Resource-constrained reasoning using a reasoner composition approach

To increase the interoperability and accessibility of data in sensor-rich systems, there has been a recent proliferation of the use of Semantic Web technologies in sensor-rich systems. Quite a range of such applications have emerged, such as hazard monitoring and rescue, context-aware computing, environmental monitoring, field studies, internet of things, and so on. These systems often assume a centralized paradigm for data processing, which does not always hold in reality especially when the systems are deployed in a hostile environment. At runtime, the infrastructure of systems deployed in such an environment is also prone to interference or damage, causing part of the infrastructure to have limited network connection or even to be detached from the rest. A solution to such a problem would be to push the intelligence, such as semantic reasoning, down to the device layer. A key enabler for such a solution is to run semantic reasoning on resource-constrained devices. This paper shows how reasoner composition (i.e. to automatically adjust a reasoning approach to preserve only a "well-suited" amount of reasoning for a given ontology) can achieve resource-efficient semantic reasoning. Two novel reasoner composition algorithms are introduced and implemented. Evaluation indicates that the reasoner composition algorithms greatly reduce the resources required for OWL reasoning, potentially facilitating greater semantic reasoning on sensor devices.