Internet of Things - Strategic Research Agenda

Internet of Things together with the other emerging Internet developments such as Internet of Energy, Media, People, Services, Business/Enterprises are the backbone of the digital economy, the digital society and the foundation for the future knowledge based economy and innovation society.

 

At the conceptual level the IoT technology represents the “middleware” between the implementation of the “grand challenges” such as climate change, energy efficiency, mobility, digital society, health at the global level and enabling technologies such as nanoelectronics, communications (mobile/wired, wireless sensors, M2M, RFID), sensors, smart phones, embedded systems, cloud computing and software technologies. These challenges will give rise to new products, new services, new interfaces and newapplications. The “grand challenges” may also give rise to smart environments and smart spaces. 

The SRA for the Internet of Things is the result of a four-step collaboration between the members of the cluster research projects:

1. Elaboration of an IoT common definition about the meaning of "Things" and IoT visions, introducing the IoT concept and presenting the underlying vision

2. Identification of IoT Application Domains exploring the application domains for the future IoT

3. Identification of Technologies that will drive the IoT development and supporting the IoT vision

4. Formulation of an IoT Research Agenda, presenting the research challenges and priorities, the standardization issues and the security and privacy concerns that have to be addressed and solved over the next decade

As a result the main outcomes could be summarized as follows:

• The Internet of Things is an integrated part of Future Internet and could be defined as a dynamic global network infrastructure with self configuring capabilities based on standard and interoperable communication protocols where physical and virtual “things” have identities, physical attributes, virtual personalities and use intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly integrated into the information network.

• The vision of Future Internet based on standard communication protocols considers the merging of computer networks, Internet of Media (IoM), Internet of Services (IoS), and Internet of Things (IoT) Internet of Energy (IoE),  Internet of Business/Enterprises (IoB), Internet of People (IoP) into a common global IT platform of seamless networks and networked “things”. This future network of networks will be laid out as public/private infrastructures and dynamically extended and improved by terminals created by the “things” connecting to one another.

• We envisage that the Internet of Things will allow people and things to be connected Anytime, Anyplace, with Anything and Anyone, ideally using Any path/network and Any service.

• The concept of Internet of Things can be regarded as an extension of the existing interaction between humans and applications through the new dimension of “Things” communication and integration.

Internet of Things - Strategic Research Roadmap: 2011