Author:
Henry Narits

Doctoral defence: Jakob Mass “Process management for Internet of mobile things”

On 9 December at 10:15 Jakob Mass will defend his doctoral thesis “Process management for Internet of mobile things” for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in Computer Science).

Supervisors:

Prof. Satish Narayana Srirama, University of Tartu
Dr. Chii Chang, Apromore (Australia)

Opponents:
Prof. Antonio Brogi, University of Pisa (Italy)
Assist. Prof. Andrea Marrella, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

Summary
The Internet of Things (IoT) enables solutions such as a smart city, where everyday objects connect with info systems and each other. One such example can be a road condition monitoring system. Video feeds could be collected from connected vehicles, such as buses, and then processed to detect potholes and snow buildup. Building such a solution conventionally involves establishing a complex centralized system. The centralised approach relies on a constant connection to all of the involved devices in order to make decisions, such as which vehicles to involve in the process.
Designing, automating, managing, and monitoring such processes can greatly be supported using the standards and software systems provided by the field of Business Process Management (BPM). However, BPM techniques are not directly applicable to new computing paradigms, such as Fog Computing and Edge Computing, on which the future of IoT relies. Here, a lot of decision-making and processing is moved from central datacenters to devices in the network edge, near the end-users and IoT sensors.
For example, video could be processed in mini datacenters deployed throughout the city, e.g., at bus stops. This kind of load distribution reduces the risk of a central datacenter getting overloaded from the ever-growing number of IoT devices.
This thesis studies how to reorganize the process execution into this decentralised fashion, where processes need to dynamically adapt to the volatile edge environment filled with moving devices. Namely, connectivity is intermittent, so decision-making and planning needs to involve factors such as movement trajectories of the mobile devices.
Based on established standards in the BPM community, we built a prototype for Android smartphones. We also showcase the simulation toolset called STEP-ONE, which allows researchers to conveniently simulate and analyze these issues in different realistic scenarios, such as those found in a smart city.

The defence can also be followed in Zoom (Meeting ID: 957 9165 9329, Passcode: ati).

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