Emergent Behavior and Uncertainty in IoT-Enhanced Business Processes: Challenges and Future Directions

Abstract

IoT-enhanced business processes are characterized by high complexity due to heterogeneous actors, varying levels of autonomy among participating systems, continuously evolving execution contexts spanning the digital and physical worlds, and continuous event streams. In such settings, process behavior partially emerges only at runtime through complex interactions involving humans, IoT devices, physical objects, software systems, agents, and services. This complexity introduces partial observability, uncertainty, and runtime dynamics that are difficult to anticipate and that challenge traditional business process management (BPM) assumptions and systems. We discuss these challenges from three perspectives, addressing 1) uncertainty representation, 2) operationalization of IoT-enhanced processes, and 3) runtime management of emergent behavior. Based on a motivating scenario and an analysis of the state of the art, we identify open research gaps and outline short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations to shape a research agenda on emergent behavior in IoT-enhanced business processes.