LICENTIATE THESIS

STUDIES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE NO 8, LICENTIATE THESIS

FAHED ALKHABBAS
TOWARDS EMERGENT
CONFIGUR ATIONS IN THE
INTERNET OF THINGS
TOWARDS EMERGENT CONFIGUR ATIONS IN THE
INTERNET OF THINGS
Malmö University,
Studies in Computer Science No 8,
Licentiate Thesis

© Fahed Alkhabbas, 2018

ISBN 978-91-7104-958-2 (print)
ISBN 978-91-7104-959-9 (pdf)
Holmbergs, Malmö 2018
FAHED ALKHABBAS
TOWARDS EMERGENT
CONFIGUR ATIONS IN THE
INTERNET OF THINGS

Malmö University, 2018

Faculty of Technology and Society
Department of Computer Science and Media Technology
Studies in Computer Science
Faculty of Technology and Society
Malmö University

1. Jevinger, Åse. Toward intelligent goods: characteristics, architec-

tures and applications, 2014, Doctoral dissertation.
2. Dahlskog, Steve. Patterns and procedural content generation in
digital games: automatic level generation for digital games using
game design patterns, 2016, Doctoral dissertation.
3. Fabijan, Aleksander. Developing the right features: the role and
impact of customer and product data in software product devel-
opment, 2016, Licentiate thesis.
4. Paraschakis, Dimitris. Algorithmic and ethical aspects of recom-
mender systems in e-commerce, 2018, Licentiate thesis.
5. Hajinasab, Banafsheh. A Dynamic Approach to Multi Agent Based
Simulation in Urban Transportation Planning, 2018, Doctoral dis-
sertation.
6. Fabijan, Aleksander. Data-Driven Software Development at Large
Scale, 2018, Doctoral dissertation.
7. Bugeja, Joseph. Smart Connected Homes: Concepts, Risks, and
Challenges, 2018, Licentiate thesis.
8. Alkhabbas, Fahed. Towards Emergent Configurations in the In-
ternet of Things, 2018, Licentiate thesis.
Electronically available at:
https://muep.mau.se/handle/2043/26522
To those who never give up.
ABSTRACT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast-spreading technology that enables

new types of services in several domains, such as transportation, health,
and building automation. To exploit the potential of the IoT effectively,
several challenges have to be tackled including the following ones. First,
the proposed IoT visions provide a fragmented picture, leading to a
lack of consensus about IoT systems and their constituents. A second
set of challenges concerns the environment of IoT systems that is often
dynamic and uncertain, e.g. devices can appear and be discovered at
runtime as well as become suddenly unavailable. Additionally, the in-
volvement of human users complicates the scene as people’s activities
are not always predictable. The majority of existing approaches to en-
gineer IoT systems rely on predefined processes to achieve users’ goals.
Consequently, such systems have significant shortcomings in coping with
dynamic and uncertain environments.
To piece together the fragmented picture of IoT systems, we sys-
tematically identified their characteristics by analyzing and synthesizing
existing taxonomies. To address the challenges related to the IoT envir-
onment and the involvement of human users, we used the concept of
Emergent Configurations (ECs) to engineer IoT systems. An EC consists
of a dynamic set of devices that cooperate temporarily to achieve a user
goal. To realize this vision, we proposed novel approaches that enable
users to achieve their goals by supporting the automated formation, en-
actment, and self-adaptation of IoT systems.

Keywords: Emergent Configurations, Internet of Things, Software Ar-

chitectures, Self Adaptive Systems.
PUBLICATIONS

Included Papers

Paper I. Alkhabbas, F., Spalazzese, R., Davidsson, P.: A Character-

ization of Internet of Things Systems through Taxonom-
ies. Submitted to Journal.

Paper II. Alkhabbas, F., Spalazzese, R., Davidsson, P.: Emergent

Configurations in the Internet of Things as System of Sys-
tems. In: IEEE/ACM Joint 5th International Workshop
on Software Engineering for Systems-of-Systems and 11th
Workshop on Distributed Software Development, Soft-
ware Ecosystems and Systems-of-Systems (JSOS), pp. 70-
71. IEEE Computer Society, 2017. https://doi.org/
10.1109/JSOS.2017.6

Paper III. Alkhabbas, F., Spalazzese, R., Davidsson, P.: Architecting

Emergent Configurations in the Internet of Things. In:
IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture
(ICSA), pp. 221–224. IEEE, 2017. https://doi.org/
10.1109/ICSA.2017.37

Paper IV. Alkhabbas, F., Ayyad, M., Mihailescu, R. C., Davidsson,

P.: A Commitment-based Approach to Realize Emergent
Configurations in the Internet of Things. In: IEEE In-
ternational Conference on Software Architecture Work-
shops (ICSAW), pp. 88-91. IEEE, 2017. https://doi.
org/10.1109/ICSAW.2017.55
 Paper V. Alkhabbas, F., De Sanctis, M., Spalazzese, R., Buc-
chiarone, A., Davidsson, P., Marconi, A.: Enact-
ing Emergent Configurations in the IoT through Do-
main Objects. In: 16th International Conference on
Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC), pp. 279-294.
Springer, Cham, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/
978-3-030-03596-9_19

Paper VI. Alkhabbas, F., Spalazzese, R., Davidsson, P.: ECo-IoT: an

Architectural Approach for Realizing Emergent Config-
urations in the Internet of Things. In: 12th European
Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA), pp. 86-
102. Springer, Cham, 2018. https://doi.org/10.
1007/978-3-030-00761-4_6

