Towards the Internet of Behaviors in airports with a fog-to-cloud approach

Recent advances in Internet of Things (IoT) and the rising of the Internet of Behavior (IoB) have made it possible to develop real-time improved traveler assistance tools for mobile phones, assisted by cloud-based machine learning, and using fog computing in between IoT and the Cloud. Within the Horizon2020-funded mF2C project an Android app has been developed exploiting the proximity marketing concept and covers the essential path through the airport onto the flight, from the least busy security queue through to the time to walk to gate, gate changes, and other obstacles. It gives chance to travelers to discover the facilities of the airport, aided by a recommender system using machine learning, that can make recommendations and offer voucher according with the traveler's preferences or on similarities to other travelers. The system provides obvious benefits to the airport planners, not only people tracking in the shops area, but also aggregated and anonymized view, like heat maps that can highlight bottlenecks in the infrastructure, or suggest situations that require intervention, such as emergencies. With the emerging of the COVID pandemic the tool could be adapted to help in the social distancing to guarantee safety. The use of the fog-to-cloud platform and the fulfilling of all centricity and privacy requirements of the IoB give evidence of the impact of the solution in a smart city environment.