Internet of Things Architecture

Internet of Things – Architecture © - 68 -

3.4 Information model

The IoT Information Model defines the structure (e.g. relations, attributes,
services) of all the information for Virtual Entities on a conceptual level, see also
Sections 3.3.2.2, 3.3.3.1 and 3.3.3.3. The term information is used along to the
definitions of the DIKW hierarchy, see [Rowley 2007], where data is defined
as pure values without relevant or useable context. Information adds the right
context to data and offers answers to typical questions like who, what, where
and when.

The description of the representation of the information (e.g. binary, XML, RDF
etc.) and concrete implementations are not part of the IoT Information Model.

Attribute

attributeName

attributeType

MetaData

metadataName

metadataType

metadataValue

VirtualEntity

entityType

identifier

Service

Description

Association

serviceType

Value

Device

Description

Resource

Description

ValueContainer

0..*

0..*

1

0..1

1..*

0..*

0..*

metadataMetadata

Figure 11 : IoT Information Model.

The IoT Information Model details the modelling of a Virtual Entity. The Virtual
Entity (VirtualEntity) has attributes with a name (resp. Attribute and
AttributeName) and a type (AttributeType) and one or more values