This one-day workshop will focus on how the telecommunication industry can embrace the opportunities from M2M (Machine to Machine) networks, matching the growing needs for Smart City solutions in terms of connectivity and platforms for cost effective development of applications.
The journey will take you from a discussion of core technologies and network technologies to business development issues, ending up with views from the users: The cities – what are the real needs?.
Smart City perspectives are plentiful
Sustainable urban development is recognised as a key challenge at a global level. The ‘Smart Cities’ model provides opportunities and challenges for cooperation on issues related to areas of energy, water, environment, information and communication technologies and transport.
The “Mapping Smart Cities in EU” report issued by ITRE (Industry, Research and Energy Committee) of the European Parliament points out that more than half of all European cities with more than 100,000 residents have implemented or planned measures to have “smarter” cities. Frost & Sullivan research estimates a combined market potential of €1.3 trillion globally for the Smart City market in segments of energy, transportation, healthcare, building, infrastructure and governance. Yet, while the potential is huge, the challenge is finding funding and developing the right business model, as many cities in the Western world do not have the finances available to take on mammoth-sized projects. The challenge is to find cost-effective ways to develop and deploy large scale Smart City applications.
Smart City market participants will assume one or more of four main roles in such engagements: Integrators (the end-to-end service provider); network operators (the M2M and connectivity providers); product vendors (hardware and asset providers); and managed service providers.
This one-day workshop will focus on how the telecommunication industry has embraced the challenges of smart city needs and connectivity; how the telecom operators can optimise their network solutions for massive Smart City application deployment and how third party Smart City application developers can utilise the network platforms and tools to efficiently and cost-effectively develop valued-added Smart City applications.
M2M networks create the opportunity
When billions of devices will be deployed in the smart city, data must be gathered and managed in an efficient way. Only a standard communication platform can enable the “many billions” of smart objects in a future smart city scenario. M2M communication will be a core technology for the proper functioning of future smart cities.
ETSI (The European Telecommunication Standard Institute) has released a standard for M2M platforms (release 2 - 2013). The standard relies on the very powerful concepts of store and share. The data are collected from the devices, stored in a repository and shared to the applications willing to use them. The ETSI standard is based on a “resource” model with open REST APIs. The ETSI M2M horizontal scenario provides a REST service platform to enable data storage and sharing, multi-service and multi-application support, as well as abstraction of devices and applications with support for constrained devices.
In September 2012, ETSI M2M entered into the oneM2M Partnership Project with other standardisation bodies: Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB), Telecommunication Technology Committee (TTC) of Japan, Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) of the USA, China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), and Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) of Korea. The oneM2M initiative thus provides the foundation for smart city application developers with a worldwide internet based application development platform.
ALMANAC provides the solutions
The ALMANAC project develops a “lightweight” implementation of the ETSI standard release 2, integrated with higher functional layers such as semantic discovery and delivery capabilities and allowing smart city developers to add value enablers such as data fusion and application delivery across a variety of “Capillary Networks” that connect distributed objects in the smart city.
The term Capillary Network refers to an infrastructure that realises a dedicated network, connecting a large number of smart city objects such as humans, street furniture, water and electricity meters, light actuators, waste bins, health devices, etc.
The ALMANAC middleware integrates Capillary Networks in the M2M architecture and supports the federation of private and public networks, thus hiding the complexity of linking sensors and actuators to the platform for the application developers. The middleware provides device abstraction, data management and virtualized access to data through a Smart City Resource Adaptation Layer (SCRAL) and a Data Management Framework, which is exposed through a Virtualization Layer. It also provides a Policy Management Framework, managing the privacy policies of individual providers, and a Communication Management Framework, handling Capillary Network aspects. The ALMANAC middleware is compliant with the ETSI M2M Network Service Capability Layer (NSCL).
Overall, the ALMANAC open federated IoT Storage Cloud provides elasticity in the data storage services with gateways enabling access to different logical parts of the smart city structures for analysis and sharing among different stakeholders.
Target Groups
The workshop targets technology managers and practitioners from all parts of the telecommunication industry including, but not limited to network operators, connectivity providers, manufacturers of telecommunication equipment, system integrators, and resellers.
The workshop also targets software architects, developers and planners of Smart City and general IoT applications, end-to-end service providers and asset providers.
Finally, the workshop targets the owners and planners of Smart City applications, including managed services providers, and cloud operators.
The ALMANAC project is co-funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 609081, objective ICT-2013.1.4 'A reliable, smart and secure Internet of Things for Smart Cities'. Duration: 1st September 2013 to 31st August 2016.
Impressum 