Conceptual modeling of complex events of the Internet of Things

RFID technology and the Internet of Things provide a flood of information which can be regarded as a stream of simple events, e.g. when material passes an RFID gate. Yet the large amount of events that emerge in daily business cannot be handled manually. That's why Complex Event Processing (CEP) engines have been developed to analyze large streams of simple events and aggregate them to business relevant complex events. To describe the aggregation rules, these engines use technical and formal languages which are difficult to handle for business experts. Hence, business experts are often not properly involved into the formulation of complex events. Therefore this paper proposes a conceptual modeling language that allows business experts to formulate complex events according to business needs. The proposed modeling language is demonstrated in a quality management scenario in the automotive manufacturing industry and is defined with OMG's MOF standard.