Monitoraggio strutturale e ambientale con il Web delle cose

Structural health and Environmental monitoring are recently benefiting from the advancement in the digital industry. Thanks to the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, monitoring systems are increasing their functionalities and reducing development costs. However, they are affected by a strong fragmentation in the solution proposed and technologies employed. This stale the overall benefits of the adoption of IoT frameworks or IoT devices since it limits the reusability and portability of the chosen platform. As in other IoT contexts, also the structural health and environmental monitoring domain is suffering from the negative effects of, what is called, an interoperability problem. Recently the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is joining the race in the definition of a standard for IoT unifying different solutions below a single paradigm. This new shift in the industry is called Web of Things or in short WoT. Together with other W3C technologies of the Semantic Web, the Web of Things unifies different protocols and data models thanks to a descriptive machine-understandable document called the Thing Description. This work wants to explore how this new paradigm can improve the quality of structural health and environmental monitoring applications. The goal is to provide a monitoring infrastructure solely based on WoT and Semantic technologies. The architecture is later tested and applied on two concrete use-cases taken from the industrial structural monitoring and the smart farming domains. Finally, this thesis proposes a layered structure for organizing the knowledge design of the two applications, and it provides evaluation comments on the results obtained.Le pratiche di monitoraggio strutturale e dell'ambiente stanno recemente beneficiando degli avanzamenti nella industria digitale. Grazie alla nascita di tecnologie basate sull'Internet of Things (IoT), i sistemi di monitoraggio hanno migliorato le loro funzionalità base e ridotto i costi di svilippo. Nonostante ciò, queste soluzioni hardware e software sono affette da una forte fragmentazione sia riguardo ai tipi dispositivo sia alle tecnologie usate. Questa fenomeno fa si che i benifici ottenuti utilizzando tecnologie IoT si riducano poichè spesso tali soluzioni mancano di portabilità e adattabilità. Come in altri contesti IoT, anche nel monitoraggio strutturale e ambintale possiamo incorre nel problema tipico della mancanza di interoperabilità tra diverse piattaforme. Recemenete il World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) ha iniziato a lavorare ad uno standard per unificare le maggiori tecnologie IoT sotto un unico paradigma. Questo nuova corrente è chiamata il Web of Things o in breve WoT. Assieme ad altre tecnologie del W3C come il Semantic Web, il Web of Things astrae differenti protocolli e middleware grazie ad un documento descritivo interpretabili dalle macchine chiamato Thing Description. Questo documento vuole esplorare come questo nuovo paradigma influenzi il mondo del monitoraggio strutturale e ambientale. In particolare vuole verificare se l'utilizzo di tecnologie puramente basate su WoT e Semantic Web possa migliorare la portabilità di un applicazione di monitoraggio. In concreto propone un architetuttura software poi implementata in due casi d'uso reali presi dal mondo dello smart farming e monitoraggio di strutture industriali. Infine, la tesi, propone un organizzazione a layer del modello dei dati e una valutazione dei risultati ottenuti

A Sensor Network with Embedded Data Processing and Data-to-Cloud Capabilities for Vibration-Based Real-Time SHM

This work describes a network of low power/low-cost microelectromechanical- (MEMS-) based three-axial acceleration sensors with local data processing and data-to-cloud capabilities. In particular, the developed sensor nodes are capable to acquire acceleration time series and extract their frequency spectrum peaks, which are autonomously sent through an ad hoc developed gateway device to an online database using a dedicated transfer protocol. The developed network minimizes the power consumption to monitor remotely and in real time the acceleration spectra peaks at each sensor node. An experimental setup in which a network of 5 sensor nodes is used to monitor a simply supported steel beam in free vibration conditions is considered to test the performance of the implemented circuitry. The total weight and energy consumption of the entire network are, respectively, less than 50 g and 300 mW in continuous monitoring conditions. Results show a very good agreement between the measured natural vibration frequencies of the beam and the theoretical values estimated according to the classical closed formula. As such, the proposed monitoring network can be considered ideal for the SHM of civil structures like long-span bridges

