Context-as-a-service platform: exchange and share context in an IoT ecosystem

While the Internet of Things (IoT) is growing at a staggering pace, the demand for context-driven intelligence will be a fundamental factor for IoT sustainability, growth, interoperability and acceptance. In this paper, we propose an operational platform called Context-as-a-Service (CoaaS) which enables smart things and IoT silos to discover, validate and share relevant and dependable context. The CoaaS platform consists of context query engine, context reasoning engine, and context storage management system for scalable and performance-oriented context management. We demonstrate features and functionality of CoaaS with a smart city use case 'Smart parking and charging for electrical vehicles' partnering with a large vehicle manufacturing company.