Personal Contribution
For all publications above, except Paper V, the first author was the main
contributor with regard to the planning and execution of the research as
well as the writing of the publications. Regarding Paper V, the first three
authors were the main contributors.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreci-

ation to Assoc. Prof. Romina Spalazzese, my amazing PhD supervisor,
for her availability, patience, continuous support, and believing in me.
This work would not have been completed without her efforts. It has
been an honour to be her first PhD student. I also would like to express
my special thanks and appreciation to my co-supervisor Prof. Paul Dav-
idsson. I am deeply grateful for sharing your wealth of knowledge with
me and for the inspiration, and great support you have been providing.
Your guidance has been invaluable. Thank you both for your tremend-
ous help and for everything. I could not have imagined having better
supervisors for my PhD study.
I am so thankful to the “Internet of Things and People (IOTAP)” Re-
search Profile financed by the Knowledge Foundation and Malmö Uni-
versity in collaboration with several industrial partners. I extend my
thanks to all the participants in the research project “Emergent Config-
urations of Connected Systems (ECOS)”.
Many thanks to my PhD examiner Assoc. Prof. Andreas Jacobsson
and to the review group members Prof. Bengt Nilsson and Dr. Radu-
Casian Mihailescu for their efforts in reviewing this thesis and assessing
my individual study plans. I would like also to convey my thanks to
Assoc. Prof. Jan Persson, Dr. Bo Peterson, Dr. Christina Bjerkèn, As-
soc. Prof. Johan Holmgren, Dr. Åse Jevinger, Dr. Annabella Loconsole,
Prof. Thomas Pederson, Farid Naisan, Zahra Ghaffari, Sara Säthersten,
Susanne Lundborg, and Solveig-Karin Erdal for the different types of
support they have provided.
Furthermore, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my par-
ents, wife, and children for their understanding, sacrifices, and support.
Their contribution to every success I made in this life is uncountable. I
am also thankful to my friends Majed Ayyad and Abed Alhakim Freihat
for their encouragement.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. COMPREHENSIVE SUMMARY 1
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3. Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4. Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2. Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1. Systematic Mapping Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2. Design Science Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3. Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.1. Characterization of IoT Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.2. Emergent Configurations as Systems and SoS . . . . . . . 20
3.3. Software Architectures for Emergent Configurations . . . . 21
3.4. Software Processes for Emergent Configurations . . . . . 22

4. Conclusions and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.1. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2. Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

II. PAPERS 37
PAPER I: A Characterization of Internet of Things Systems through
Taxonomies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2. Research Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
 5. Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6. Conclusions and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

PAPER II: Emergent Configurations in the Internet of Things as Sys-

tems of Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2. ECs as Systems and SoS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

PAPER III: Architecting Emergent Configurations in the Internet of

Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
2. The Smart Meeting Room Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3. Engineering Emergent Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4. Conclusion and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

PAPER IV: A Commitment-based approach to realize Emergent Con-

figurations in the Internet of Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
2. The Smart Meeting Room Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3. Conceptual Model for Commitment-based Emergent Con-
figurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4. Realizing Emergent Configurations via Commitments . . . 101
5. Conclusion and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

PAPER V: Enacting Emergent Configurations in the IoT through Do-

main Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
2. Background on the Domain Object Model . . . . . . . . 111
3. The IoT-FED Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4. The AL-office Scenario and AL Prototype Running on IoT-FED117
5. Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
6. Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7. Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
8. Conclusion and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

PAPER VI: ECo-IoT: an Architectural Approach for Realizing Emer-

gent Configurations in the Internet of Things . . . . . . . . . . 131
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
2. Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
3. Emergent Configurations Background . . . . . . . . . . . 135
4. The ECo-IoT Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
5. Prototype Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
6. Experimenting ECo-IoT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7. Conclusion and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
 Part I.

COMPREHENSIVE
SUMMARY

1
1. Introduction

The term “Internet of Things” (IoT) was first introduced by Kevin Ashton
in 1999 [1]. The basic idea behind the IoT is to enable physical objects,
or things, such as sensors, actuators, appliances, and vehicles, to connect
and collaborate to achieve goals [2–4]. Exploiting such objects, the IoT
has opened for new types of services that have a social and societal im-
pact on almost every aspect of our daily life. New things are connected
to the Internet every day and new types of applications are developed
and used in several fields such as building automation, health-care, and
transportation to mention a few [3, 5]. An example of a product that is
available in the consumer market is Amazon Echo1 . It provides several
services such as enabling users to control connected things like doors,
TVs, lights, and thermostats through the Alexa2 Voice Service. Another
example is the Google Nest Thermostat3 , which learns users behaviours
to automatically adjust the usage of available power resources to save
energy.
Connected things are often resource constrained with respect to en-
ergy sources and communication and processing capabilities [3, 6]. They
can be equipped with sensors and/or actuators, can be autonomous, and
are sometimes mobile. The number of things getting connected to the
Internet is increasing rapidly and expected to reach 18 billion by 20204 .
This expansion is due to several reasons including the advantages gained
from connecting objects, the affordable technology, and that the con-
nectivity is widespread.
To exploit the potential of the IoT effectively, a set of challenges
have to be tackled including the following ones. First, the available IoT
visions provide a fragmented picture, leading to a lack of common un-
derstanding about IoT systems and their constituents [3]. A second set
of challenges concerns the environment of IoT systems that is often dy-
namic and uncertain e.g., things can appear and be discovered at runtime
1
https://iot.do/devices/amazon-echo
2
https://developer.amazon.com/alexa
3
https://store.nest.com/product/thermostat/T3007ES
4
https://www.ericsson.com/assets/local/mobility-report/
documents/2017/ericsson-mobility-report-june-2017.pdf

3
as well as become suddenly unavailable. The involvement of human
users complicates the scene as people’s activities are inherently situated
and not always predictable. Related challenges have been addressed to
different extents in several research disciplines such as Ubiquitous Com-
puting [7, 8], System of Systems [9], Multi-Agent Systems [10], and Ser-
vice Oriented Computing [11]. The majority of existing approaches for
engineering IoT systems rely on predefined processes to achieve users’
goals. Such systems have significant shortcomings in coping with dy-
namic and uncertain environments.
To piece together the fragmented picture of IoT systems, we sys-
tematically identified their characteristics by analyzing and synthesizing
existing taxonomies. To address the challenges related to the IoT en-
vironment and the involvement of human users, we used the concept of
Emergent Configurations (ECs) to engineer IoT systems. An EC is an IoT
system composed of a dynamic set of things that connect and cooperate
temporarily to achieve a user goal. A thing is any (smart) connected
object, with its functionalities and services or applications [12, 13]. In
the ECs vision, users express their goals without the need to worry about
how available things can achieve them (if possible). To realize this vision,
we proposed novel approaches that enable users to achieve their goals
by supporting the automated formation, enactment, and self-adaptation
of IoT systems. To better explain the concept of ECs, in Section 1.1, we
introduce two concrete scenarios that we use throughout the thesis.

