A meta-model framework for the design and analysis of smart cyber-physical environments

A smart environment is a physical environment enriched with sensing, actuation, communication and computation capabilities aiming at acquiring and exploiting knowledge about the environment so as to adapt it to inhabitants' preferences and requirements. In this domain, there is the need of tools supporting the design and analysis of applications. In this paper, a meta-model framework for smart environments is proposed. This framework allows to model applications by exploiting concepts closer to the smart environment domain. The proposed meta-model framework approaches the modelling from two different points of view, namely the functional and data perspectives. The functional perspective focuses on the services provided by the environment whereas the data perspective is used to characterize data sources of the environment. The effectiveness of the proposal is shown by applying it to the modelling of a smart environment scenario well known in literature.