Managing IoT Systems for Institutions and Cities

Chuck Benson

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429956560
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Government & Business
• Index: Business

This book defines what IoT Systems manageability looks like and what the associated resources and costs are of that manageability. It identifies IoT Systems performance expectations and addresses the difficult challenges of determining actual costs of IoT Systems implementation, operation, and management across multiple institutional organizations. It details the unique challenges that cities and institutions have in implementing and operating IoT Systems.

Chapter 1

IoT Systems Introduction

Internet of Things (IoT) systems are rapidly changing the world around us and will continue to do so. These systems offer substantial potential benefit in terms of social value and business value in the institutions and cities in which they are deployed. However, how IoT systems are selected, implemented, and operated – and the ease or difficulty of implementation and operation – has significant consequences for the success of IoT systems implementation in institutions and cities.

All systems, whether natural, technical, or social, experience systems loss. IoT systems, these sociotechnical systems deployed and geographically distributed throughout the environments around us in our cities and institutions can have elements of all three systems – natural, social, and technical. The technical part, the technology part, of IoT systems is only a fraction of the overall system. Systems losses occur within each of these different types of systems and between these systems. All of the resources that appear to be available to implement and operate the IoT system do not get converted into actual positive, value-added output. A considerable portion of these ostensible resources – staffing, time, funding, technologies, and others – simply get converted to waste. As we will see, these systemic losses involving IoT systems will manifest themselves in lost Return on Investment (ROI) and degraded cybersecurity capabilities and cyber risk profiles for institutions and cities.

This systems waste, this loss of resources, is felt particularly fully in resource-constrained environments – which almost all institutions and cities are. This waste, and thus this impact on IoT systems success, can be mitigated substantially by paying attention to the manageability of the IoT system. This manageability is not just technical aspects. It presents itself in the deployed environment, supporting technical infrastructures, and most importantly supporting social and organizational environments within the city or institution.

Given the rapidly changing and dynamic aspects of IoT systems and the increasingly complex and resource-constrained environments in which they are deployed – and the number of variables that are outside of an institution’s or city’s control – the manageability of an IoT system or Systems becomes critical for systems success (or failure).

The Potential Benefits of IoT Systems

The potential benefits of appropriately selected, procured, implemented, and managed IoT systems are substantial. Universities and institutions can benefit from IoT systems such as traditional building automation systems (e.g., heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC)), energy management and conservation systems, building and space access systems, environmental control systems for large research environments, academic learning systems, and safety systems for students, faculty, staff, and the public. Cities also benefit from IoT systems supporting public safety (e.g., surveillance of high crime areas), air quality monitoring by sector, transportation control systems, city accessibility guidance and support, and many others.¹

In automotive and transportation systems, IoT can enable health checks of automotive components, Global Positioning System-based location monitoring, route optimization, crash prevention, car-to-car communication, and real-time traffic analysis. City governments and institutions can use traffic data for more effective city planning. In health systems, whether lifestyle, recreational, or patient monitoring for critical functions such as blood pressure, glucose levels, heart rate, or others, IoT devices and supporting systems can monitor, analyze, report health data, and even directly provide appropriately dosed medicine to patients.

Sensor-based analysis in retail spaces can provide business owners valuable analysis of customer behavior and buying patterns, reducing waste, and enhancing profitability.² Institutions and cities can use arrays of IoT devices, sensors, and actuators to monitor and analyze buildings, campuses, and spaces for energy usage. With this data, opportunities for increased energy efficiency can be identified. Regulatory and compliance requirements such as carbon emissions requirements can be measured, reported, and enforced. Further, aspirational objectives around carbon emissions, other air quality measures, water contaminant levels, and others can be recorded, studied, and reported.

Systems Loss

Oh, ye seekers after perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you pursued? Go and take your place with the alchemists.

Leonardo Da Vinci³

As with systems in nature, in social/societal organizations, and particularly in sociotechnical organizations – of which most modern societies are – there is always systems loss. Sociotechnical systems can have many components, facets, and attributes – there can be plans, intentions, resources, alignment, conflict, lag, cause and effect, uncertainty, and surprises. One thing is certain though – there is always system loss. Nothing is free. In the excitement, novelty, complexity, and hype around IoT and IoT systems, often what is not realized by cities and institutions is that there is still systems loss. Worse, not only is there systems loss, this loss is substantial and will directly and negatively impact the opportunity for successful implementation of the IoT system.