1.1. Scenarios
The concept of ECs represents a basis for novel approaches to engineer
goal-driven IoT systems that can cope with dynamic and uncertain en-
vironments. Realizing the ECs vision requires enabling several processes
including the automated interpretation of user goals, the dynamic dis-
covery of available things, the automated formation and enactment of
ECs to achieve the goals, as well as the automated adaptation of the ECs
in response to changes in their environments. To better explain these
concepts, in this section, we introduce two concrete scenarios that we
use throughout the thesis. The first scenario, presented in Paper III, de-
scribes how an EC is realized to support a person who intends to give a
presentation in a smart meeting room that she enters for the first time.
The second scenario, presented in Paper V, illustrates how ECs are real-
ized to enable a user to adjust light levels in arbitrary environments using
an application.

1.1.1. The Smart Meeting Room Scenario

Lorraine enters an unknown smart meeting room and intends to give a
presentation. The room is equipped with several things including light

4
and temperature sensors, curtains and light actuators, a smart screen,
and a smart projector. She expresses her goal to give a presentation e.g.,
via an application installed on her smartphone. The goal is interpreted,
the available things are automatically discovered, and an EC is automat-
ically formed and enacted to achieve it. For instance, as illustrated in
Figure 1a, the EC constituents could be the smartphone, the laptop, the
smart projector, the light sensor, and the curtains actuator. The laptop
connects and streams the presentation to the projector that illustrates it
while curtains are closed automatically due to the high light levels detec-
ted by the light sensor. During the presentation, the projector turns off
suddenly. The failure is detected and the EC is automatically adapted
when Lorraine agrees to continue the presentation using the available
smart screen as illustrated in Figure 1b. Since different display media
require different light conditions, Lorraine is also proposed to open the
curtains, when the presentation is resumed on the screen.

(a) EC formation (b) EC adaptation

Figure 1.
The Smart Meeting Room Scenario

1.1.2. The Adjust Light Scenario

Adjust Light (AL)-office. Lorraine enters an office that is equipped with
several connected things including light sensors and connected curtains
and lights. The things, with their functionalities, are configured to be con-
trollable by people in the office. Preparing for a meeting, she requests
her goal to increase the light level using an application running on her
smartphone. The available things are automatically discovered and, as
illustrated in Figure 2, an EC formed by her smartphone, a light sensor,
and connected curtain and light is enacted to achieve her goal. The light
sensor measures the light level in the room, the light is turned on and the
curtain is partially opened. We realized this scenario, including both its
hardware and software, in our IoT lab.

AL-hotel. Lorraine enters a hotel room that is equipped with three light
sensors, a connected curtain, and two connected lamps. The things, with

5
 Figure 2.
The Adjust Light Scenario

their functionalities, are configured to be controllable by guests living in

the room. Using the same application running on her smartphone, Lor-
raine expresses her goal to decrease the light level in the room. The
available things are automatically discovered and given that the avail-
able curtain is closed, as illustrated in Figure 2, an EC formed by her
smartphone, one of the light sensors, and the two lamps is enacted to
reach her goal. The light sensor measures the light level in the room, one
of the two lamps is turned off, and the light intensity level of the second
lamp is reduced.

1.2. Related Work

In this section, we present a brief background about IoT systems and
their constituents. Furthermore, we discuss related works in the fields of
Software Architectures and Self-Adaptive Systems.

1.2.1. IoT Systems

There are four digitization waves that have made major impacts on our
life. The first wave took place in 1980s when people started using com-
puters to develop software products. The second wave happened a dec-
ade later when the Internet enabled computers to communicate, which
helped people to share and access information easily. The third wave,
mobile Internet, enabled us to exploit the Internet services wherever we
are. Nowadays, we are witnessing the rise of the fourth digitization wave,
referred to as the IoT, where the digitization is expanded to include phys-
ical objects such as sensors, actuators, vehicles, and appliances. These

6
objects, referred to as “Things”, represent basic building blocks of IoT
systems [3, 4]. They add a physical dimension that makes IoT systems
different from traditional software systems. Although in this thesis we
do not focus on the hardware aspects of IoT systems, we take into con-
sideration related aspects like things power source types, e.g., batteries,
their connectivity status, i.e., connected/disconnected, and operational
status, i.e., on/off.
As already mentioned, there is no consensus about IoT systems and
their constituents. For instance, there are studies that considered smart-
phones, tablets and PCs as things [3, 14]; in contrast, other studies did
not [15, 16]. There are studies that presented abstract characterizations
of IoT systems [3, 17], and studies that provided more detailed character-
izations but taking specific perspectives [6, 18, 19]. Multiple conceptual
models for IoT systems have been proposed. Bauer et al. [20] presen-
ted a model for the IoT domain represented using the Unified Modelling
Language (UML). Patel et al. [21] introduced a conceptual model for
IoT applications. Ciccozzi el al. [22] proposed a conceptual model for
mission-critical IoT systems by building upon the models presented in
[20, 21]. However, none of these models presented a systematic charac-
terization of IoT systems. In this section, we briefly introduce the main
aspects about IoT systems while we refer the reader to Paper I for more
details.

