The Emerging Internet of Things Marketplace From an Industrial Perspective: A Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a dynamic global information network consisting of internet-connected objects, such as Radio-frequency identification (RFIDs), sensors, actuators, as well as other instruments and smart appliances that are becoming an integral component of the future internet. Over the last decade, we have seen a large number of the IoT solutions developed by start-ups, small and medium enterprises, large corporations, academic research institutes (such as universities), and private and public research organisations making their way into the market. In this paper, we survey over one hundred IoT smart solutions in the marketplace and examine them closely in order to identify the technologies used, functionalities, and applications. More importantly, we identify the trends, opportunities and open challenges in the industry-based the IoT solutions. Based on the application domain, we classify and discuss these solutions under five different categories: smart wearable, smart home, smart, city, smart environment, and smart enterprise. This survey is intended to serve as a guideline and conceptual framework for future research in the IoT and to motivate and inspire further developments. It also provides a systematic exploration of existing research and suggests a number of potentially significant research directions.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing 201

Big Data and the Internet of Things

Advances in sensing and computing capabilities are making it possible to embed increasing computing power in small devices. This has enabled the sensing devices not just to passively capture data at very high resolution but also to take sophisticated actions in response. Combined with advances in communication, this is resulting in an ecosystem of highly interconnected devices referred to as the Internet of Things - IoT. In conjunction, the advances in machine learning have allowed building models on this ever increasing amounts of data. Consequently, devices all the way from heavy assets such as aircraft engines to wearables such as health monitors can all now not only generate massive amounts of data but can draw back on aggregate analytics to "improve" their performance over time. Big data analytics has been identified as a key enabler for the IoT. In this chapter, we discuss various avenues of the IoT where big data analytics either is already making a significant impact or is on the cusp of doing so. We also discuss social implications and areas of concern.Comment: 33 pages. draft of upcoming book chapter in Japkowicz and Stefanowski (eds.) Big Data Analysis: New algorithms for a new society, Springer Series on Studies in Big Data, to appea

Circular economy design visioning: exploring industrial and urban symbiosis in South African cities.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Cities of tomorrow will be at the coalface of the complex challenges posed by climate change, e.g. resource scarcity. Climate change adaptation strategies will include circular economy (CE) practices (e.g. industrial and urban symbiosis) to increase the rate of recycling technical nutrients, in turn improving the resource efficiency of cities. The study investigates industrial and urban symbiosis in South Africa. In doing so, exploring technology enabled (i.e. cyber-physical-social ecosystems) CE solutions to designing out waste in South African cities. One of the key contributions of the research is the comprehensive synthesis and testing of an iterative problem structuring, theory building and design visioning (problem-theory-design) continuum to inform CE experimentation. A mixed methods design visioning approach is developed through an experiential and iterative design practice nested in a network of interdisciplinary theoretical constructs: 1) philosophical construct – Ecological Literacy (systems thinking), 2) techno-economic construct – Third Industrial Revolution (internet-of-things enabled general purpose technology platform), and Circular Economy (industrial and urban symbiosis), and 3) design construct – properties of Ecodesign derived from the dynamic renewable design of natural ecosystems. The research argues that to construct a meaningful CE transition experiment, a logical starting point is to distil key findings from a theoretically embedded case study to inform the design of a virtual experiment and simulation sketch. Through an embedded multiple case study approach the research investigates complex resource recovery dynamics in two key waste economy sub-sectors; industrial waste management and urban informal recycling sectors in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The case studies provide an integrated method (i.e. synthesising quantitative and qualitative knowledge) for holistic and high-resolution problem structuring. From a systems thinking perspective, key leverage points (i.e. data, information sharing and infrastructure) are identified for potential policy and technology intervention. Learnings from the case studies inform policy recommendations and CE innovation. The findings from the industrial symbiosis (IS) case study illustrate that firms and supply chain networks recognise the environmental importance of improving industrial waste management practices, however they are locked-in to end-of-pipe solutions. Firms highlighted regulation, price sensitivity, customer pressure and top management as key drivers of pro-environmental behaviour change (e.g. waste beneficiation). The findings highlight the unrealised IS potential in the South vi Durban Basin. In addition, revealing significant barriers to IS, i.e. lack of information sharing between firms and a weak regulatory environment. To increase the detection, matching and emergence of IS relationships will command the dynamic co-production of codified resource flow data; herein a big data analytics approach can be employed to construct open source platforms for interfirm information (e.g. residual resource flows) sharing and knowledge production – an industrial commons internet. The urban symbiosis case study explores the informal recycling sector in KZN analysing the instrumental role of waste pickers as primary looping agents in recovering recyclable materials from post-consumer waste and increasing the supply of recyclable materials (e.g. cardboard, paper, plastic and metal) in the secondary resources economy. Waste pickers are an important link in recycling value chains; sorting, gathering and manually transporting recyclable materials to buy-back-centres and informal collection pick up points. The case study investigates how their efficiency can be improved to stimulate greater positive environmental impacts, create decent employment opportunities, and reduce waste management costs for municipalities. The findings from the case study on waste pickers are extrapolated in a CE design visioning exercise. From a systems level perspective, the research culminates in the sketch of a virtual circular city experiment; a cyber-physical social ecosystem (CPSE) designed to increase recycling rates in cities by addressing the infrastructural needs of waste pickers. The hardware, software and social ecosystem is built out of an internet-of-things (IoT) platform. Firstly, the IoT enabled infrastructural system improves material recovery efficiencies (of post-consumer recyclable materials) by increasing connectivity between waste pickers and waste collectors. Increased connectivity allows for looping and aggregating material stock and flow data. Secondly, the integrated hardware and software infrastructure provides an automated, digitised and decentralised buy-back-transfer service – delivered through connected and solar-powered collection nodes strategically distributed throughout the city in a mesh network configuration. Thirdly, the digital platform aggregates big data and employs advanced analytics to generate actionable residual resource intelligence, consequently enabling evidence-based decision making by key stakeholders, e.g. government agencies, industry associations, recyclers and material reprocessors. To further the research agenda, the next step is structuring a real-world transition experiment based on the virtual circular city design experiment, defined as, the internet-of-waste pickers (IoWP)

