IoT-centric Edge Computing for Context-aware Smart Environments

The ever increasing diffusion of the Internet of Things is currently promoting the development of pervasive Smart Environments. The effectiveness of such systems is highly related to the capability of dealing with possible changes in users' habits, adapting the system to people needs and envisaging people behaviors. For this purposes, it becomes important to have methodological approaches and technologies favoring the development of cognitive systems aware of what is happening inside them. In this paper a methodological approach for the development of context-aware IoT-based Smart Environments is proposed. Such approach relies on a three-layered architecture offering some well suited abstractions taking also into account that computational resources in a system can be located either at the edge of the network or in the Cloud. A case study is proposed which concerns the development of a Smart Office devoted to forecast workers' presence and to adapt the office environmental conditions to them.