The Internet of Things

Foreword

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next phase in the evolution of the Internet and will transform our business and personal lives in many areas. IoT refers to the increasing trend for many types of objects including vehicles, environmental sensors, traffic sensors, clothing, and all kinds of consumer goods to be connected to the Internet and to have the ability to sense, communicate, network, and produce new information. The information generated by IoT devices is already exploited in a wide range of early applications: there are existing uses in the field of transport, smart cities, retail, logistics, home automation, and industrial control among others.

The IoT will generate massive volumes of data that flow to the computers for analysis, resulting in the collection of much richer information and insights in real time and used by automated systems to respond intelligently with appropriate actions.

The IoT has been a recurrent theme among commentators since the term was coined in the late 1990s. It involves a radical new view of networked ICT and the relationship between information systems and the physical world. The vision of IoT is that any physical object can be given the ability to measure and respond to its environment and to communicate with other objects or with computer systems anywhere in the world. This is now becoming technologically feasible and commercially viable.

Recently, a number of technological and socioeconomic drivers for the IoT have emerged, ...