Sanitation in the Circular Economy: Transformation to a Commercially Valuable, Self-sustaining, Biological System

In 2016 the Toilet Board Coalition ran a Feasibility Study to explore the potential role of Sanitation in the Circular Economy. The following questions were at the centre of our inquiry:- Are there products or materials of value being upcycled from toilet resources?- Are there scalable business models to deliver sustainable supply of these products to the market?- Is there commercial interest and demand from large industrial operations to become buyers into the system? This paper presents the findings of our study in the form of a thought piece on the topic of sanitation in the Circular Economy. Our intent is to present a number of business opportunity spaces, where we believe that value has been left on the table and customer needs unmet, which we recommend are to be explored further in the decade ahead.

Internet of Things. Information Processing in an Increasingly Connected World

This open access book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First IFIP International Cross-Domain Conference on Internet of Things, IFIPIoT 2018, held at the 24th IFIP World Computer Congress, WCC 2018, in Poznan, Poland, in September 2018. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 24 submissions. Also included in this volume are 4 WCC 2018 plenary contributions, an invited talk and a position paper from the IFIP domain committee on IoT. The papers cover a wide range of topics from a technology to a business perspective and include among others hardware, software and management aspects, process innovation, privacy, power consumption, architecture, applications

iSensA - A System for Collecting and Integrating Sensor Data

The idea of monitoring several types of parameters in various environments has been motivating significant research works in Internet of Things (IoT). This paper presents the design and construction of iSensA, a system for integrating and collecting information from sensors. The solution implements a multi-sensor monitoring system and then expands the monitoring concept to an IoT solution, by employing multi-network access, Web services, database and web and mobile applications for user interaction. iSensA system is highly configurable, enabling several monitoring solutions with different types of sensors. Experiments have been performed on real application scenarios to validate and evaluate our proposition.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Sensing as a Service Model for Smart Cities Supported by Internet of Things

The world population is growing at a rapid pace. Towns and cities are accommodating half of the world's population thereby creating tremendous pressure on every aspect of urban living. Cities are known to have large concentration of resources and facilities. Such environments attract people from rural areas. However, unprecedented attraction has now become an overwhelming issue for city governance and politics. The enormous pressure towards efficient city management has triggered various Smart City initiatives by both government and private sector businesses to invest in ICT to find sustainable solutions to the growing issues. The Internet of Things (IoT) has also gained significant attention over the past decade. IoT envisions to connect billions of sensors to the Internet and expects to use them for efficient and effective resource management in Smart Cities. Today infrastructure, platforms, and software applications are offered as services using cloud technologies. In this paper, we explore the concept of sensing as a service and how it fits with the Internet of Things. Our objective is to investigate the concept of sensing as a service model in technological, economical, and social perspectives and identify the major open challenges and issues.Comment: Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies 2014 (Accepted for Publication