IoT-based Systems Actuation Conflicts Management Towards DevOps: A Systematic Mapping Study

The Internet of Things (IoT) has long been understood as an infrastructure layer allowing to gather environmental data through sensors. However, it also provides means to physically interact with our living environments through actuators. To the extent that actuation effects are not without risks on safety and trustworthiness, providing the IoT infrastructure layer with merely sensors access control mechanisms is no longer sufficient. It is also required to prevent conflicting (and possibly unsafe) actuation effects to occur in the physical environment and deploy means to resolve them. In this paper, we consider actuation conflicts management as part of the DevOps approach, which aims to harmonize tools and objectives of actors involved in IoT-based systems life cycle from their design to their deployment. In this context, a systematic mapping study (SMS) is conducted to better understand the actuation conflicts management approaches and to what extent they could be integrated into the DevOps life cycle.