7.1 Introduction

“Standards are not only a technical question. They determine the technology that will implement the Information Society, and consequently the way in which industry, users, consumers, and administrations will benefit from it.” (EC, 1996). This quote conveys two important insights that are overlooked all too often. The first one is that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems simply would not work without underlying standards. The second one is that today's ICT standards are tomorrow's technology. That is, those who lead the standardization initiatives today are likely to be in the driving seat when it comes to the actual technology development and implementation.

Scores of standards are implemented in every ICT system, from the most complex international infrastructure down to the humble PC on the desk back home. There are standards for operating systems, programming languages, user interfaces, communication protocols, disk drives, cables and connectors, and so on. Biddle et al. (2010) found that at the very least 251 interoperability standards are implemented in a laptop computer; they reckon that the total number of standards relevant to such a device is much higher.

These days the economic importance of standards is no longer questioned. Swann (2010) provides a very thorough review of the relevant literature. The reported findings include, among many others, that standards contribute at least as much as patents to economic growth (DIN, 2000). Studies from different parts of the world show that the contribution of standards to the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) is about 0.9% in Germany, 0.8% in Australia, 0.3% in the United Kingdom, and 0.2% in Canada. In absolute terms, this means that the economic benefit of the current body of standards for, for example, Germany amounts to almost  €17 billion a year (Blind et al., 2011). In addition, numerous case studies exist that highlight the economic benefits of standards for both nation-states and firms¹.

Specifically, standards frequently (albeit not necessarily) have a positive impact on innovation. For example, Blind (2009) argues that there are several ways in which standards can promote innovation. This holds particularly for the ICT sector, where compatibility standards are the one major basis for innovations. Indeed, the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) platform standards, for example, have been the basis for the numerous mobile services we are offered today.

Finally, standards are also of considerable interest to policy makers. In Europe, for instance, harmonized standards contributed a great deal to the creation of the European single market—they help to remove technical barriers to trade and to enable people, services, goods, and capital to move more freely.

The above holds for standards in general and for ICT and the Internet of Things (IoT) in particular. However, the standardization of the IoT offers some additional challenges. By definition, the IoT is based on standard communication protocols to interconnect uniquely addressable objects. However, “object” is a very broad term; it may be a sensor or a mainframe computer. The most prominent characteristic of the majority of IoT nodes will be “power constrained.” The communication infrastructure needs to take this restriction into account through, for example, appropriate modifications of existing protocols and/or through dedicated new ones. In their current form, most standards are too complex for the constrained devices in the IoT. To make things worse, many of these devices run proprietary protocols, thus creating isolated data silos. This increased variety also implies that interoperability will be even harder to achieve than in other areas of the ICT sector. Indeed, Jari Arkko, the Chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), cannot think of a better example of where interoperability is important than the Internet of Things². Interoperability standards are a sine qua non for both the IoT and the various “smart” applications that will be based on it.

In addition, standardizing the IoT will frequently require multidisciplinary cooperation, at least between the following:

• Electrical Engineers, who build the—frequently power constrained—nodes and specify associated requirements on, for example, the operating system and the communication software and protocols.
• Computer Scientists/Telecommunication Engineers, who design, for instance, the communication protocols.
• Software Engineers, who develop, for example, the operating system and take care of its integration with the communication software.

This need for multidisciplinary cooperation holds even more for cyber-physical systems³ (CPSs) and, particularly, for the various IoT application areas (see, for example, Ho and O'Sullivan (2015) and Section 7.4).

This chapter looks at the development over the past 20 years of the standardization entities for the IoT and for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), Smart Manufacturing (SM), the Smart Grid (SG), and Smart Cities (SC) and at the links between them. In doing so, it aims at taking a glimpse into the future of standardization in these sectors, informed by developments of the past. This represents a first step toward an answer to the question: How should the standardization environment for (e)merging applications look like in the future? This, in turn, should help industry, policy makers, and Standards Setting Organizations⁴ (SSOs) to optimally position themselves when dedicated standardization activities for (e)merging applications will eventually truly get off the ground.

