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5
thE intErnEt of things
for ConnECtEd and
CognitivE CitiEs
Abstract
We have been discussing the significant contributions of several
proven and promising technologies in ensuring the desired suc-
cess of smart cities. However, the selection of technologies for
establishing intelligent cities has to be made after a careful con-
sideration of multiple factors. Several technologies come and go
without contributing anything substantial toward meeting the
originally visualized and articulated needs and hence the choice
plays a vital role in shaping and strengthening our cities for
future challenges and changes. Another noteworthy point is that
instead of going for a single technology, it is prudent and per-
tinent to embrace a cluster of technologies to reach the desired
state comfortably. Technology clusters are becoming prominent
these days. Especially considering the growing complexity of
smart cities (being touted as the system of systems), the need for
a collection of technologies is being felt everywhere. Not only
the technology-cluster choice but also its appropriate usage is
pivotal in achieving the target in a risk-free and relaxed manner.
us any smart city strategy has to clearly illuminate resilient
technologies and methodologies together toward accelerating
and attaining the varied goals of smart cities across this vast and
vibrant planet. In this chapter, we discuss the immense poten-
tial and promise of the newly coined paradigm of the Internet
of ings (IoT) in creating next-generation cities that sharply
elevate the features, facilities, and functionalities of our crum-
bling and clogging cities.
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5.1 Introduction
e future Internet will comprise not only millions of computing
machines, personal/professional electronic devices, and distributed
software services but also billions of diminutive sensors, actuators,
robots, and so on and finally trillions of sentient or digitized objects.
It is overwhelmingly accepted that the fast-emerging and evolv-
ing Internet of ings (IoT) idea is definitely a strategic and highly
impactful vision to be decisively realized and passionately sustained
with the smart adoption and adaptation of state-of-the-art technolo-
gies, composite and cognitive processes, optimal and versatile infra-
structures, integrated platforms, enabling tools, pioneering patterns,
and future-directed architectures. Industry professionals and academi-
cians are constantly looking out for appropriate use, business, and tech-
nical cases to confidently and cogently proclaim the transformational
value and power of the IoT concept to the larger audience of worldwide
executives, end-users, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts, and engineers.
A growing array of open and industry-strength standards are being
formulated, framed, and polished by domain experts, industry con-
sortiums, and standard setting bodies to make the IoT concept more
visible, viable, and valuable. National governments across the globe
are setting up special groups to come out with pragmatic policies and
procedures to take forward the solemn ideals of IoT and realize the
strategic significance of the envisioned IoT in conceiving and concret-
izing a bevy of people-centric services to ensure and enhance people’s
comfort, choice, care, and convenience. Research students, schol-
ars, and scientists are working collaboratively toward identifying the
implementation challenges and overcoming them via different ways
and means, especially utilizing standard technological solutions.
In this chapter, we aim to give a broader perspective of what exactly
is the idea of IoT, as well as trends setting the stimulating stage for
IoT realization and demonstration; why it has to be pursued with
seriousness and sincerity; what the prickling and prime concerns are;
changes and challenges associated with it; where it will be applied
extensively and expediently; its near- and long-term future; the key
benefits, nightmares, risks; and so on. e dominant theme of this
chapter is revealing the usefulness of IoT for shaking up the world’s
cities to be smart and sustainable.
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THE IOT FOR CONNECTED AND COGNITIVE CITIES
5.2 Envisioning the IoT Era
As a result of digitization, distribution, and decentralization, there
is a renewed focus on realizing a legion of digitized objects, which
are termed and touted as sentient materials/smart objects that are
being derived from ordinary and everyday objects. Common and
casual things are being empowered or modernized to possess cer-
tain IT capabilities such as computing, networking, communication,
sensing, actuation, and display. Not only computers and electronic
devices but also everyday articles and artifacts in our midst are joining
in mainstream computing. In short, minimization, integration, fed-
eration, consolidation, virtualization, automation, and orchestration
technologies are fast maturing toward producing disappearing, dis-
posable, affordable, connected, dependable, people-centric, context-
aware devices. ese are service-enabled to form high-quality device
services. e Web journey as a whole has been very admirable.
e initial Web (Web 1.0) was just for reading (Simple Web), fol-
lowed by Web 2.0 for not only reading but also writing (Social Web).
In addition to its reading and writing functions, Web 3.0 (Semantic
Web) links linking multiple Web content, applications, services, and
data. e future is definitely Web 4.0 for the envisioned era of knowl-
edge (Smart Web). us every important thing in our environments is
Web enabled to interact with cloud-based data, applications, services,
content, and so on. Further, everything is connected with entities in
the vicinity. Cloud infrastructures are being continuously enhanced
to be a centralized and core platform for the Smart Web. e future
Internet is therefore the IoT.
