# A Model Based Framework for IoT-Aware Business Process Management
## 2 Related Work  
Great effort has been made over the past years in dealing with the modeling and execution of IoT-aware BPs in the business process management (BPM) field. As this topic has been faced from various perspectives, the literature review hereby proposed specifically focuses on the semantic description of IoT systems, the specification of middlewares and architectures for supporting the actual implementation of IoT systems, and finally, the identification of approaches for enacting the IoT-ware BP management. As regards the effort spent in investigating IoT systems from a conceptual point of view, interesting contributions can be found in [10; 11; 12; 13]. In [10], a novel semantic model, namely _Internet of Things in Business Processes Ontology (IoT-BPO)_ is introduced. Such a model is designed as an extension of IoT-Lite, a semantic model based on the IoT-A reference model [10] that formalizes the main concepts of the IoT domain. The Global Sensor Network (GSN), a scalable infrastructure for integrating heterogeneous sensor networks, is described in [11]. GSN introduces a set of abstractions to represent sensors and IoT devices, which are specified as XML-based descriptors. In [12], the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) introduces an architecture that, similarly to the well-known Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, specifies the different layers that an IoT System should be structured on: sensing, access, network, middleware and application. The Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) Ontology [13] is one of the most prominent contributions dealing with the specification of a conceptual picture that describes entities, actions and relations involved in the IoT domain. In this respect, this paper introduces an IoT metamodel, which has been mostly inspired by the SSN ontology. As discussed in Section 4, the metamodel is used to derive a SysML profile and a BPMN extension that enable the specification of the _structural_ and _operational_ views of an IoT system, respectively. Among the various contributions that specifically address the heterogeneity of sensor networks from an architectural point of view, relevant examples are [14; 15]. The Hydra middleware was introduced in [14] as an outcome of an EU project that aimed at building a service-oriented middleware for networked embedded systems. Open Sensor Hub (OSH) [15] is an open source framework which aims at easing the development of smart and scalable sensors networks interconnected by a web platform. The OSH implementation is based on the Software Web Enablement Framework [16], an initiative of the Open Geospatial Consortium to support the implementation of IoT systems. Specifically, SWE includes various standards dealing with the definition of sensor data models, encoding and interface specifications, for enacting the exchange of information among devices in a sensors network. As discussed in Section 6, this paper introduces a prototype of the architecture for supporting the simulation based analysis of IoT-aware BPs. Such a prototype makes use of OSH as a middleware for enabling the seamless interaction of the BPM layer with the underlying IoT layer. The deployment of IoT-based solutions in business domains requires addressing issues that go beyond the technological complexity. The network of IoT devices should be appropriately integrated with the BPM infrastructure to enable the business layer able to exploit real-time and historical data collected by the sensors. In this regard, significant contributions can be found in [17; 18; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23]. As stated in [17], the integration of the IoT technology in the BP domain constitutes an opportunity for business managers to enhance the business performance and increase business competitiveness. As an IoT-aware BP addresses concepts from both the BP and the IoT domains, this paper proposes a review of relevant approaches that deal with the integration of IoT technology and BPs. According to the proposed analysis, a valuable summary of BP-related concepts is provided by OMG's BPMN specification.