What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?
IoT connects and exchanges data from physical objects to other physical objects using processing ability, software, and other technologies. While the term internet is used, it is considered a misnomer since devices do not need to be connected to the public internet. In many applications today, devices and sensors are connected to a private network where they can be individually addressable or even connected directly to each other.
IoT crosses many industries and markets and is not limited to buildings; however, this book’s focus will be on its application in buildings. Most people today learned of IoT through the consumer market and through smart homes with features such as smart lighting, thermostats, cameras, security systems, and smart appliances. Other common applications today include smart speakers, smart watches, and healthcare devices – all IoT connected to our smartphones.
Numerous industrial applications use IoT devices to collect and analyze data for connected equipment and often are referred to as Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Operational Technology (OT) is often combined with IIoT to regulate and monitor industrial systems and manage assets. Other IoT applications include manufacturing, agriculture, energy, environmental, military, and metropolitan systems to manage cities and utilities.
While many people believe that IoT is a recent technology development, the concept of smart devices was introduced in 1982 with a modified Coca-Cola machine becoming the first connected device. In September 1985, Peter T. Lewis introduced the concept and term Internet of Things for the first time to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 15th Annual Legislative Weekend in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t officially named the Internet of Things until 1999 by MIT’s Executive Director of Auto-ID Labs, Kevin Ashton. During his presentation to Procter & Gamble, he described IoT for the first time and the definition has evolved since then.
IoT challenges
IoT devices are used to monitor and control many of a building’s electrical, mechanical, and energy management systems to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. Building IoT (BIoT) suffers from platform fragmentation, interoperability issues, and lack of standards making it sometimes difficult for devices to speak to each other. Coupled with the numerous options for connecting these devices with fiber-optic cables, copper cables, and an endless list of wireless connectivity options, IoT use in smart buildings creates some challenges that must be considered and managed.
With the large amounts of surveillance sensors and the data that is collected and stored, privacy threats are enormous, as is the potential for hackers to create disruption and misuse the information. Many people are concerned that companies and governments collecting this data are also selling it, making us more transparent and making it harder for us to control our privacy.
Data storage challenges include how and where to store all this data, either locally, in the cloud, or in a data warehouse. Questions about how long data should be stored are usually answered by legal requirements and the cost of storage. A return-on-investment business analysis usually answers how long the data will be stored because it is expensive to store data. Access to this data raises other concerns as to who should be able to see and use the data. Another IoT data challenge is how to tag it for commonality and for easier reference later. Today, there are numerous tagging languages being used that are not interchangeable.
Security is one of the biggest challenges and concerns with IoT and smart buildings. These include authentication concerns, unencrypted messages sent between devices, poor handling of security updates, man-in-the-middle attacks, and breaches. It is important to understand that if everything is connected, then access is also connected. A recent massive data breach at retail giant Target allegedly resulted partly from their failure to properly segregate systems and payment card data. According to Jaikular Vijayan’s February 6, 2014, Computerworld article Target breach happened because of a basic network segmentation error, the payment data was stolen by hackers using stolen login credentials for the HVAC system and then moved about undetected on Target’s network. IoT systems control large amounts of safety system sensors such as smoke detectors, contact sensors, motion sensors, door access controllers, and numerous others. Potential challenges include device or communication failures, software bugs, or other unforeseen bad app interactions, all of which could cause an unsafe or dangerous physical state.
Design challenges include solving communications issues between various systems, confusing terminology, scalability, environmental/sustainability impacts, device obsolescence, and lack of interoperability. Additionally, designs need to consider organization capabilities, cultural requirements, industry standards, and the numerous governmental codes, regulations, and laws from the various agencies and departments.
Finally, a mere attempt at a smart building IoT project creates unique business planning and project management challenges. IoT projects run differently than simple, traditional IT, manufacturing, or construction projects. Smart IoT projects are complex, and designers and project managers are generally inexperienced in this area. IoT smart building projects have longer timelines from design to build to occupancy, and technology advances are outpacing these timelines. Return on investment models are speculative at best because there are so few implementations to date, and there is little time to conduct pilot or prototype testing.