IoT is all about enabling extreme connectivity among various
objects across the industry domains. In this book, we focus on the
following themes and titles: the key drivers for the IoT vision, the
enabling technologies, infrastructures and platforms, prominent solu-
tions, facilitating frameworks and tools, enabling architectures, busi-
ness and use cases, concerns and challenges, and so on.
As mentioned previously, a string of promising and positive trends
in the IT space have laid a strong and sustainable foundation for the
out-of-the-box visualization of the future prospects of the raging IoT
idea. In a nutshell, the prevailing trend is all about empowering all
kinds of common and casual articles and artifacts in our everyday
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environments to be IT enabled, networking them in an ad hoc man-
ner using a variety of communication technologies on an as-needed
basis to leverage their distinct capabilities individually as well as col-
lectively to decisively and concisely understand the various needs of
people in that particular environment, and deciding, disseminating,
and delivering the identified services and information unobtrusively
to the right people at the right time and at the right place.
5.3 Emerging IoT Trends
5.3.1 Deeper Digitization toward Smart Objects
Every tangible thing is getting digitized with the aim of attaching
the much-needed sensing and communication capabilities so that
each and every article in our midst is capable of participating in and
contributing to mainstream computing. ere are multiple ways for
empowering ordinary objects to become useful, usable, and extraordi-
nary artifacts. Minuscule tags, stickers, chips, sensors, motes, smart
dust, actuators, light-emitting diode (LED) displays, and so on are the
most common elements and entities for the speedy, simple, and copi-
ous realization of smart objects. As a prime example, we are increas-
ingly and intimately connected to the outside world for outward as
well as inward communication through slim, sleek, handy, and trendy
smart phones. e ubiquity and utility of multifaceted phones augur
positively for the days ahead. In the same way, each and every com-
monly found item in our environments becomes connected and smart
in its operations, outlooks, and outputs. e smartness derived via
such internal as well as external enhancements enables them to be
elegantly and eminently constructive, cognitive, and contributive.
e maturity and stability of mesh network topology and technolo-
gies ensure these empowered and emboldened materials find and bind
with other similarly enabled articles (local as well as remote) to lever-
age their unique functionalities and features to fulfill the varying needs
(information, transaction, and physical) of people. Such a longstanding
empowerment goes a long way in unearthing a host of nimbler busi-
ness and IT models and services, fresh possibilities and opportunities
for businesses and people, scores of optimization methods for swiftly
heading toward the vision of people IT, solid and sharp growth in user
experience of diverse business and IT offerings, and so on.
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THE IOT FOR CONNECTED AND COGNITIVE CITIES
John Hagel and John Seely Brown write that big and marvel-
ous shifts are happening in how things get made from scratch and
howhitherto untapped value is being created and aggregated. And
digital technologies aren’t just impacting production and manufac-
turing; they’re changing the physical world altogether. Our physical
world is now technology enabled by the digitization of everything
from books to movies to tools such as the flashlights, cameras, calcu-
lators, day planners, music players, and bus schedules that now reside
on our handhelds and smart phones. e Internet communication
infrastructure and digital technologies are the most powerful and
path-breaking combination to bring forth big transformations in our
physical world.
Owing to a growing litany of praiseworthy improvisations, we have
achieved much in the virtual/cyber world. Now is the time to embark
on the delayed modernization of the physical world. e principal
transition for empowering our physical environments to be smart is
to make ordinary things smart. e idea is to meticulously enable
dumb things in our daily environments to join in and contribute to
mainstream computing.
Already with the maturity of cyber physical system (CPS) technol-
ogies, the effective utilization of physical assets and articles is going
up steadily. e efficiency of physical machines may be achieved in a
number of ways such as improving the “up-time” for a costly machine
that has become self-correcting or by renting out excess capacity to
external parties to generate new revenue streams.
Digital technology can locate a car and deliver it to us when
we need a ride. It matches an individual with a spare bed who
is looking for income with an individual in need of a place to
stay. It lets us find and modify a design rather than create one
and then lets us use a manufacturing-grade tool to execute the
design, with limited skill or invested time. e pavement we
drive on becomes smarter with sensors that communicate traffic
information; heavy earth-moving equipment becomes smarter
when sensors monitor tire wear to reduce the risk of down-time.
Smart materials can collect and conduct information for the
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