ModeLLer – Enabling end-users to model systems: a case study in digital agriculture

Digital technologies show promising potential in the development of sustainable agriculture. For example, the combination of cloud and edge paradigms, 5G, and the Internet of Things (IoT) allows the development of sophisticated applications — e.g., for food traceability, pest detection, and automatic irrigation — with the possibility to also exploit Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered techniques. At the same time, digitalisation in agriculture is a socio-technical process that involves several classes of stakeholders with diverse backgrounds and skills, e.g., in farming or technology. Model-driven approaches leveraging diagrammatic notations can support information exchange between different domains. In fact, the development of models can be a co-design practice involving end-users throughout all phases of creation because of their expressive power. However, current modelling platforms are typically oriented toward engineers, and there is a lack of tools accessible to end-users for designing and modelling systems. In this position paper, we present ModeLLer, a prototype of a web environment for modelling systems based on an intuitive visual language that can be exported into standard code. The aim is to increasingly involve users in modelling their digital ecosystems as a task for developing digital applications.