A Novel Framework and Tool for Multi-Purpose Modeling of Physical Infrastructures
Yawar Rasheed, Farooque Azam, Muhammad Waseem Anwar · 2020
Human Society has evolved unprecedentedly, from mankind living in caves to the most sophisticated and complex physical infrastructures of contemporary technologically advanced era. Model Driven Architecture (MDA), as against code centric approaches, present an abstract view enabling fair visualization of complex systems through abstraction and modelling. In the context of MDA, physical infrastructures need to be modeled and analyzed for model based development of number of interdependent technical systems like Security, Communication, Internet of Things (IOTs), home automation etc. This leads to a dire need of a multipurpose framework, editor and tool for modeling and visualization of physical infrastructures in such a manner that the developed models may be extended, automated and used for variety of domains and in developing various systems. In this article, we propose a framework that not only allows modelling/ planning of complex physical infrastructures but can also be extended for the model based development of wide-ranging systems. In the proposed framework, Physical Infrastructure Multipurpose Meta-Model (PIMM) has been introduced for modeling of both simple as well as complex infrastructures. The feasibility of proposed framework is demonstrated through real world case study. Subsequently, an Eclipse based plugin (PIMM editor) has been developed that allows modeling of physical infrastructures with the help of tree editor. Moreover, for graphical modeling and visualization, Physical Infrastructure Modelling Tool (PIMT) with drag / drop functionality is developed in Sirius and distributed via same plugin. The results prove that the proposed framework supports adequate concepts for the modeling and visualization of physical infrastructures and highly effective for model based systems development related to physical infrastructures.