Figure 3.
A high level representation of an IoT system

Figure 3 illustrates a high level representation of an IoT system. It

comprises a set of things that are heterogeneous, often resource con-
strained with respect to energy and processing capabilities, sometimes
mobile, and can be autonomous. Connected things can be classified into
three types:
1. Sensors or actuators: They provide the sensing or actuating func-

7
 tions to monitor or change the state of the environment, respect-
ively. They represent the majority of the connected things and
have negligible or lightweight processing capabilities [6, 23];
2. Smart things: Physical objects are turned into smart things by be-
ing enriched with medium to high communication and processing
capabilities that run smart software, they can also be equipped
with sensors and/or actuators [23, 24];
3. Gateways: They are used to support connected things that do not
posses the capabilities needed to individually connect, process re-
quests, or handle security requirements. They represent the links
between various involved things in an IoT system [24]. Their pro-
cessing capabilities range between medium and high. Examples of
gateways are Arduino5 and Raspberry Pi6 .
Things connect, communicate and collaborate to achieve IoT systems
goals [2, 4]. Communications should be enabled between users and
things and among involved things. For this purpose, several types of
networks can be used such as LAN, WLAN, WPAN [18, 25]. In addi-
tion, several protocols operating at different layers can be exploited such
as MQTT7 and RPL8 [26]. The data generated by connected things and
exchanged among them can be vast especially in large scale IoT systems.
Such data is heterogeneous and can be of several types, for example,
textual, numerical, images and videos [27]. IoT systems should be able
to analyze such data and accordingly provide actionable insights in their
environments [27, 28]. To facilitate the development of IoT systems, sev-
eral IoT platforms have been provided such as AWS IoT Core9 , Azure10 ,
and Google Cloud IoT11 . They provide several services such as enabling
things to communicate securely, monitoring their status, and processing
the generated data.
As illustrated in Figure 3, the processing and storage capabilities of
IoT system can be distributed across three layers namely, Cloud, Fog,
and Edge [29]. In the Cloud Computing Paradigm, the capabilities of
IoT systems reside in the cloud. Comparing to Cloud Computing, in the
Fog Computing Paradigm, the capabilities reside in networks of more
constrained devices (e.g., servers) that are closer to the edge of the net-
work. Finally, in the Edge Computing Paradigm, processing capabilities
reside in connected things [30, 31]. The Cloud Computing Paradigm has
more powerful processing capabilities but also higher latency rates com-

5
https://www.arduino.cc/
6
https://www.raspberrypi.org/
7
http://mqtt.org/
8
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6550
9
https://aws.amazon.com/iot-core/
10
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/iot-accelerators/
11
https://cloud.google.com/solutions/iot/

8
pared to the Fog and Edge paradigms. The Fog Computing Paradigm
has less processing capabilities but also less latency rates compared to
the Cloud Computing Paradigm. The Edge Computing Paradigm has
the least latency rates but also has limited processing capabilities [30].
When deployed, IoT systems can be used by human or non-human users,
i.e., (semi-) autonomous agents. [24].

1.2.2. Software Architectures

Software Architectures pervade and manifest themselves in all core as-
pects of software systems including their elements, i.e., components, in-
teractions among them, and the constraints on the elements that enable
systems to meet their design requirements [32–34]. Taylor et al. [35]
highlight other important aspects in their definition about a system’s ar-
chitecture, i.e., the important design decisions made during the system’s
life cycle. In the literature, several methodologies have been proposed to
design software architectures [36, 37]. The dynamicity and uncertainty
of the IoT environment and the involvement of human users put addi-
tional requirements on engineering architectures for IoT systems. More
specifically, such architectures should support the automated formation
of goal-driven IoT systems that can self-adapt in response to changes in
their dynamic and uncertain environments.
In the context of architectures, several works have been proposed.
The IoT-A project presented a service-based reference architecture for
the IoT [38]. Another novel reference architecture for enabling the no-
tion of Plug and Produce in the industrial IoT is presented in [39]. Khan
et al. [40] proposed a layered architecture for the IoT. Kramer et al. [41]
introduced another architectural model to support the automatic (re)con-
figuration of Self Managed Systems. The model exploits a repository of
predefined plans to achieve goals. To realize new goals, new plans are
generated in a time-consuming process.
Aura is an architectural framework that supports users to perform
their tasks in mobile contexts by pre-compiling user tasks at design time
and (re-)assigning appropriate services at runtime [42]. The Socrades
Integration Architecture (SIA) is a service-oriented architecture that ad-
opts a similar approach to enable the integration of the IoT in enter-
prise services [43]. Business processes are modelled at design time via
an extended version of BPEL that allows the dynamic (re-)assignment
of services at runtime. Systems realized by both Aura and SIA have lim-
ited flexibility as their execution processes are specified at design time.
Dar et al. [44] proposed a high-level architecture to enable the adaptive
composition of services in the IoT. The adaptation of composed services
is performed at design time through user interfaces. Thus, automated
adaptations in response to unforeseen changes are not supported.
In general, the majority of the existing architectures comprise repos-

9
itories responsible for providing systems execution flows, which are spe-
cified at design time, to achieve user goals. Therefore, they do not fully
support the dynamic formation and enactment of IoT systems to achieve
user goals in a specific context. Consequently, the systems that comprise
them have shortcomings in adapting to unforeseen context changes.

1.2.3. Self-Adaptive Systems

To enable (IoT) systems to deal with continuously changing environ-
ments and evolving user goals, they are engineered as Self-Adaptive Sys-
tems [45, 46]. A well-established technique in the field of Self-Adaptive
Systems is the implementation of feedback loops [47].
Several approaches have been proposed to engineer self-adaptive
IoT systems. Hussein et al. [48] proposed a model-driven approach
where an IoT system’s states and adaptation triggers are modelled at
design time. When an adaptation is triggered at the runtime, the system’s
state is changed based on the designed models. Ciortea et al. [49] pro-
posed an agent-based approach for composing goal-driven IoT mashups
where connected things are modelled at design time as agents or artefacts.
Agents achieve their goals by executing predefined plans. In cases where
their plans cannot achieve goals, agents interact and cooperate to com-
pose a mashup that achieves them if possible. Seiger et al. [50] proposed
a framework that implements the Monitor-Analyze-Plan-Execute plus
Knowledge (MAPE-K) feedback loop for enabling the automated adapt-
ation of workflow-based Cyber Physical Systems. Relying on predefined
plans or workflows to achieve goals in [49, 50] limit the flexibility of
IoT systems as it is hard to foresee the things that can be available in
dynamic and uncertain environments. Likewise, relying on predefined
models to enable IoT systems to self-adapt as in [48] limit the systems
ability to respond to unforeseen changes in their environments.
The MobIoT is a service-oriented middleware that leverages an on-
tological based composition approach to achieve user requests by ex-
ploiting the notation of probabilistic registration and lookup mechan-
isms [51]. The approach enables the achievement of specific types of
requests related to physics and chemistry domains. Mayer et al. [52] pro-
posed an approach to enable the dynamic composition of service-based
IoT mashups to achieve user goals. Connected things are modelled as se-
mantic services and user goals are described in a machine understandable
way. Given the description of a goal and a list of services, a service-based
mashup is composed to achieve the goal if possible. The proposed ap-
proach supports also the automated adaptation of mashups apropos the
dynamic availability of services.
In general, the majority of existing approaches rely on predefined
processes to achieve user goals, thus limiting IoT systems flexibility. There-
fore, there is a need for less-constrained approaches that enable the auto-

10
mated formation of IoT systems to achieve a user goals in a specific con-
text. Such approaches should also support the automated enactment and
adaptation of IoT systems in response to changes in their dynamic and
uncertain environments.

