Enabling reactive cities with the iFLUX middleware

This paper presents the iFLUX middleware, designed to provide a lightweight integration solution for Smart City applications. Based on three core abstractions, namely event sources, action targets and rules, iFLUX makes it very easy to expose sensors and actuators through REST APIs so that they can be integrated in application-level workflows. Sensors and actuators can be smart objects integrating hardware and software, but can also be pure software services. In the paper, we introduce the iFLUX programming model and describe how it has been implemented in a middleware platform. We also report on how the platform has been used and evaluated in various contexts. While iFLUX has been initially designed in the context of Smart City applications, it is generic and applicable to other domains where hardware and software components are connected through the Web.