Architecture framework of IoT-based food and farm systems: A multiple case study

Cor Verdouw, Harald Sundmaeker, Bedir Tekinerdogan, Davide Conzon, Teodoro Montanaro
2019 Computers and Electronics in Agriculture  
A B S T R A C T The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to be a real game changer in food and farming. However, an important challenge for large-scale uptake of IoT is to deal with the huge heterogeneity of this domain. This paper develops and applies an architecture framework for modelling IoT-based systems in the agriculture and food domain. The framework comprises a coherent set of architectural viewpoints and a guideline to use these viewpoints to model architectures of individual
more » ... systems. The framework is validated in a multiple case study of the European IoF2020 project, including different agricultural sub sectors, conventional and organic farming, early adopters and early majority farmers, and different supply chain roles. The framework provides a valuable help to model, in a timely, punctual and coherent way, the architecture of IoT-based systems of this diverse set of use cases. Moreover, it serves as a common language for aligning system architectures and enabling reuse of architectural knowledge among multiple autonomous IoT-based systems in agriculture and food. However, the application of IoT in agriculture is challenging, especially because of a high uncertainty of business processes (Sundmaeker et al., 2016; Verdouw et al., 2016a) . Agri-food products are living objects and farming is depending on natural conditions, such https://doi.
doi:10.1016/j.compag.2019.104939 fatcat:dvt74p43dzbgla3x3th6ebalwe