Development of a context-aware internet of things framework for remote monitoring services

Asset management is concerned with the management practices necessary to maximise the value delivered by physical engineering assets. Internet of Things (IoT)-generated data are increasingly considered as an asset and the data asset value needs to be maximised too. However, asset-generated data in practice are often collected in non-actionable form. Moreover, IoT data create challenges for data management and processing. One way to handle challenges is to introduce context information management, wherein data and service delivery are determined through resolving the context of a service or data request. This research was aimed at developing a context awareness framework and implementing it in an architecture integrating IoT with cloud computing for industrial monitoring services. The overall aim was achieved through a methodological investigation consisting of four phases: establish the research baseline, define experimentation materials and methods, framework design and development, as well as case study validation and expert judgment. The framework comprises three layers: the edge, context information management, and application. Moreover, a maintenance context ontology for the framework has developed focused on modelling failure analysis of mechanical components, so as to drive monitoring services adaptation. The developed context-awareness architecture is expressed business, usage, functional and implementation viewpoints to frame concerns of relevant stakeholders. The developed framework was validated through a case study and expert judgement that provided supporting evidence for its validity and applicability in industrial contexts. The outcomes of the work can be used in other industrially-relevant application scenarios to drive maintenance service adaptation. Context adaptive services can help manufacturing companies in better managing the value of their assets, while ensuring that they continue to function properly over their lifecycle.Manufacturin

Context ontology development for connected maintenance services

The opportunity to shift from corrective and preventive to data-driven Predictive Maintenance has received a significant boost with the deeper penetration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in industrial environments. Processing IoT generated data nonetheless creates challenges for data management and actionable data processing. One way to handle such complexity is to introduce context information modelling and management, wherein data and service delivery are determined upon resolving the apparent context of a service or data request. In this paper, context information management is considered on the basis of a valid knowledge construct for reliability-oriented maintenance management. The aim is to produce a viable semantic organization of data for maintenance services. It is applied on an industrial case linked to maintenance of a distributed fleet of connected production grade industrial printers. The complexity of translating the data generated by such production assets to actionable information is significant, as the status of a single asset is characterised by several hundreds of failure modes and a multitude of event codes. To assess the viability of the ontology for the targeted application, a qualitative usability evaluation study of the ontology is performed

Ontology-based context modeling in physical asset integrity management

Asset management is concerned with the management practices, technologies and tools necessary to maximize the value delivered by physical engineering assets. IoT-generated data are increasingly considered as an asset and the data asset value needs to be maximized too. However, asset-generated data in practice are often collected in non-actionable form. Collected data may comprise a wide number of parameters, over long periods of time and be of significant scale. Yet they may fail to represent the range of possible scenarios of asset operation or the causal relationships between the monitored parameters, and so the size of the data collection, while adding to the complexity of the problem, does not necessarily allow direct data asset value exploitation. One way to handle data complexity is to introduce context information modeling and management, wherein data and service delivery are determined upon resolving the apparent context of a service or data request. The aim of the present paper is, therefore, 2-fold: to analyse current approaches to addressing IoT context information management, mapping how context-aware computing addresses key challenges and supports the delivery of monitoring solutions; and to develop a maintenance context ontology focused on failure analysis of mechanical components so as to drive monitoring services adaptation. The approach is demonstrated by applying the ontology on an industrially relevant physical gearbox test rig, designed to model complex misalignment cases met in manufacturing and aerospace applications

Ontology – based context resolution in internet of things enabled diagnostics

Internet of things (IoT)-generated data from industrial systems are often collected in non-actionable form, thus not directly aiding maintenance actions. Context information management is often seen as an enabler for interoperability and context-based service adaptation, acting as a mechanism for linking data with knowledge to adaptive data and services. Ontology-based approaches for semantic maintenance have been proposed in the past as a data and service mediation mechanism and are adopted here as the starting point employed to develop a context resolution service for industrial diagnostics. The underlying ontology of the context resolution mechanism is relevant to failure analysis of mechanical components. The terminology and relationship between concepts are structured on the basis of relevant standards with a reliability-oriented knowledge grounding. A reasoning mechanism is employed to deliver context resolution and the derived context can add a metadata layer on data or events generated by automated and human-driven means. The approach is applied on a gearbox test rig appropriate for emulating complex misalignment cases met in many manufacturing and aerospace application