A Digital Object-based Infrastructure for Smart Governance of Heterogeneous Internet of Things Systems

Several challenges arises in any Smart City ecosystem, such as the governance (management) of heterogeneous IoT (Internet of Things) systems deployed and managed by different entities. Usually, IoT-based smart city applications operate in isolation, leading to a fragmented IoT landscape that hinders the managements of the IoT systems in an integrated way. Thus, it is required the involvement of city authorities to structure and organize city-wide interventions among the different IoT systems/applications; but also it is needed the infrastructure and technology that allow these city-wide interventions between the different levels of government (from upper tier authorities to down tier) for the proper management of heterogeneous IoT systems deployed within a Smart City by public as well as private entities. In this paper we propose an infrastructure for the Smart Governance of heterogeneous IoT solutions within Smart Cities, which provides useful features such as the spread of power, security constraints and scalability, among others. The infrastructure is described through 1) a new architectural model, as an adapted version of the basic architectural model, 2) the use of Digital Objects as crucial artifacts to represent, store and interact with physical and digital elements and 3) the use of open-source technology to implements the architectural model and supports the management of the Digital Objects.