Stefan Avesand

Chapter 15 – Participatory Sensing

Participatory Sensing (PS), also known as Urban, Citizen, or People-Centric Sensing, is a form of citizen engagement for the purpose of capturing the surrounding environment in a city as a first step for contributing to the solution of specific issues such as public health and well-being. Either citizens on their own initiative, or citizens organized through a specific campaign initiated by city authorities, collect sounds, pictures, videos, and other sensor data using their mobile phones as the main tool to monitor the environment and transfer the collected data to a storage space. The collected data are analyzed by citizens or city authorities, conclusions and action plans are drawn, and actions are taken. Although this form of engagement was typical a few years ago, nowadays the PS concept has been enriched to include active citizen journalists or passive social media sensing in the sense that citizen engagement to social media such as Twitter can also be used as additional input to PS campaigns.

M2M to IoT – The Vision

The transition from M2M towards an IoT is mainly characterized by moving away from closed silo deployments to openness, multipurpose technologies, and innovation. This transition is triggered by a set of megatrends and global game changers that present new challenges and opportunities. The transition is characterized by the following: moving away from isolated solutions to an open environment; the use of IP and web technologies; the Internet; multimodal sensing and actuation; and knowledge-creation technologies. Together, these forces create capabilities and drivers that form the basis of the evolution from M2M to IoT.

Chapter 14 – Smart Cities

Digital technologies are often suggested as the panacea through the development of “smart cities”–cities that in some form integrate a digital infrastructure with the physical city in order to reduce environmental impact while improving quality of life and economic prospects. While these sorts of concepts have been around for several decades, the recent advent of smartphones and cheaper sensor technology means that digitally enabled, or “smart,” cities are fast becoming a real-world possibility.

Architecture Reference Model

An IoT reference model serves as a description of main IoT system entities and their relationships. The most complete IoT reference model is the model from the IoT-A research project funded by the European Commission on which this chapter is based on. The model contains a set of sub-models such as the IoT domain, communication, information, functional, and security models. The domain model describes the IoT world as a collection of Physical Entities represented in the digital world as Virtual Entities. The Users (humans or applications) are interested in monitoring and interacting with the Physical Entities through Services. Services are the interfaces of the Resources deployed on the network or on Sensor/Actuator/Tag devices deployed for the purposes of monitoring and interacting with the Physical Entities. Apart from the domain model, the communication, information, functional, and security models are also described.

M2M and IoT Technology Fundamentals

In this chapter, we present an overview of technology fundamentals – or building blocks—that form the basis of M2M and IoT. Here, we cover devices and gateways, local and wide area networking, data management, business processes, cloud and analytics technologies. Devices form the basis of the Internet of Things and provide functions for sensing and actuating in the physical world. Local and wide area networking provides these with the necessary infrastructure to connect to services, using Wireless Sensor Networks to form multi-hop architectures with gateway sensor nodes that provides WAN connectivity towards the backhaul network. Data management handles essential functions such as data acquisition, validation and storage, and makes sure that critical information is available at the right point in a timely manner, and in the right form. Business processes refers to the series of steps to perform management, operational and supporting activities for achieving specific mission objectives. XaaS is used as a general term to describe the functions provided as-a-service by cloud infrastructures, such as computational capacity, software, networking and storage. Analytics are used to extract additional value from data generated by devices and enable new opportunities by using data from devices for multiple purposes, most of which will not be imagined at the time of deployment. Knowledge Management Frameworks provides functions that provide the ability to understand data-generated information and use existing experience within a certain decision-making context. Local and wide area networking provides the necessary infrastructure to connect devices to services, using Wireless Sensor Networks to form multi-hop architectures with gateway sensor nodes that provides WAN connectivity towards the backhaul network. Data management provides essential functions such as acquisition, validation and storage of data and makes sure that critical information is available at the right point in a timely manner, and in the right form. Business processes refers to the series of steps to perform management, operational and supporting activities for achieving specific mission objectives. XaaS is used as a general term to describe the functions provided as-a-service by cloud infrastructures, such as computational capacity, software, networking and storage. Analytics are used to extract additional value from data generated by devices and enable new opportunities by using data from devices for multiple purposes, most of which will not be imagined at the time of deployment. Knowledge Management Frameworks provides functions that provide the ability to understand data-generated information and use existing experience within a certain decision-making context.

Chapter 10 – Asset Management

With the increasing and vast number of machines pertaining to every aspect of our business and personal space, the need for effective management of these, as well as the processes they control, becomes evident. Machines need to be able to be monitored and controlled, and provide the necessary information for the real-world processes they are attached to. We take a closer look at the expected benefits, and the role of remote management and e-maintenance in the M2M era. Additionally, we take a closer look at how machines can empower a hazardous goods management scenario, including collaboration among them and with enterprise systems.

Introduction and Book Structure

This chapter provides an introduction to the book and overview of chapters, including the technical and market drivers from M2M towards IoT.

Real-World Design Constraints

This chapter outlines the technical design constraints to illustrate the questions that need to be taken into account when developing and implementing M2M and IoT solutions in the real-world.

M2M to IoT – A Market Perspective

This chapter describes the drivers for M2M towards IoT from a market perspective. As a result of open, web-based technologies, IoT solutions will drive the creation of Information Marketplaces that allow the exchange of data between different economic entities within an information value chain.

M2M to IoT – An Architectural Overview

The overall design objective of an IoT architecture shall be to target a horizontal system of real-world services that are open, service-oriented, secure, and offer trust. Design principles include the reuse of deployed IoT resources across application domains, and the design for a set of support services that provide open service-oriented capabilities and can be used for application development and execution, something already evident in the ETSI M2M standardization. A further design principle is to allow for actors taking on different roles of providing and using services across different business domains and value chains. An architecture must consider different functional components ranging from devices, networks and communications, data and knowledge management, applications, and exposure and integration into different business systems, all while considering security and management. The role of standardization is spanning across industrial domains, ICT and non-ICT, as well as addressing both technology and system perspectives.