On dependability of smart applications within edge-centric and fog computing paradigms

Advances of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology resulted in appearance of digital connection and computation boxes, personal mobile devices, and ubiquitous wireless networks. The dependability in such IoT environments suffers due to taking the computation control away from remote servers to local surroundings (Internet edge) and intermediary devices (on network data transfer paths to the servers). In this paper, we consider the two emerging IoT-enabled paradigms: Edge-centric Computing and Fog Computing. We elaborate their potential for development of smart applications with focus on the dependability and using a mobile assistant for e-tourism as a reference application. We analyze possible concept elements for smart application development and provide recommendations in respect to the dependability.