Modelling with NGSI-LD: the VALLPASS project case study

The smart cities paradigm covers multiple domains which span from citizens’ accessibility and mobility to general infrastructures and services. Hence, smart cities can be seen as an excellent showcase of heterogeneity, namely at the data level. For this reason, they are a perfect candidate for linked data and semantic web concept applications. This powerful combination leads to interoperability at the data level which is one of the ultimate goals of the Internet of Things (IoT). In this reference frame, NGSI-LD is an open framework for context information processing consisting of both a semantic information model and a RESTful Application Programming Interface (API). This paper proposes a methodology for creating semantic data models in the context of IoT, namely to represent and describe data associated with digital twins. The methodology is presented in a practical way, through the process of creating an NGSI-LD semantic data model for the VALLPASS project, inserted in the traffic domain, which is one of the most popular in smart cities.