7.2 Current Status

A number of SSOs have become active in IoT standardization and have already developed a considerable number of standards. These organizations mostly develop what not just Sherif (2001) calls “anticipatory standards”; they are typically specified at the introduction of a technology and are crucial for interoperable communication systems. Anticipatory standards stand in contrast to “participatory” and “responsive” standards. The former proceed in parallel with implementations, thus enabling testing of the specifications prior to their adoption. The latter basically rubber-stamp existing successful specifications.

According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), there are currently (late 2016) over 900 IoT-related standards. Of those, around 140 come from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 200 from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and 300 from the joint committee for ICT standardization of the ISO and the International Electrotechnical Committee (IEC; ISO/IEC JTC1). Although most of these are rather more generic standards in the field of wireless communication systems that were not necessarily developed specifically for the IoT they may well be deployed by it as well.

Cybersecurity and privacy are other important fields of standards setting in which a vast array of SSOs are active (including ITU, ISO, IEC, CEN, ETSI, W3C, OASIS, and the IETF). Again, these standards are not necessarily unique to the IoT.

7.2.1 IoT Standardization

Specific IoT-related standards for the communication infrastructure have mostly been developed for the field of (power-)constrained devices. Relevant activities in this field are ongoing in, for example, oneM2M, where standards for a common M2M (Machine-to-Machine) Service Layer are being developed. Within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the “Smart M2M Communications” committee works on the interface between the service layer and the application layer. Other ETSI Technical Committees (TCs) as well as groups in IEEE, ITU, and several other SSOs work on wireless applications. Within the IETF, several Working Groups (WGs) focus on constrained devices.

The ITU has identified a “List of Internet of things (IoT) relevant organizations and forums.”⁵ Updating and adapting this list to include only organizations and entities that develop native IoT standards (as opposed to those that develop more generic standards that may also be deployed by the IoT) yields the list of SSOs shown in Table 7.1; without any claim for completeness.

CEN: European Committee for Standardization CEN provides a platform for the development of European Standards for all sectors excluding electrotechnology and telecommunications. TC 225/WG 6: Internet of Things—Identification, data capture, and edge technologies.

ETSI: European Telecommunications Standards Institute ETSI is a regional (European) telecommunication SDO. It contributes to M2M (Machine-to-Machine) standardization through a dedicated Technical Committee (TC). TC SmartM2M

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a professional association that is also active in standards setting. The two major IoT-related “projects” are P2413: Standard for an Architectural Framework for the Internet of Things P1451: Smart Transducer Interface Standards

IETF The IETF is the Internet's standardization body. It comprises a number of Working Groups (WGs). A WG covers a comparably narrow aspect and is dissolved once it has achieved its goal. 6LoWPAN: IPv6 over Low power WPAN – dissolved 6Lo: IPv6 over Networks of Resource-constrained Nodes CoRE: Constrained RESTful Environments ACE: Authentication and Authorization for Constrained Environments DICE: DTLS In Constrained Environments – dissolved

Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) The IIC aims to improve the integration of the physical and digital worlds. Strictly speaking, it is not an SSO; it defines common architectures to connect smart devices, machines, people, processes, and data. “Architecture” Task Group

ISO/IEC JTC1 JTC1 is ISOs and IEC's “ICT-arm.” It develops standards for the IoT primarily through two dedicated Working Groups. WG 7: Sensor Networks WG 10: Internet of Things Sub-Committee SC 41: Internet of Things and related technologies (to be established)

ITU-T The ITU-T, the ITU's standardization arm, is subdivided into a number of Study Groups (SGs), each of which deals with a number of “questions,” covering different technical aspects. SG 11: Protocols and test specifications Question 12/11: Internet of things test specifications Question 7/11: Signaling and control requirements and protocols for network attachment supporting multiscreen service, future networks, and M2M Question 3/11: Signaling requirements and protocol for emergency telecommunications SG 13: Future networks (and cloud). SG 16: Multimedia Question 27/16: Vehicle gateway platform for telecommunication/ITS services/applications. SG 20: IoT and its applications including smart cities and communities Internet of Things Global Standards Initiative (IoT-GSI) – completed Joint Coordination Activity on Internet of Things and Smart Cities & Communities (JJCA-IoT and SC&C)

oneM2M oneM2M is an alliance of eight regional telecommunication SDOs that develops standards for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication and for the IoT.