1.3. Research Questions

In this thesis we address the following research questions:

RQ1. What are the characteristics needed to describe IoT systems?

As already mentioned, there is a lack of common understanding about

IoT systems and their constituents. Therefore, the objective of RQ1 is to
identify a set of characteristics that distinguish IoT systems from other
systems. Such a set would capture the characteristics needed to be con-
sidered while engineering IoT systems. As presented in Section 1.2.1,
several studies presented characteristics of IoT systems, however, there
is no effort that presented a systematic characterization of IoT systems.

RQ2. What is a suitable software architecture to enable the dynamic

formation and adaptation of goal-driven IoT systems?

The objective of RQ2 is to design a suitable software architecture that

supports the automated formation, enactment and self-adaptation of
goal-driven IoT systems in dynamic and uncertain environments. Engin-
eering software architectures requires taking decisions about the system
components, their responsibilities, relationships and the constraints on
them [32, 33]. To design a suitable architecture, several challenges have
to be addressed including specifying the relevant context dimensions and
the components responsible for modelling and storing their values at the
runtime. For instance, in the smart meeting room scenario, a context
dimension that should be considered is the operational state, i.e., on/off,
of the things. Moreover, proper relations and constraints must be spe-
cified among the components responsible for forming, enacting, and self-
adapting goal-driven IoT systems. As presented in Section 1.2.2, several
studies presented architectures for IoT systems, however, none of them
can fully address the aforementioned challenges.

RQ3. How can goal-driven IoT systems be dynamically formed and ad-
apted?

The objective of RQ3 is to devise processes that leverage the architec-

ture, proposed in the answer to RQ2, to enable the automated forma-
tion, enactment and adaptation of goal-driven IoT systems in dynamic

11
and uncertain contexts. Considering the scenarios presented in Section
1.1, suitable architectures and processes should be designed to enable a
user to adjust light levels in arbitrary environments using an application
and to continue her presentation via the available smart screen after the
sudden failure of the smart projector.
Devising such processes require addressing several challenges in-
cluding proposing mechanisms to analyze how available things can col-
laborate to achieve user goals (if possible). For instance, how is it determ-
ined that the user’s smartphone should connect and stream the presenta-
tion to the projector that then illustrates it? Furthermore, techniques are
needed to maintain systems context at runtime and to detect events that
affect the achievement of user goals. For instance, how can we maintain
the operational state of the smart projector at runtime and detect that it
has stopped working?
Moreover, mechanisms are needed to enable IoT systems to self-
adapt in response to the detected events. For instance, how is it auto-
matically determined that the user can continue the presentation via the
available smart screen? As presented in Section 1.2.3, several approaches
are proposed in related works. However, none of them can fully address
the highlighted challenges.

1.4. Outline
This thesis is in the context and contributes to the project Emergent Con-
figurations of Connected Systems (ECOS)12 within the Internet of Things
and People (IOTAP)13 Research Profile. The thesis is divided into two
parts, the first part describes a comprehensive summary of it while the
second part presents six papers that form the actual research of this
thesis. Paper I is submitted to journal and is under review, while the
other papers are accepted in peer-reviewed conferences and workshops.
Figure 4 illustrates the relationships between these papers including their
contributions and the research questions they address.
To answer to RQ1, in Paper I, we proposed a characterization of IoT
systems by analyzing and synthesizing existing taxonomies, details about
this contribution can be found in Paper I. Additionally, in Paper II, we
studied ECs taking a System of Systems (SoS) perspective. This helped
us better understand ECs, their characteristics, constituents, and their
physical and logical layers. Thus, Paper II contributes also to answering
to RQ2.
To answer to RQ2 and RQ3, in Paper III, we proposed an abstract
architectural approach, which comprises an architecture and a process,
for realizing ECs. Then, we proposed three novel approaches that re-
12
http://iotap.mau.se/projects/ecos/
13
https://iotap.mau.se/

12
 Figure 4.
The relationships between the included papers and their contributions

fine it. They all enable users to achieve their goals by supporting the
automated formation, enactment and adaptation of ECs. However, they
exploit different techniques and focus on different aspects as follows.
One approach exploits techniques adopted from the Self-Adaptive Sys-
tems and Artificial Intelligence domains to enable things to engage in
agreements autonomously to form and adapt ECs. This approach re-
fines the abstract process proposed in Paper III, details about this con-
tribution can be found in Paper IV. The IoT-FED approach, proposed in
Paper V, exploits the Domain Objects (DOs) technology to enable users
to achieve their goals by supporting the automated formation of ECs as
well as their enactment. It refines the abstract architecture and process
presented in Paper III [11]. Finally, the ECo-IoT approach, proposed in
Paper VI, exploits techniques adopted from the Self-Adaptive Systems
and Artificial Intelligence domains to enable the automated formation
and self-adaptation of ECs. It refines the abstract architecture and pro-
cess presented in Paper III.
The remainder of Part I is as follows. Chapter 2 describes the re-
search methodology applied to address the research questions. Chapter
3 presents the main contributions to the body of knowledge. Chapter 4
concludes the thesis and outlines possible future work directions.

13
2. Research Methodology

This chapter introduces the research methodology applied to address

the research questions presented in Chapter 1. We applied a mixed re-
search method that includes the Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) and
the Design Science Research (DSR) presented in Sections 2.1 and 2.2,
respectively [53–55]. We considered the peer reviewed literature as the
main source of knowledge.

