iQAS: An integration platform for QoI assessment as a service for smart cities

While reducing costs and improving sustainability, a common goal for Smart Cities is to become more “liveable” for their citizens. By taking advantage of new information sources offered by the Internet of Things (IoT), cities can rely on sensing platforms to improve their service offer. These sensing platforms, however, raise new research challenges, in particular regarding Quality of Information (QoI). To cope with this issue, common platforms generally provide quality-oriented internal mechanisms. Nevertheless, the configuration of such platforms is complex, especially for Smart City stakeholders that may have various skill levels and different areas of expertise. As a result, QoI assessment is often delegated to end applications where developers have to implement their own adaptation mechanisms. This paper proposes and describes iQAS, an integration platform for QoI Assessment as a Service for Smart Cities. iQAS is autonomic, extensible and configurable, allowing Smart City stakeholders to collaboratively assess and improve (when possible) QoI in real-time. While the platform development is at its early stages, we illustrate within a concrete case study the need for QoI assessment and the benefits to implement adaptation mechanisms.