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Through its Domain Working Groups, the OGC develops interfaces that enable real-time integration of heterogeneous sensors into the IoT information infrastructure. Sensor Web Enablement DWG

TIA: Telecommunications Industry Association TIA is a regional (US) telecommunication SDO. It contributes to M2M standardization through a dedicated Engineering Committee. TR-50 M2M: Smart Device Communications

TSDSI: Telecommunications Standards Development Society TSDSI is a regional (Indian) telecommunication SDO. It contributes to M2M standardization through a dedicated Working Group. Working Group on M2M

TTA: Telecommunications Technology Association TTA is a regional (Korean) telecommunication SDO. It contributes to IoT standardization through a dedicated Special Technical Committee. IoT Special Technical Committee (STC1)

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium develops most of the standards related to the WWW. Its WoT interest group is a fairly new player. Ultimately, it aims to bridge incompatible IoT platforms through the Web. Web of Things Interest Group

The links that exist between these (and other) SSOs will be discussed in Section 7.3.

The number of entities that are devoted to the standardization of a particular technology may be seen as an indicator of the increasing perceived (market) relevance of this technology. For the IoT, this number has skyrocketed over the past 8 years (see Section 7.5). These entities focus primarily on the two upper layers depicted in Figure 7.1.

The different application areas will be discussed in Section 7.2.2. The IoT layer provides the application layer with IoT-specific functions (e.g., data management, security, privacy). The standardization focus here is still largely on the architectural level. Existing communication standards may be reused for the deployment in the network layer. IoT-specific efforts in this layer primarily address problems related to the power constrainedness of many IoT devices (e.g., sensors). Dedicated requirements will emerge in some application areas and will require new or adapted communication protocols ((Fettweis et al., 2014), think, for example, autonomous driving).

7.3 The Standardization Environment

Most industry sectors have a rather simple standardization environment. A number of National Standards Organizations (NSOs) contribute to the work of ISO and IEC at the international level. An additional regional level in between has been established in Europe through the European Standards Organizations (ESOs).

The situation is different in the ICT sector (specifically in telecommunications). This sector is characterized by a number of national/regional bodies and, particularly, by a huge number (more than 200) of private standards setting consortia. The proliferation of these consortia began in the late 1980s and was primarily triggered by the fast-paced development of ICT technologies and a widely perceived slowness (Lehr, 1992) and nonresponsiveness to users' needs on the side of the SDOs (Cargill, 1995).

The number of consortia and the complex links that exist between them and the SDOs yield an almost impenetrable web of SSOs. Figure 7.2 gives a rough idea of this complexity.

The figure shows the major SSOs that are active in the standardization of the IoT and/or its applications and some of the links that exist between them. Generally speaking, such a link represents some level of formal cooperation. Such cooperation may take the form of exchanging information about planned new work items, the joint development of common standards, or anything in between. In the absence of a central coordinating entity, these links currently represent the most important (distributed) coordination mechanism in standards setting (see also further).

The rectangle at the top shows some private standards consortia. The links between them are not normally particularly well developed, but some do exist. There are more links between consortia and “formal” SDOs; for instance, consortia may submit their specifications for an SDO for (international) standardization (“reactive standardization”; see Section 7.2.1). SSOs active in telecommunication standardization are shown at the bottom left. Their number is comparably limited, with relatively strong links between them. For instance, 3GPP and oneM2M are joint initiatives by several regional SSOs. Specifically, oneM2M develops standards for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication and for the IoT. The Global Standards Collaboration (GSC) is a less formal form of cooperation between regional SSOs and the ITU. The IT standardization landscape (bottom right) is the most densely populated and most complex part of the ICT standardization environment. Here as well, comparably strong links exist between individual players.

