Identifier Management in Semantic Interoperability Solutions for IoT

There are multiple ways, in which large-scale IoT ecosystems can materialize. First, they can be instantiated as a result of a specific project. For instance, when a city authority decides to deploy an IoT-based smart city solution. Second, they can be result of "organic growth". For instance, a port authority deploys smart lighting system, then it implements smart gateways, and in the next stage it decides to combine these two, and a smart container positioning system, into a complete port IoT ecosystem. In the context of interoperability, one of the interesting open issues is: how to manage identities of artifacts and entities that constitute the IoT ecosystem. Identity management seems to be relatively easy in the first case - identifier management can be a part of the IoT deployment. However, as soon as multiple artifacts are to be combined, the problem of identification is no longer easy to solve. This is particularly the case when (i) multiple artifacts originate from different vendors (that use their own identity management approaches), and (ii) when the interoperability solution is based on semantic technologies. In this context, the aim of this contribution is to introduce an approach to identifier management, as well as potential ID interoperability architectures that have been developed within the scope of the INTER-IoT project.