-system. This is done using the situation calculus modelling to represent the fundamental requirements for adjustable decentralised feedback control mechanisms necessary for the IoT-ready software systems: It is shown that complex properties and emergent outcomes of the system can be deduced, emanating from the simple distributed interaction models. A case study from the rail industry is used to assess the design and possible implementation.