Coordination of the different standardization activities remains an important issue. A lack of coordination, eventually resulting in the development of functionally equivalent (and thus competing) standards, will reduce market transparency, decrease interoperability and ease of use, fragment the market, and increase transaction costs (Egyedi, 2014). Indeed, various coordination mechanisms have been developed over time, ranging from highly formalized high-level regulatory documents to very informal coordination through individuals who contribute to the work of multiple SSOs. Figure 7.3 shows some of the existing formal coordination mechanisms between some major global players.

In any case, all forms of coordination will be of particular importance in the complex world of IoT standardization.

7.4 Standardization in Selected Application Areas

This section will look at the environment of four typical IoT application areas. These include intelligent transport systems (ITS), smart manufacturing (SM), the smart grid (SG), and smart cities (SC). These areas represent one comparably mature field (ITS), two more recent developments including a trend in the private manufacturing sector (SM) and a typically private utility that is nonetheless a crucial part of the public infrastructure (SC) and, finally, the over-arching and perhaps even slightly futuristic concept of smart cities (SC).

7.4.1 Intelligent Transport Systems (Automotive Sector)

ITSs result from the integration of ICT with vehicles and transport infrastructure to improve economic performance, safety, mobility, and environmental sustainability⁷.

The ITS standardization landscape is populated by three different types of entities. For one, there are those from the “traditional” automotive sector. Their major common characteristic is their comparably old age (certainly by ICT standards). They may be further subdivided into specialized entities that deal exclusively with automotive/transport issues and into more general SSOs that have covered transport-related aspects for quite some time. Typically, they have added ITS-related topics to their portfolio only more recently, either through dedicated groups or by expanding the coverage of existing groups (e.g., IEC). Private consortia that focus exclusively on ITS topics form the third group. Most members of this group were founded only in this millennium, for example, CAR2CAR, the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) and the Open Automotive Alliance (OAA).

Figure 7.4 shows the very thinly populated ITS standardization environment in 1996, with hardly any links between the individual entities. This is not too surprising since ITSs became popular only in the late 1980s–early 1990s.

Today, the environment has become much more complex, with a number of additional players forming a much more elaborate web with different types of links between them (see Figure 7.5). On the one hand, this is in line with the general trend in standards setting toward closer cooperation. On the other hand, the figure also shows that links between private consortia are still very limited; for quite a few, no links to other SSOs active in the same sector could be identified⁸. This situation may also be observed in other parts of the standardization universe.

The time line depicted in Figure 7.6 also offers some interesting insights. As noted above, the idea of ITS emerged in the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, the first standardization-related entities that were founded (in 1991) were not SSOs, but rather more policy-related entities. The associated Technical Committees (TCs) of the major international and European SDOs were established afterward.

A second “wave” of standardization-related bodies started almost 10 years later, again led by a non-SSO (EasyWay, a program run by European road operators and authorities and the European Commission). Between 2002 and 2010, major specialized consortia (Car2Car, Autosar) emerged, as well as Working Groups in the telecommunication sector focusing on communication support for ITS services and applications. This development was not least triggered by the diffusion and increasingly advanced functionalities offered by mobile communication systems.

All in all, it seems safe to say that the ITS sector is quite mature by now. While the coordination between SSOs could certainly be improved, quite a few reasonably well-established links and coordination mechanisms are in place.

7.4.2 Smart Manufacturing

The idea of “smart manufacturing” emerged in the late 1980s, became more popular as a research topic in the late 1990s, and got off the ground with the advent of the German “Industrie 4.0” initiative in 2013 (GTAI, 2014). Smart manufacturing uses ICT to optimize the use of labor, material, and energy to produce customized, high quality products for on-time delivery and to be able to quickly respond to changes in market demands and supply chains (Lu et al., 2015).