2.1. Systematic Mapping Study

To address RQ1, in Paper I, we conducted a SMS—a well-known method-
ology in the Software Engineering community [54]. The study identified
the characteristics of IoT systems by analyzing and synthesizing existing
taxonomies. In general, taxonomies are considered as reference mod-
els that facilitate the engineering and development of (software) systems
[56]. The study followed the most commonly applied guidelines for con-
ducting systematic mapping studies [54]. More specifically, the applied
method involved three stages: planning, conducting, and reporting.
In the planning stage, we produced a well-defined review protocol.
For this purpose, we carried out several activities including: confirming
the need of the study, formulating the study goal, defining the RQs, for-
mulating the search string, and generating selection criteria. Moreover,
mechanisms were developed to analyze and synthesize the identified taxo-
nomic dimensions. In the conducting stage, we set the developed pro-
tocol in practice, and we reported the results of the study in the report-
ing stage. Furthermore, we performed quantitative analysis to provide
insights about the direction of the future research concerning IoT sys-
tems.

Critical Literature Review. Systems of Systems (SoS) and IoT systems /

ECs have many common characteristics. For example, their constituents
are managerially independent, i.e., self-controlled and managed, opera-
tional independent, i.e., can keep achieving their goals independently,
heterogeneous, often distributed, and able to communicate. Also, their
environments are often dynamic and uncertain [3, 57–59]. To better un-

15
derstand ECs, their characteristics, and constituents, in Paper II, we con-
ducted an exploratory study that investigates ECs taking a SoS perspect-
ive by exploiting two scenarios. In the first scenario, an EC is formed by
connected things to achieve a user goal while, in the second scenario, an
EC constituent includes also two IoT systems.

2.2. Design Science Research

We applied the design science research to address RQ2 and RQ3 in an
iterative way to devise approaches that realize the ECs vision. We chose
this research method because we aimed to create innovative artifacts
to solve practical problems—and this is supported by the methodology.
The applied method comprises five stages: problem explication, require-
ments definition, artifact design and development, artifact demonstra-
tion, and artifact evaluation [55].
In the problem explication stage, in Papers III, IV, V, and VI, we
explored different aspects of the problem by studying the literature, in-
cluding examples of IoT systems, and evaluating related works. By lever-
aging the knowledge gained from answering the RQ1 and the contribu-
tions of Paper II, we identified the characteristics of the IoT systems ad-
dressed in this thesis (i.e., ECs). In the requirement definition stage, we
formulated the functional requirements that ECs should meet.
In the artifact design and development stage, in Paper III, we pro-
posed an abstract architectural approach for realizing ECs. Then, we
proposed three approaches that refine it as follows. In Paper IV, we pro-
posed an approach that enables connected things to engage into agree-
ments autonomously to form and adapt ECs. In Paper V, we proposed
the IoT-FED approach to enable the automated formation and enact-
ment of ECs. In Paper VI, we proposed the ECo-IoT approach for en-
abling the automated formation and self-adaptation of ECs.
For all the approaches, the set of input parameters to the forma-
tion process comprises a user goal, e.g., give a presentation, available
things with their capabilities, e.g., a light sensor measures light levels,
and other contextual information such as things connectivity and oper-
ational status, e.g., on/off. The output of the formation process is an
EC instance that achieves the user goal when enacted through the en-
actment process. The adaptation process requires additional parameters
that represent the execution states of the ECs to be adapted.
In the artifact demonstration stage, we developed two prototypes
that realized the adjust light and the smart meeting room scenarios presen-
ted in Chapter 1.1, these prototypes are described in Paper V and VI,
respectively. In the evaluation stage, in Paper V, we conducted experi-
ments to: (i) evaluate the ability of the IoT-FED approach to dynamic-
ally form different ECs based on available things; (ii) gain insights on

16
the IoT-FED performance. In Paper VI, we conducted experiments to
get initial insights on the performance of some key components in the
ECo-IoT approach. We plan to extend the approach presented in Paper
IV, develop a prototype, and conduct experiments to evaluate it. We also
plan to perform more extensive evaluations in our future work.

17
3. Contributions

This chapter presents the contributions of the thesis that were developed
under the following assumptions:
1. The user goal specification and interpretation process is already
performed and correctly terminated: Atomic goals resulting from
decomposing a (high level) user goal, e.g., give presentation, into
sub-goals are provided. Atomic goals are fine-grained goals achiev-
able by things, for example, get light level is achievable by a light
sensor. We plan to devise approaches for user goals interpretation
in future work;
2. ECs are formed, enacted, and adapted within well-defined spatial
boundaries: ECs goals are achieved within locations e.g., room,
building. Consequently, the number of things involved in forming
and adapting an EC is not expected to be massive. This notably
mitigates the well-known IoT scalability problem [3].
3. ECs are realized to achieve goals within non-critical time con-
straints: We envision that ECs are realized within the timescale
of seconds;
4. ECs are formed and enacted at runtime: We do not address cases
where the formation and enactment of ECs are scheduled in the
future;
5. Services that provide information about connected things and their
locations are provided: We do not develop solutions to report
information about connected things, for example, battery levels
(when applicable), their connectivity status (i.e., connected/discon-
nected), operational status (i.e., on/off), and their locations.

3.1. Characterization of IoT Systems

The existing visions provide a fragmented picture about the IoT, leading
to a lack of common understanding about IoT systems and their con-
stituents. To fill this gap, in Paper I, we provided a holistic view of IoT
systems. More specifically, we identified seventeen characteristics of IoT
systems by conducting a SMS that leveraged existing taxonomies. We
organized the characteristics into two categories: elements and quality

