The National Institutes of Standards and Technology has said it is taking part in a “SmartAmerica / Global Cities Challenge” to help develop a technological framework to realize the benefits of an Internet of things.
An Internet of things is much what it sounds like: networked devices. However, the ubiquity and low cost of “digitizing” and linking up hardware has reached a point where practical application on a large scale is within reach. (The Postal Service, for example, relies on a lot of equipment that linked up online could give it new, real-time visibility over its distribution network.)
The SmartAmerica challenge was launched last December to bring together industry, government and academia to demonstrate how cyber-physical systems could work. Recently, over 100 organizations came together at the Washington DC Convention Center to demonstrate the solutions they have been working on to meet a number of challenges facing the development of an Internet of things: http://smartamerica.org/challenge/
“Cyber-physical systems … are the next big advance for our use of the web,” said Chris Greer, NIST’s senior executive for cyber-physical systems.
“They allow complex systems of feedback and control that can help a robot coordinate with a dog or human in a search-and-rescue operation or help health care providers evaluate the recovery of patients after they leave the hospital,” he explained.
Greer in particular wants to see wider collaboration to creating the building blocks for smart cities, reducing the time and cost for cities to roll out advanced engineering and IT to network their physical infrastructure.
He also said public-private partnerships are natural in this field given the interconnectedness they imply – such as a fire detector in a home being able to communicate with a municipal fire department.
Link: http://www.commerce.gov/blog/2014/06/11/internet%E2%80%99s-next-big-idea-connecting-people-information-and-things