For 1996, the standards setting environment for smart manufacturing is not too dissimilar from the one in the ITS sector—a comparably small number of entities with very limited links between them. Here as well, the situation today is very different from the one to be found back then. The number of important players has almost tripled and a number of different types of links have been established (see Figure 7.7). Almost all private consortia and alliances (eCl@ss being the exception) focus on communication aspects. The explanation might be that smart manufacturing simply is not going to happen without an adequate underlying communication infrastructure that needs to meet special requirements concerning, for example, latency, resilience, reliability, and predictability (see, for example, Fettweis et al. (2014)). Accordingly, standards for this infrastructure will be much more widely used than those for the applications sitting on top of it. At least during the early days of development, they thus represent a much more lucrative field than application standards.

However, SSOs from the telecommunication sector (ITU, ETSI, oneM2M) appear to be isolated from the other entities. This is a bit of a surprise, since today supply chains are becoming global and the same may be expected for future manufacturing (IEC, 2015). Against this background the need for global communication services appears obvious.

Looking at the time line again, some older entities (ISO/TC 184 and IEC TC 65 and its European mirror entity, CENELEC TC65X, working on process automation) predate all others by quite a while (see Figure 7.8). In the mid-1990s a number of entities emerged, most of which had specified and developed products for plant floor communication. Many of their specifications found their way into the IEC process and were eventually formally standardized. In the nearer past, a number of SDOs established TCs or other groups that specifically focus on smart manufacturing. The agglomeration of newly found entities in 2013–2015 is quite remarkable and highlights the increasing importance recently assigned to smart manufacturing.

7.4.3 Smart Grid

First initiatives toward a more intelligent power supply system started in the late 1980s (Werbos, 2011). Today, the smart grid is a modern electric power grid infrastructure with smooth integration of renewable and alternative energy sources, through automated control and modern ICT (Gungor et al., 2010).

In 1996, the standardization arena relating to the smart grid was even thinner populated than in the two cases above. It is little wonder that mostly those SSOs active in the field of electrical engineering were around back then, working primarily in the field of power distribution. Links between these SSOs were nonexisting.

Again, similar to the development in the other two sectors already discussed, the web of SSOs working on smart grids (see Figure 7.9) has become much more complex today, involving many more players with a much more elaborate network of cooperations between them.

Compared to the other two sectors, the number of private consortia contributing to smart grid standardization is limited to the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) and the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), both of which also work on grid-specific aspects, not just on communication problems (as in smart manufacturing). Here, standards setting is mostly done by the SDOs (led by IEC), which have been active in the “traditional” fields of energy supply, electrical accessories, power systems management, or communication systems for decades (see also Figure 7.10).

In a way, the time line of the creation of entities working on standards for the smart grid further extends the development that could be observed for smart manufacturing (Figure 7.8) and, to a lesser degree, for ITS (Figure 7.6). In the latter case, the establishment of new entities was more equally distributed over time. For the former, a certain accumulation may be observed for the past 7 years or so. For the smart grid, this accumulation is much more pronounced. Here, we see the formation of numerous “specialized” entities starting in 2008. Prior to that point, only more “generic” aspects were covered (power supply, communication). That is, the smart grid may be considered as a novel application area, certainly in terms of associated standardization.

7.4.4 Smart Cities

“Smart cities” are arguably the broadest application area. A smart city will, among others, comprise smart buildings, utilize the smart grid, provide smart transport facilities and e-health services, and also incorporate smart production sites. It will, therefore, be a particularly complex construct. Nevertheless, a survey by TU Vienna identifies 90 “smart” cities with 300,000–1,000,000 inhabitants and 77 with 100,000–300,000 inhabitants⁹. According to Navigant (2013), there are many pilot projects and small-scale developments but no examples of a smart city on a large scale, in line with the model depicted in Figure 7.11 (which is quite similar to the model used by TU Vienna). Truly “smart” cities are still closer to science fiction than to real life.

As can be seen, (virtually) all other applications contribute to the objectives of smart cities. In a way, a smart city represents a superset of “smart” applications. In addition, standards for “smart policies and objectives” (see Figure 7.2) provide guidance to city leadership for the development of an overall smart city strategy, the identification of priorities, the development of a practical implementation roadmap, and for an effective approach to monitoring and evaluating progress (BSI, 2015). Figure 7.12 shows the late 2016 status of SSO entities whose activities specifically focus at smart cities (again, those which develop more generic technologies or services that may also be deployed in a smart city context are not included) and the links that exist between them.

