Future Generation Computer Systems 94 (2019) 250–271 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Future Generation Computer Systems journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs A systematic method for building Internet of Agents applications based on the Linked Open Data approach Pablo Pico-Valencia a,∗ , Juan A. Holgado-Terriza b , Patricia Paderewski b a Programming and Development of Software, Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, Esmeraldas, Ecuador b Software Engineering Department, University of Granada, Granada, Spain highlights • A novel systematic method to build Internet of Agents ecosystems is proposed. • Our method allows building smart, proactive, collaborative and adaptable agents. • Our reactive agent can model smart behaviors at microscopic and macroscopic levels. • Semantic descriptors contribute to perform reasoning for agent dynamic discovery. • Our methods describe agent ecosystems using contracts represented with linked data. article info Article history: Received 19 September 2017 Received in revised form 3 June 2018 Accepted 26 November 2018 Available online 30 November 2018 Keywords: Internet of Things Linked Open Data Semantic agent contract Software agile methodology Agent-based method abstract The Internet of Agents (IoA) is an emerging paradigm whose objective is to mitigate the deficiencies of devices of Internet of Things (IoT) in terms of reasoning and social capabilities, in order to improve proactivity, intelligence and interoperability. This paper presents the guidelines to develop IoA appli- cations based on described semantic agents following the Linked Open Data (LOD) approach and the specifications of the IoA-OWL ontology—a specialized full ontology that formally defines the main aspects related to a novel approach such as IoA. These guidelines have been drawn up via a systematic method created from the best practices of Agile Software Development Methodologies. This method creates smart, autonomous, collaborative IoA applications based on novel Linked Open Agents (LOAs) that are driven by Linked-Agent Contracts (LACs) and Workflows for Agent Control (WACs). From a practical perspective, our method separates the modeling of components using two levels, microscopic (at agent level) and macroscopic (at agent society level) facilitated the planning, configuring and implementation of each agent in the IoA ecosystem. Moreover, the method facilitates the agent creation automation process, reducing the time required for its development and simplifying the design complexity. These achievements were demonstrated through the modeling of an Ambient Intelligence (AmI) scenario on an office composed by a set of collaborative agents in order to provide smart comfort. © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The Internet of Things (IoT) is a booming paradigm that arose at end of the nineties in order to control the physical world by the use of a global network of smart objects which are intercon- nected through the Internet [1–3]. With the aim of covering a wide spectrum of real applications, to date a variety of smart objects have proliferated based on different standards. However, when IoT networks are integrated, some operational and communica- tion conflicts emerge. In addition, the limitations of computation resources of some objects obstruct the dynamic and intelligent ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ppico@pucese.edu.ec (P. Pico-Valencia), jholgado@ugr.es (J.A. Holgado-Terriza), patricia@ugr.es (P. Paderewski). management of an IoT network [4]. In consequence, researchers have recently been interested in models and applications based on the integration of agent technologies and IoT infrastructures [5– 11]. As a consequence of the integration process among software agents with the IoT technologies, a new approach related to the Future Internet, called Internet of Agents (IoA), has emerged [12]. This approach is basically oriented towards adding a component of intelligence, autonomy, collaboration and easily adaptation to objects connected in IoT networks [12,13]. Thus, these objects be- come ‘‘smart’’ and can operate coherently in complex and dynamic scenarios as demanded by the IoT [14,15]. An important contribution to this line of research is undoubt- edly the Agent of Thing concept proposed by Mzahm et al. [15], who suggest that each object connected to an IoT network has https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2018.11.042 0167-739X/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.