On Modeling Data for IoT Agroecology Applications by means of a UML Profile

The adoption and deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in agroecology raise a challenging research agenda. Agroecology IoT projects feature complex requirements involving: heterogeneous hardware and heterogeneous software systems; data collection architectures, stream and queuing systems as well as data management systems for real-time and batch processing with different data models. On top of that, agroecology IoT applications are characterized by complex spatio-temporal data and low quality communication networks. Developing conceptual models of such complex systems is mandatory for successful projects, but it is much more challenging than for traditional systems. To the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive (end-to-end) data modeling method applicable to such systems has not been provided yet. It motivated us to propose and assess a new UML profile for data modeling across an IoT ecosystem for agroecology applications. The modeling approach allows to represent the following components of a system: data producers, data integration and storage as well as data analytics. The profile has been validated in a real project on monitoring autonomous agricultural robots.