The Internet of Things

1Introduction

John Davies¹, and Carolina Fortuna²

¹British Telecommunications plc, Ipswich, UK

²Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The physical world is becoming ever more closely connected to information systems as sensors and actuators are incorporated into a wide variety of physical objects – from highways to pacemakers to cattle to running shoes to factories – and then connected to the Internet via a range of wired and wireless networks. This is the Internet of Things (IoT) and it is already generating massive volumes of data. The result is that much richer information can be collected (in real time) and used by automated systems to provide actionable insight and to respond to changing contexts with appropriate intelligent actions. IoT has rapidly moved from the conceptual phase to widespread use in real‐world applications in recent years.

The IoT will deliver significant innovation in many different areas, including future cities, transport, health and social care, manufacturing, and agriculture. Sensors can now be deployed at low cost to instrument the world to a far greater extent than has been possible before. There is increasing recognition of the potential value in opening up data resources so that they can be exploited more fully.

At the highest level, many of the IoT applications being considered appear similar – involving the collection of information from a range of sensors and other sources, interpreting this in a specific context, and then making better ...