This paper presents the design and development of an innovative multiagent system based on virtual organizations. The multiagent system manages information from wireless sensor networks for knowledge discovery and decision making in rural environments. The multiagent system has been built over the cloud computing paradigm to provide better flexibility and higher scalability for handling both small‐ and large‐scale projects. The development of wireless sensor network technology has allowed for its extension and application to the rural environment, where the lives of the people interacting with the environment can be improved. The use of “smart” technologies can also improve the efficiency and effectiveness of rural systems. The proposed multiagent system allows us to analyse data collected by sensors for decision making in activities carried out in a rural setting, thus, guaranteeing the best performance in the ecosystem. Since water is a scarce natural resource that should not be wasted, a case study was conducted in an agricultural environment to test the proposed system’s performance in optimizing the irrigation system in corn crops. The architecture collects information about the terrain and the climatic conditions through a wireless sensor network deployed in the crops. This way, the architecture can learn about the needs of the crop and make efficient irrigation decisions. The obtained results are very promising when compared to a traditional automatic irrigation system.

Internet of Things (IoT) platforms have a great number of vulnerabilities which cyber-attackers can exploit. A possible solution largely contemplated in the state of the art is to make use of blockchain technology in any IoT system to enhance the security of the platform while improving other of its aspects. Although there are valuable benefits of the use of IoT platforms based on blockchain technology, it is worth studying the different alternatives between blockchain technologies, because all of them have their own limitations that are not suitable for every use case scenario. In this work, we listed a number of flaws that blockchain technology has in this respect. We have identified that, most of the flaws can be overcome by adapting the variants of this technology to the specific needs of the IoT platform. Every IoT system based on blockchain technology, should perform a systematic analysis of their needs, identifying what are the blockchain features sought for that scenario, to choose the solution that best meets the needs among the different blockchain technology alternatives.