Technical experts are meeting in Singapore this week to discuss the development of the global standards for the Internet of Things (IoT) and its applications, including smart cities.
The International Telecommunication Union Standardization Sector (ITU-IT) Study Group 20 meeting will gather 150 participants from 14 ITU member states and 36 organizations. The first such meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland in last year.
Currently, there is no universal set of IoT standards to govern the increasing proliferation of interconnected and interoperable devices. Most countries are working on developing their own IoT standards to meet their requirements.
Singapore aims to be a forerunner in the development of interoperable IoT standards – which can be adopted not just by industry in Singapore to build our Smart Nation applications, but are also recognized and used universally.
IoT is a critical cornerstone of many of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiatives such as Smart Homes, Smart Urban Habitat, Autonomous Vehicles, and even Digital Healthcare wearables.
A Cisco white paper forecast that there will be 50 billion devices connected to the internet by 20201. More recently, industry research firm Gartner predicted that IoT will support total services spending of $235 billion worldwide in 2016, up 22% from 20152.
IoT is a critical cornerstone of many of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiatives such as Smart Homes, Smart Urban Habitat, Autonomous Vehicles, and even Digital Healthcare wearables.
The ITU-T SG20 meeting is another collaboration between IDA and the ITU, following the signing of a joint MOU in October 2015. As a signatory, Singapore is one of 10 cities that will pilot a set of key performance indicators leading to the eventual development of a “Global Smart Sustainable Cities Index”.
This index will allow ITU to benchmark and rank cities’ performance in terms of their level of “smartness”.
“A smart city ‘system of systems’ will be characterized by openness and interoperability, built on coordinated adherence to common standards. Harmonized implementation of standards will help to prevent the emergence of industry-specific technology ‘silos’, thus ensuring that all industries can benefit from the information drawn from data-driven IoT systems,” said Chaesub Lee, director of the ITU-IT.
“Singapore’s participation in ITU work is an invaluable asset to our development of international standards for Smart Sustainable Cities. I applaud Singapore for its work to share the blueprints of its smart city advances with other ITU member states.”