High-Frequency Patterns in the Abundance of Benthic Species near a Cold-Seep – An Internet Operated Vehicle Application

Three benthic megafaunal species (i.e. sablefish Anoplopoma fimbria; pacific hagfish Eptatretus stoutii and a group of juvenile crabs) were tested for diel behavioral patterns at the methane hydrates site of Barkley Canyon (890 m depth), off Vancouver Island (BC, Canada). Fluctuations of animal counts in linear video-transects conducted with the Internet Operated Deep-Sea Crawler ªWallyº in June, July and December of 2013, were used as proxy of population activity rhythms. Count time series and environmental parameters were analyzed under the hypothesis that the environmental conditioning of activity rhythms depends on the life habits of particular species (i.e. movement type and trophic level). Nonlinear least squares modeling of biological time series revealed significant diel periods for sablefish in summer and for hagfish and crabs in December. Combined cross-correlation and redundancy (RDA) analyses showed strong relationships among environmental fluctuations and detected megafauna. In particular, sablefish presence during summer months was related to flow magnitude, while the activity of pacific hagfish and juvenile crabs in December correlated with change in chemical parameters (i.e. chlorophyll and oxygen concentrations, respectively). Waveform analyses of animal counts and environmental variables confirmed the phase delay during the 24 h cycle. The timing of detection of sablefish occurred under low flow velocities, a possible behavioral adaptation to the general hypoxic conditions. The proposed effect of chlorophyll concentrations on hagfish counts highlights the potential role of phytodetritus as an alternative food source for this opportunistic feeder. The juvenile crabs seemed to display a cryptic behavior, possibly to avoid predation, though this was suppressed when oxygen levels were at a minimum. Our results highlight the potential advantages such mobile observation platforms offer in multiparametric deep-sea monitoring in terms of both spatial and temporal resolution and add to the vastly understudied field of diel rhythms of deep-sea megafauna

From Heterogeneous Sensor Networks to Integrated Software Services: Design and Implementation of a Semantic Architecture for the Internet of Things at ARCES@UNIBO

The Internet of Things (IoTs) is growing fast both in terms of number of devices connected and of complexity of deployments and applications. Several research studies an- alyzing the economical impact of the IoT worldwide identify the interoperability as one of the main boosting factor for its growth, thanks to the possibility to unlock novel commercial opportunities derived from the integration of heterogeneous systems which are currently not interconnected. However, at present, interoperability constitutes a relevant practical issue on any IoT deployments that is composed of sensor platforms mapped on different wireless technologies, network protocols or data formats. The paper addresses such issue, and investigates how to achieve effective data interoperability and data reuse on complex IoT deployments, where multiple users/applications need to consume sensor data produced by heterogeneous sensor networks. We propose a generic three-tier IoT architecture, which decouples the sensor data producers from the sensor data consumers, thanks to the intermediation of a semantic broker which is in charge of translating the sensor data into a shared ontology, and of providing publish-subscribe facilities to the producers/consumers. Then, we describe the real-world implementation of such architecture devised at the Advanced Research Center on Electronic System (ARCES) of the University of Bologna. The actual system collects the data produced by three different sensor networks, integrates them through a SPARQL Event Processing Architecture (SEPA), and supports two front- end applications for the data access, i.e. a web dashboard and an Amazon Alexa voice service

Whole blood gene expression profiling in preclinical and clinical cattle infected with atypical bovine spongiform encephalopathy

