Data-centric UML profile for agroecology applications: Agricultural autonomous robots monitoring case study

Abstract

The conceptual design of information systems is mandatory in several application domains. The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies pushes conceptual design tools and methodologies to consider the complexity of IoT data, architectures, and communication networks. In agroecology applications, the usage of IoT is quite promising, but it raises several methodological and technical issues. These issues are related to the complexity and heterogeneity of data (social, economic, environmental, and agricultural) needed by agroecology practices. Motivated by the lack of a conceptual model for IoT data, in this work, we present a UML profile taking into account different kinds of data (e.g., sensors, stream, or transactional) and non-functional Requirements. We show how the UML profile integrates with classical UML diagrams to support the design of complex systems. Moreover, We prove the feasibility of our conceptual framework through a theoretical quality assessment and its implementation in the agroecology case study concerning the monitoring of autonomous agricultural robots.