19
aspects of IoT systems, we refer the reader to Sections 3.1 and 3.2 in
Paper I for more details about them.
The identified elements of IoT systems are IoT thing, communica-
tion, middleware, data, deployment, goal, user, identifier, resource man-
agement, and collaboration. The identified quality aspects of IoT sys-
tems are security, privacy, trust, interoperability, scalability, latency, and
reliability. They represent non-functional characteristics of IoT systems.
These characteristics represent the answer to RQ1. Moreover, we ana-
lyzed more in depth the elements of IoT systems and identified their
dimensions. For example, the dimensions of the element IoT thing in-
clude, but not limited to, type and level of autonomy. The former dimen-
sion classifies connected things into the three types presented in Chapter
1.2.1, while the latter dimension classifies things based on their level of
autonomy to non-autonomous and autonomous things.
Furthermore, by quantitatively analyzing the results of the SMS, we
presented insights about the directions of future research concerning IoT
systems. The analysis show that many taxonomies focus on security
aspects of IoT systems while the most explored elements of IoT systems
are IoT thing, communication and data respectively. We believe that
the focus on securing IoT systems might be due to the sensitive data
that they might monitor such as health parameters and the critical or
costly control operations they might perform such as in self-driving cars
and turning on district heating, respectively. The focus on the IoT thing
element could be due to the physical dimension it adds to IoT systems,
which makes them different from traditional software systems. Enabling
IoT things to communicate and managing the generated data represent
core aspects in the IoT [3, 5, 17, 60]; this might clarify the focus on the
elements communication and data. The analysis also revealed that some
elements of IoT systems such as user, goal, and deployment have not been
explored sufficiently. They represent core characteristics of IoT system
and we believe that they should be more investigated. By exploiting the
identified characteristics, we provided a more formal characterization
of IoT systems and also outlined a process for designing them. Further
details about these contributions can be found in Paper I.
The proposed characterization represents a reference model that
supports researchers and interested practitioners to (i) contribute to the
research about IoT systems; (ii) better understand characteristics of IoT
systems and take them into consideration when designing and develop-
ing IoT systems.

3.2. Emergent Configurations as Systems and SoS

In Paper II, we highlighted some common characteristics between the
IoT and SoS domains [3, 57–59]. For instance, their constituents are het-

20
erogeneous, can be autonomous, able to communicate, often distributed,
managerially independent (i.e., self-controlled and managed), and opera-
tionally independent (i.e., can keep achieving their goals independently).
In addition, their environments are dynamic and uncertain. Therefore,
we studied ECs taking a SoS perspective, which helped us better under-
stand ECs, their characteristics, constituents, and their logical and phys-
ical layers. This contributed to answering to both RQ1 and RQ2.
The main outcome of this study is that ECs can be regarded as both
systems and SoS based on the types of their constituents. More specific-
ally, ECs are considered systems when their constituents are connected
things and SoS when their constituents involve at least two IoT systems.
Consequently, we believe that the IoT research can gain insights from the
already developed SoS research and, vice versa, the IoT research might
produce useful results for the SoS community.

3.3. Software Architectures for Emergent

Configurations
To address RQ2, in Paper III, we proposed an abstract architecture for
realizing ECs leveraging the characteristics of ECs presented in Chapter
1. As illustrated in Figure 5, the proposed architecture comprises the fol-
lowing components: (i) The User Agent (UA) is an application running
on one of the existing smart things (e.g., smartphone) and used to en-
able users to interact with the system (e.g., to express her goal); (ii) the
Emergent Configuration Manager (ECM) is responsible for automatic-
ally forming and enacting ECs to achieve user goals (if possible) and
for adapting ECs in response to dynamic changes in the context; (iii)
The Thing Manager (TM) is responsible for discovering and registering
available things and services, monitoring their status and reporting any

Figure 5.
A high level architecture for realizing ECs

21
changes to the ECM. Finally, a set of connected things that, following in-
dications of the ECM, communicate and collaborate to realize ECs. The
ECM comprises the following sub-components:
(i) Goal Manager: It is responsible for interpreting user goals and
forming ECs that achieve them when enacted;
(ii) Adaptation Manager: It is responsible for adapting ECs in re-
sponse to context changes. ECs are adapted by executing the
Monitor-Analyze-Plan-Execute plus Knowledge (MAPE-K) loop
-better described in Section 3.4 [61];
(iii) Context Manager: It is responsible for maintaining ECs context;
(iv) Enactment Engine: It is responsible for enacting ECs by com-
manding or requesting ECs constituents to perform functionalities
in specific orders;
(v) System Knowledge Base (KB): It is the container of the context of
ECs.
Papers V and VI present two possible refinements of the abstract
architecture proposed in Paper III. In Paper V, we proposed the IoT-FED
architectural approach for enabling the automated formation and enact-
ment of ECs. It exploits heterogeneous and independently developed
things, services, and applications modeled as Domain Objects (DOs), a
service-based formalism [11]. The architecture refines the Thing Man-
ager and the sub-components of the ECM by leveraging an IoT platform,
the existing components of the DOs technologies, and also developing
new ones.
In Paper VI, we proposed the ECo-IoT architectural approach that
comprises another refinement of the abstract architecture proposed in
Paper III. The architecture is designed to support the automated form-
ation and self-adaptation of ECs. It refines the sub-components of the
ECM by exploiting techniques adopted from the Self-Adaptive Systems
and Artificial Intelligence domains [61–63].
Compared to the architectures of IoT systems presented in Chapter
1.2.2, the architectures we proposed answer better to the needs of IoT
systems as they are designed to support the dynamic formation, enact-
ment and self-adaptation of goal-driven IoT systems that can better cope
with dynamic and uncertain environments.

3.4. Software Processes for Emergent

Configurations
To answer RQ3, in Paper III, we proposed an abstract process for real-
izing ECs. In Paper V, we proposed the IoT-FED architectural approach
for enabling the automated formation and enactment of ECs. As already
mentioned, in this approach we model connected things, services and

