An Architecture for IoT Analytics and (Real-time) Alerting

Internet of Things (IoT) applications poses many challenges in different research fields like electronics, telecommunication, computer science, statistics, etc. In this article, we focus our attention on the so-called “IoT Analytics” that can be defined as the set of approaches and tools used to extract value from IoT data.

Of course, the meaning of the word “value” may vary, depending on the specific application domain (e.g., optimization of a production line to save time and money, increasing revenues thanks to new services, new business models, etc.). After describing one of the use cases that helped us to define the architecture depicted in Figure 1, we will discuss some of the technologies that can be used to actually implement a platform for IoT Analytics whose many advantages are:

• increase data retention, thanks to the usage of scalable systems like Hadoop, Cassandra, etc. In such a way the whole set of data coming from physical devices is available to data scientists and data analysts;
• generate detailed reports about equipment usage, customer habits, etc. starting from collected data;
• carry out in-depth analyses on gathered data to predict future failures, utilization peaks, etc.;
• apply the advanced models defined by data scientists in conjunction with streaming technologies like Apache Spark Streaming, Apache Flink, etc. This feature enables the implementation of (near-real time) altering systems.

Use case: Industry 4.0

We propose a general architecture for IoT Analytics that can be used both in consumer as well as industrial scenarios but, in this section, we describe how it can be used in the Industry 4.0 domain (a.k.a., Industrial IoT - IIoT) to detect events of interest, anomalies, etc. on a production line. In order to do so, the following approaches can be used:

• apply static rules defined by looking at what happened in the past. In this case, analyzing data about how the production line performed in the past can help human operators to define static rules (e.g., “if machine B stops for more than 3 minutes and machine C for more than 5 minutes, then machine A is probably broken”) that are able to detect the events of interest. This approach is effective in many cases, but it is not optimal because it is able to describe only the simple “if-then” logic. Moreover it is not adaptive in case of changes;
• Apply Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) techniques to identify the events of interest. The usage of advanced analytics techniques allows the identification of more complex logics that goes beyond the simple “if-then” approach. Furthermore, AI/ML enables the identification of patterns that were unknown to the operator and can self-adapt as conditions changes. AI/ML models are generated off-line (i.e., on the historical data gathered in the past) but, once defined, they can be applied in near-real time to respond quickly. In particular, we deployed our models in a centralized system where the application of AI/ML models to incoming data flows takes place in near real-time thanks to the presence of a streaming framework (i.e., Apache Spark Streaming). A generic discussion about where such models should be deployed (i.e., Edge vs. Fog vs. Cloud Computing) is out of the scope of this article, as we focus on the solution that we deployed in real world scenarios.

Architecture and Technologies

In this section, we describe the architecture that we defined for IoT use cases and some of the technologies that we used in real world deployments.

Figure 1: The architecture for IoT Analytics.

Michele Stecca received his master’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of Padova and his Ph.D. from the University of Genova. He worked as a researcher at the ICSI in Berkeley, CA before joining Horsa Group as IoT & Big Data Consultant. He has participated in important projects co-financed by the EU in these areas for Telefonica, Telecom Italia, FIAT, Atos and Siemens (in the IoT field he has been involved in the EU FP7 collaborative project iCore www.iot-icore.eu). Dr. Stecca has authored numerous articles for international industry publications, presented at many international events and has served as an Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Genova and Padova. For more information see: https://sites.google.com/site/steccami/

Sergio Fraccon is an MBA IT Leader with 20 years experience in National and Multinational companies on both side demand and offering, focused into the business process realignment to the company strategy, using IT as enabler. Thanks to these experiences he has developed international skill and experience of management of international projects and team in different country and different industry (from Manufacturing and logistics, to Fashion). He is today Director of Business Analytics Data Strategy Unit at Horsa Group, taking care of Data Intensive environment that has analytics pervasive not only as Decision Support System but already integrated in the daily operational process. His main goal is to spread technologies like Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in practice and solutions for all kinds of company size, making it accessible not only to the big organization but also to the mid-sized company.

Comments