Modeling industrial assets

You can create virtual representations of your industrial operation with Amazon IoT SiteWise assets. An asset represents a device, a piece of equipment, or a process that uploads one or more data streams to the Amazon Web Services Cloud. For example, an asset device can be a wind turbine that sends air temperature, propeller rotation speed, and power output time-series measurements to asset properties in Amazon IoT SiteWise.

Each data stream corresponds to unique property alias. For example, the alias /company/windfarm/3/turbine/7/temperature uniquely identifies the temperature data stream coming from turbine #7 in wind farm #3. You can configure Amazon IoT SiteWise assets to transform incoming measurement data using mathematical expressions, such as to convert temperature data from Celsius to Fahrenheit.

An asset can also represent a logical grouping of devices, such as an entire wind farm. You can associate assets with other assets to create asset hierarchies that represent complex industrial operations. Assets can access the data within their associated child assets. By doing so, you can use Amazon IoT SiteWise expressions to calculate aggregate metrics, such as the net power output of a wind farm.

You must create every asset from an asset model. Asset models are declarative structures that standardize the format of your assets. Asset models enforce consistent information across multiple assets of the same type so that you can process data in assets that represent groups of devices. In the preceding diagram, you use the same asset model for all three turbines because all turbines share a common set of properties.

You can also create component models. A component model is a special type of asset model that you can include in asset models or other component models. You can use component models to define common reusable sub-assemblies, such as sensors, motors, and so forth, that you share across multiple asset models.

After you define your asset models, you can create your industrial assets. To create an asset, select an ACTIVE asset model to create an asset from that model. Then, you can populate asset-specific information such as data stream aliases and attributes. In the preceding diagram, you create three turbine assets from one asset model and then associate data stream aliases like /company/windfarm/3/turbine/7/temperature for each turbine.

You can also update and delete existing assets, asset models, and component models. When you update an asset model, every asset based on that asset model reflects any changes that you make to the underlying model. When you update a component model, this applies to every asset based on every asset model that references the component model.

Your asset models may be very complex, for example when modeling a complicated piece of equipment that has many subcomponents. To help keep such asset models organized and maintainable, you can use custom composite models to group related properties or to re-use shared components. For more information, see Custom composite models (Components).