Towards a Microservice-Based Middleware for a Multi-hazard Early Warning System

Abstract

Environmental hazards—like water and air pollution, extreme weather, or chemical exposures—can affect human health in a number of ways, and it is a persistent apprehension in communities surrounded by mining operations. The application of modern technologies in the environmental monitoring of these Human-made hazards is critical, because while not immediately health-threatening may turn out detrimental with unwanted negative effects. Enabling technologies needed to realize this concept is multifaceted and most especially involves deploying interconnected Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, existing legacy systems, enterprise networks, multi-layered software architecture (middleware), and event-processing engines, amongst others. Currently, the integration of several early warning systems has inherent challenges, mostly due to the heterogeneity of components. This paper proposes transversal microservice-based middleware aiming at increasing data integration, interoperability, scalability, high availability, and reusability of adopted systems using a containers orchestration framework for a multi-hazard early warning system. Devised within the scope of the ICMHEWS project, the proposed platform aims at improving known challenges.