Quality of Information and Access Cost of IoT Resources in BPMN Processes

Abstract

From an Internet of Things aware business processes perspective, quality of information of physical resources as well as access cost information provide important criteria to differentiate resource providers and to choose the one that meets process requirements. Despite business process languages, such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN2.0) do not foresee quality of information aspects, recent works extend the BPMN2.0 to include them. This way, the definition of process models can include quality requirements and process execution can be adapted considering these criteria. In this paper we take a step forward by bringing access cost information (e.g. energy consumption) to the business process level. Quality of information cannot be assessed alone due to its interdependency with access cost (e.g. increasing sensor sampling rate will improve not only information quality but also energy consumption). Therefore, quality of information and access cost can be used in process definitions, as well as to optimize and adapt process execution. Additionally, changing quality and cost requirements can also influence physical resources behavior at runtime as, for instance, in dealing with unexpected exceptions. Hence, processes can control and make tradeoffs regarding quality of information and access cost.