So far, the ITU has assumed a leading role in smart city standardization (not unlike IEC has done for the smart grid). Figure 7.12 also suggests that “smart cities” is a fairly new topic for standardization. Only a very limited number of players are active in this field and the links between them are neither particularly close nor numerous. Moreover, only a minority of entities within the individual SSOs focus on actual technical standardization work. Most are charged with high-level tasks like requirements identification as well as survey, road mapping, and/or coordination activities. However, the latter only relates to internal coordination within one SSO. In conjunction with the fairly young age of the activities, this explains the limited links between the entities.

Figure 7.12 also shows the complete absence of private standards consortia. This may be explained by the fact that smart city standardization focuses rather more on the strategic level (i.e., the top level in Figure 7.11), as opposed to the technical one. It seems fair to assume that little money is to be made form such activities, so consortia would stay clear off them.

As can be seen from the time line depicted in Figure 7.13, “smart cities” is indeed a very new field¹⁰. The first entity, ITU-T's Joint Coordination Activity on Internet of Things and Smart Cities and Communities (JCA-IoT and SC&C; now disbanded), was established in 2011.

The situation is similar to the one observed for smart manufacturing and the smart grid in that here as well we see a wave of newly founded standardization entities over the past 5 years. However, a major difference to the other sectors is that smart cities do not have any predecessor technologies—all standardization activities started from scratch in the 2010s.

7.5 Discussion and Some Speculation

So far, the chapter has looked at the standardization of the IoT and four (e)merging application areas. Their major common characteristic is the convergence of different technologies. The developments over time of the respective standardization environments show similarities, but also differences. Regarding the former, all environments emerged from comparably humble beginnings starting around the mid-1990s to fairly complex webs of SSOs today. The main reason for this increased complexity is the emergence of new and sometimes highly specialized SSOs. Likewise, in all cases, formal SDOs initially led the way; consortia and other “nontraditional” entities joined at a later stage (if at all, so far). It could be argued that their emergence—and increasing importance—eventually triggered the foundation of numerous new entities by the SDOs (Technical Committees, Working Groups, etc.).

Moreover, a notable agglomeration of SSOs may be observed over the past 5–7 (SM, SG, and SC) or 10 years (ITS). For SM and SG, this might be interpreted as the attempt of the industrialized, high-wage countries to improve their competitiveness versus emerging economies like China (smart manufacturing) and to reduce their dependence on fossil energy sources (smart grid and, to a lower degree, ITS). Here as well, smart cities represent a superset of these and other “smart” applications.

The comparably more “homogeneous” development of the ITS area may also be attributed to the fact that lobbying entities and an overarching EU program preceded (and perhaps helped trigger) the first “wave” of SSOs in the early 1990s. This area also seems to have the most advanced integration of the telecommunication sector, which may also be considered a sign of greater maturity. In contrast, this integration is largely nonexistent in SM. The rather dominant role of SDOs for smart grid standardization is also worth noting. The fact that this is a highly regulated area may at least be part of the explanation.

Smart cities are a very new development without any preceding technologies. This is reflected in both the time line (which starts in 2011) and their sparsely populated and thinly linked web of SSOs. However, this is little wonder. After all, smart cities rely on the services provided by the other “smart” applications (located in the middle layer in Figure 7.13); the term “system of systems” is frequently used to highlight this characteristic (see, for example, IEC (2014)).

Comparing these time lines with the one for wireless communication systems (the most important part of their underlying infrastructure) we find a similar picture, but shifted to the left on the time line (see Figure 7.14).

The largest wave of SSO foundations occurred in the mid/late 1990s, when several major entities were formed. It predated those in SM and SG by more than 10 years. This is not such a big surprise since “smart” applications depend on an established ICT infrastructure. Today, all four application areas discussed require a wireless communication infrastructure as it offers much greater flexibility than a wired one (De Pellegrini et al., 2006; ITU, 2011; AIOTI, 2015b); of course, the Internet still represents the communication backbone. Nevertheless, initially standardization in at least one “smart” application area, ITS, could apparently proceed without underlying standard-based wireless communication protocols and services. The beginning of standardization activities for wireless communication preceded that for ITS by only a few years.

