Building adaptive context-aware service-based smart systems

Existing smart systems tend to be domain specific and developed end-to-end in an ad hoc manner and thus tend to be time and resource consuming, error prone and hard to interoperate and integrate. The objective of this paper is to provide a method through which the method users can follow a general process model and a uniform set of concepts to define the main elements involved in their targeted smart solution while also thinking about how their system could or should improve, adapt and eventually integrate with other systems. We propose an approach to design smart systems based on the principles of service-oriented computing, context-awareness and adaptability to tackle the previously mentioned issues. The proposed approach, called AS3 (adaptive service-based smart systems), consists of two main contributions. To deal with the interoperability, integration and adaptability issues, we first propose a smart system loop to showcase the capabilities of smart systems, the main concepts in play and their interactions. Then, we propose a method to design smart systems that is supported by a product metamodel and a process model. The application of AS3 on a road security-focused intelligent transport system design and simulation shows its relevance and efficiency in designing adaptive smart systems.