Systems Loss in Nature

The formalization of the study of systems loss has a rich history of study and publication. It is hard to imagine that the advances in science, medicine, technology, and society that we witness today would have been possible without the discovery, formalization, and documentation of systems loss.

From a scientific viewpoint, the quintessential study of the development and application of systems loss can be found in thermodynamics and, particularly, the second law of thermodynamics.⁴

In the early 19th century, French military engineer, Sadi Carnot, built on some of the work of his father, Lazare Carnot, and introduced the idea of an idealized heat engine. (Among other things, Lazare Carnot is also known for appointing Napoleon as the general-in-chief of the Army of Italy, subsequently being named Minister of War by Napoleon and later as Minister of the Interior by Napoleon).⁵

In his book, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire,⁶ (Sadi) Carnot abstracted out the core components of steam engines of the day into an idealized system so that consistent math could be performed in the context of these “heat engines (Figure 1.1).”

In the course of this, Carnot introduced the idea of a heat transfer pattern cycle, subsequently named the Carnot cycle.⁷ In this abstraction, he showed that there is always system loss – that even when disregarding the effects of friction and machine imperfections (which also cause loss), Carnot proved that there is a maximum efficiency, well less than 100%, of any engine. That is, regardless of the machine (engine) or the type of fluid on which the engine runs – whether steam, gas, or others – a portion of the energy added to the engine will not be converted to work. That is, a portion of the energy added will always be lost. (This is also consistent with a concept that Leonardo Da Vinci had introduced that a perpetual motion machine is impossible.)

Rudolf Clausius,⁸ a physics professor at the Artillery and Engineering School in Berlin in the mid-19th century, extended upon Carnot’s contributions by formulating the second law of thermodynamics. In his 1850 paper, On the Moving Force of Heat, he introduced the early concepts of the second law of thermodynamics.

Figure 1.1 A James Watt steam engine, similar to those studied in Sadi Carnot’s Reflections on Motive Power of Fire. (From Thurston, Robert H. >English: A Schematic of Watt’s Steam Engine Printed in a 1878 Book. 1878. Thurston, Robert H. History of the Growth of the Steam Engine. D. Appleton & Co. 1878. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Watt_steam_pumping_engine.webp.)¹¹,¹²

In 1865, Clausius gave this irreversible heat loss a name – entropy. The broad concepts are that, left on their own, in systems involving heat (and all do), everything gets cooler, and more generally in all systems, everything tends towards disorder. There is always loss in the system – not everything that goes into the system produces useful output or work.

Systems Loss in Societal Systems – Warfare

An example of systems loss within complex social systems is that of warfare. Because of its complexity, lessons learned in millennia of warfighting can offer some clues to planning for, implementing, and managing complex sociotechnical systems in complex societal groups such as cities and institutions.

Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war.

Carl Von Clausewitz, On War

Carl von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian war theorist of the 19th century, introduced the concept of friction in war. He describes friction as “the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult.”

This notion of friction being things that are “apparently easy” but that are actually difficult in reality can apply to large IoT systems implemented in institutions and cities. At face value, deploying one sensor in a location, routing data over a network, aggregating that data for subsequent processing, analysis, distribution, and consumption should be straightforward and easy. However, doing that 100, 1,000, or 10,000 times on a network (or networks) that is not has homogenous and predictable as ori...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Author
• 1 IoT Systems Introduction
• 2 Differences between IoT and Traditional IT Systems
• 3 Defining IoT Systems Implementation Success
• 4 Systems of Systems and Sociotechnical Systems
• 5 Systems Seams, Boundaries, and the IoT Ecosystem
• 6 IoT Systems Manageability
• 7 IoT Systems Vendor Relations and Vendor Management
• 8 Templates for Institutional and City IoT Systems Planning and Operations
• 9 Strategy Implementation
• Appendix A: Some IoT Systems Vendor Management Considerations for Higher Education Institutions
• Appendix B: Making Sense of the Internet of Things in Higher Education
• Appendix C: Interview with Hendrik Van Hemert, Pacific Northwest Regional Director–Technical Services, McKinstry, December 17, 2018
• Index