The time line of the establishment of IoT-specific standardization entities depicted in Figure 7.15 shows a replication of this development. The establishment of the vast majority of dedicated IoT standards setting entities (new SSOs or specialized subunits of existing ones) occurred over the past 9 years. It got off the ground in 2009, with a peak in the period from 2013–2014. In 2015, JTC1 established its WG 10 “Internet of Things.” This WG, together with WG 7 “Sensor Networks” has been moved to the newly established JTC1/SC 41 “Internet of Things and related technologies.” This consolidation and, more so, the “elevation” to subcommittee status further highlights the importance ISO assigns to this field of work. That is, standardization activities for a dedicated IoT infrastructure started at around the same time as smart city standardization and the second “wave” of standardization of the smart grid and smart manufacturing. So, here again, application-specific standardization started without a dedicated infrastructure. Such a large mutually independent standardization of the IoT and its applications is a somewhat dangerous development. For one, a dialogue between the ICT world (developing the IoT-based infrastructure) and the world of applications (which will utilize this infrastructure) is crucial. After all, the latter needs to provide requirements for the former, and experts from the infrastructure side need to make clear any (technical) restrictions that may apply and potentially impact the applications. Moreover, and also due to an inadequate level of coordination between individual standardization activities (see Section 7.3), there is a real risk of creating new silos. Coordination largely occurs within individual SSOs, which may lead to the emergence of SSO-specific silos in which only standards from this SSO can seamlessly interoperate. This would then come in addition to proprietary silos. Furthermore, and considering the sheer number of standards setting entities that are active in the IoT domain and in the different application areas, one could be tempted to wonder if global interoperability can be achieved at all.

After all, the already quite considerable number of IoT-related standards may well contribute to interoperability issues in the field (silos) (Meddeb, 2016). The creation of a cross-SSOs coordination entity should be a next step. In addition, entities that actually try to address concrete application-related problems from a multidisciplinary perspective (see Table 7.3) will eventually be required. It remains to be seen if improved coordination helped get the mushrooming of standards and specifications under control.

7.6 Conclusion

This chapter has discussed some aspects of the standardization of the IoT and four of its major application areas. It turned out that the standardization environment has changed considerably over the past 20 years. Specifically, the number of SSOs working on standards relevant to the IoT and its applications has mushroomed during this period, as have the links that exist between them. A closer look at the time line of these developments reveals that the establishment of standardization entities relevant for the IoT, ITS, smart manufacturing, the smart grid, and smart cities show a very similar pattern. A first “wave” of new standardization entities occurred in the early–mid 1990s, followed by a second one around 2010 in the areas of SM, SG, and SC, when new entities were established at virtually explosive rate. For ITS, this happened a bit earlier and slightly less pronounced. The same picture emerges for mobile communication systems, where the peaks were in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, respectively. For the IoT, the time line looks slightly different, with one fairly massive wave between 2008 and 2014. In all cases, we can observe a considerable drop in the creation of new entities after 2014.

Considering the above, a look into a crystal ball suggests that the number of specialized standardization entities (SSOs, TCs, etc.) working on individual aspects of (e)merging applications and the IoT will continue to increase for a while, albeit a much slower pace (a fairly steep decline in the number of newly founded standardization entities may be observed for the past 2 years). It will probably reach saturation—at a fairly high level—in the not too distant future.

Today, the problem is that each SSO coordinates internally and may get updates from the other entities through more or less loose liaisons. Specifically, there is no cross-SSO coordination¹¹. This once again reinforces the urgent need for some sort of effective and efficient cross-SSO coordination beyond what currently exists. This also holds for the coordination between the IoT-based infrastructure and the applications deploying it. However, it remains to be seen whether or not such overarching coordination will actually be established. This is highly unlikely to happen anytime soon, though.

Acknowledgments

Work on this chapter was funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments.

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