A Scalable Agent-Based Smart Environment for Edge-Based Urban IoT Systems

New Internet of Things (IoT) applications are encouraging Smart City and Smart Environments initiatives all over the world, by leveraging big data and ubiquitous connectivity. This new technology enables systems to monitor, manage and control devices, and to create new knowledge and actionable information, by the real-time analysis of data streams. In order to develop applications in the depicted scenario, the adoption of new paradigms is required. This paper suggests combining the emergent concept of edge/fog computing with the agent metaphor, so as to enable designing systems based on the decentralization of control functions over distributed autonomous and cooperative entities, which run at the edge of the network. Moreover, we suggest the adoption of the iSapiens platform as a reference, as it was designed specifically for the mentioned purposes. Multi-agent applications running on top of iSapiens can create smart services using adaptive and decentralized algorithms which exploit the principles of cognitive IoT.