22
applications as Domain Objects (DOs). The approach comprises a pro-
cess that refines the abstract process presented in Paper III. The process
starts by specifying a user goal type, e.g., adjust light level, and the goal
spatial boundaries, e.g., Lorraine’s office. Given these inputs and using
the concept of refinement supported by the DOs technologies, an EC
is formed to achieve the user goal (if possible). The formed EC is then
enacted by instantiating the DOs forming it.
To validate the feasibility of the IoT-FED approach, we developed a
prototype that realized the adjust light scenario presented in Chapter 1.1
and performed experiments that revealed the IoT-FED ability to dynam-
ically form different ECs when the number and/or the type of available
things change. Also, the experiments showed that the IoT-FED approach
enables the automated formation and enactment of the generated ECs
in average time less than 2.5 seconds.
In Paper VI, we proposed the ECo-IoT architectural approach to
enable the automated formation and adaptation of ECs. The approach
comprises a process which refines the abstract process proposed in Pa-
per III. Given the user goal type, e.g., give a presentation, and the goal
spatial boundaries, e.g., a smart meeting room, an EC is formed from
available things to achieve the goal (if possible). To enable the auto-
mated adaptation of the EC, the process implements the MAPE-K loop,
a well-established technique in the domain of Self-Adaptive Systems [61].
The EC context is continuously monitored and changes are automatic-
ally detected and analyzed. The process exploits the notion of events to
model changes in the context. In cases where the detected changes affect
the achievement of the EC goal, plans are automatically generated, the
EC is adapted accordingly and enacted, and the system KB is enriched.
We conducted an initial validation of the ECo-IoT approach by de-
veloping a first prototype that realized the smart meeting room scenario
presented in Chapter 1.1. Moreover, we performed two experiments to
get insights into the performance of some key components of the ap-
proach. The results are promising and indicate the ECo-IoT ability to
enable the automated formation and adaptation of ECs at the scale of a
few seconds.
In Paper IV, we proposed a commitment-based approach for en-
abling the automated formation and self-adaptation of ECs. It refines
the abstract process presented in Paper III. More specifically, it exploits
the concept of Commitments, adopted from the field of Multi-Agent
Systems (MAS), and the concept of MAPE-K feedback loops, adopted
from the field of Self-Adaptive Systems, to support autonomous things
to negotiate agreements to realize ECs [61, 64]. We denoted ECs by the
notation EC = hA, C, Si where A is a set of smart things, C is the set
of commitments that hold among them and S is a set of state transitions
that realize the user goal. Furthermore, we presented a conceptual model

23
for commitment-based ECs. We highlight that this approach can be in-
tegrated with both the IoT-FED and the ECo-IoT approaches presented
above.
Compared to the related works discussed in Chapter 1.2.3, the pro-
cesses proposed for realizing ECs provide IoT systems with more flexib-
ility in responding to dynamic and uncertain environments.

24
4. Conclusions and Future Work

4.1. Conclusions
The type of applications enabled by the IoT and the rapid increase of
the number of objects that get connected give to the IoT an increasingly
important role in all aspects of our society. Although the IoT is well
recognized in both academic and industrial communities, a widely ac-
cepted definition of the term is still elusive. The manifold visions about
the IoT provide a fragmented picture, leading to a lack of common under-
standing about IoT systems. The involvement of human users and the
dynamicity and uncertainty of the IoT environment put additional re-
quirements on engineering IoT systems. In this thesis, we addressed the
aforementioned challenges through three research questions. The first
question concerns a characterization of IoT systems. The second and
third research questions address suitable architectures and processes that
enable users to achieve their goals by supporting the automated forma-
tion, enactment and adaptation of IoT systems in dynamic and uncertain
environments. To answer these research questions, we proposed a num-
ber of contributions by applying two main research methods, i.e., the
systematic mapping study and the design science research. More spe-
cifically, we systematically identified the characteristics of IoT systems
by analyzing and synthesizing existing taxonomies. Also, we proposed
novel approaches that exploit the concept of Emergent Configurations
(ECs) as a basis to engineer goal-driven IoT systems that can cope with
dynamic and uncertain environments.

4.2. Future Work

The contributions of this thesis can be extended in several directions
addressing the different interesting areas as described below.

4.2.1. Characteristics of IoT systems

Based on the results presented in Paper I, more work is needed to in-
vestigate important characteristics of IoT systems such as user, goal, and
deployment. In addition, efforts are needed to explore and analyze in

25
depth the quality aspects of IoT systems such as scalability, privacy and
security. In addition, the proposed processes for designing IoT systems
can be refined and evaluated in realistic case studies.

4.2.2. The Architectural Approaches

The proposed architectural approaches can be extended in several inter-
esting directions including: proposing (intelligent) processes and tech-
niques for effective and efficient user goal interpretation; and devising
mechanisms to handle situations where concurrent ECs compete on avail-
able resources or aim to achieve contradicting goals. Additionally, more
focus can be dedicated to the uncertainty aspect. Several challenges
related to the provision of assurances for Self-Adaptive Systems in un-
certain environments are presented in [65]. The approach proposed in
Paper IV can be further developed to enable the realization of ECs in
decentralized settings or to be integrated with the approaches proposed
in Paper V and VI. We plan to contribute to the research directions de-
scribed above, extend the prototypes developed in Papers V and VI, and
perform more extensive evaluations.

4.2.3. User Involvement

To realize the ECs vision, novel interaction mechanisms are needed to
enable users to express their goals, interact with the dynamically formed
IoT systems, and to provide their feedback. Different technologies sup-
port users to interact with the IoT environment such as software applic-
ations, augmented reality, and gestures. The diversity and the number
of connected things in surrounding environments put additional require-
ments on engineering usable interfaces for IoT systems. Therefore, mech-
anisms are needed to visualize those things, their capabilities, and to en-
able users to interact with them. In this context, several challenges have
been presented in the literature [66]. Furthermore, investigations can be
dedicated to devise models of human users behaviours that support IoT
systems in learning and predicting user goals and actions.

4.2.4. Security and Privacy

As objects are getting connected everywhere, the security of IoT systems
and the privacy of the people become major concerns [67]. ECs constitu-
ents can belong to different owners and can also be mobile. Therefore,
mechanisms are needed to ensure that users are aware of the data col-
lected about them, how it is used, and by whom. Furthermore, due to
the dynamicity of the IoT environment and the involvement of human
users, responsive and effective mechanisms are needed to secure commu-
nications among users and connected things. Several challenges, require-
ments, and issues related the security and privacy of IoT systems have

26
been proposed [68–70].

4.2.5. Deployment
ECs constituents are heterogeneous, sometimes mobile, and possibly
autonomous. Taking decisions about where to deploy the processing
and storage capabilities of ECs can be a complex task. Investigations
can be dedicated to conducting trade off analysis among existing IoT
deployment models to support IoT engineers to take design decisions
concerning the deployment of ECs in particular and IoT systems in gen-
eral [71].

27
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