Prion diseases, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathies (BSE), are transmissible neurodegenerative disorders affecting humans and a wide variety of mammals. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a prion disease in humans, has been linked to exposure to BSE prions. This classical BSE (cBSE) is now rapidly disappearing as a result of appropriate measures to control animal feeding. Besides cBSE, two atypical forms (named Hand L-type BSE) have recently been described in Europe, Japan, and North America. Here we describe the first wide-spectrum microarray analysis in whole blood of atypical BSEinfected cattle. Transcriptome changes in infected animals were analyzed prior to and after the onset of clinical signs. The microarray analysis revealed gene expression changes in blood prior to the appearance of the clinical signs and during the progression of the disease. A set of 32 differentially expressed genes was found to be in common between clinical and preclinical stages and showed a very similar expression pattern in the two phases. A 22-gene signature showed an oscillating pattern of expression, being differentially expressed in the preclinical stage and then going back to control levels in the symptomatic phase. One gene, SEL1L3, was downregulated during the progression of the disease. Most of the studies performed up to date utilized various tissues, which are not suitable for a rapid analysis of infected animals and patients. Our findings suggest the intriguing possibility to take advantage of whole blood RNA transcriptional profiling for the preclinical identification of prion infection. Further, this study highlighted several pathways, such as immune response and metabolism that may play an important role in peripheral prion pathogenesis. Finally, the gene expression changes identified in the present study may be further investigated as a fingerprint for monitoring the progression of disease and for developing targeted therapeutic interventions. \ua9 2016 Xerxa et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Soluzioni per conferire robustezza a un broker di informazioni semantiche per l'Internet of Things basato su OSGi

Negli ultimi 50 anni Internet è passata da una piccola rete di ricerca, formata da pochi nodi, ad un’infrastruttura globale capace di connettere più di un milione di utenti. La progressiva miniaturizzazione e la riduzione di costi di produzione dei dispositivi elettronici, permette, tuttora, l’estensione della rete a una nuova dimensione: gli oggetti intelligenti. In questi scenari dove le risorse di rete sono spesso proibitive o la mobilità dei nodi è una caratteristica comune, è necessario che sia garantita forte robustezza a transitori di connessione. Lo dimostra uno studio precedente riguardo ad un applicativo d'agricoltura di precisione denominato Agri-Eagle. In esso vengono confrontate due diverse implementazioni utilizzando il framework SMART M3 e MQTT. Il lavoro di tesi in esame ne estende le considerazioni ed esplora vari metodi per conferire robustezza ad applicazioni sviluppati su SMART-M3. Verrà studiata la funzionalità di Lastwill e Testament proprie di MQTT e se ne tenterà una trasposizione nel mondo semantico. Infine verrà modificato il meccanismo di sottoscrizione in modo da renderlo più robusto a cadute di connessione

SPARQL Update Processing: Extracting Inserted and Deleted Quads

This short paper presents a novel algorithm to extract the inserted and deleted quads from a SPARQL 1.1 Update operation. The aim is to enable smarter approaches in the subscriptions processing of the SPARQL Event Processing Architecture (SEPA). We expect that the proposed algorithm would increase the overall SEPA performance by filtering out not affected subscriptions and optimizing the processing of each single subscription

WoT Store: Enabling Things and Applications Discovery for the W3C Web of Things

The Web of Things (WoT) architecture recently proposed by the W3C working group constitutes a promising approach to handle interoperability issues among heterogeneous devices and platforms, by semantically describing interfaces and interaction patterns among the Things. One of the main advantage of the W3C architecture is the possibility to decouple the description of the Things' behavior from their implementation and communication strategies, hence greatly simplifying the deployment of novel applications and services on top of it. Starting from such state-of-art, and envisioning a Web of seamlessly interacting W3C Things, this paper focuses on the next steps, i.e.: how to effectively support the discovery of Things? and: how to ease the distribution of applications running on Things? We answer to both the questions above through the proposal of the WOT STORE, a novel software platform supporting the distribution, discovery and installation of applications for the W3C WoT. The WOT STORE allows users to perform semantic discovery of the available Things, to search for compatible applications available on the market, and to install them over the target devices, all within the same framework. We describe the platform architecture and its proof-of-concept implementation, providing two alternative interfaces to interact with our tool: a Web portal, and new modules developed for the popular Node,-RED platform. Finally, we discuss two realistic use-cases of the WOT STORE for industrial IoT and home automation systems, remarking theadvantages of our solution in terms of deployment costs and interoperability support