Thousands of smart city projects are under way worldwide, as government and technology leaders seek to use the Internet of Things (IoT) to bring tangible benefits to the citizens in their communities. However, many of these projects are customized and not fully interoperable or scalable.
A number of organizations are developing and proposing various architectural design principles, taxonomies, and standards for these projects. However, we have not yet seen the convergence of standards efforts that will enable IoT's full potential to be realized in the smart city market.
To address this issue, the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—together with several domestic and international partners—has launched the "International Technical Working Group on IoT-Enabled Smart City Framework" (now shortened to "IES-City Framework" and pronounced: " 'yes city' framework").
In consultation with city stakeholders, the group will compare and distill current architectural efforts; identify pivotal points of interoperability (PPI) across the many existing and deployed architectures, and then produce a consensus framework document of common architectural features. This framework document will help cities employ interoperable and scalable smart city solutions that will meet the needs of their communities.
The kick-off meetings for this group will be held in the United States (March 24-25, 2016, on NIST campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland) and in Europe (April 11-12, 2016, in Rome, Italy).Details about the March 24-25 meeting and the April 14-15 meeting are available online.
The working group is open to all and is composed of experts from industry, government, and academia. For more information on this project, please visit the group's collaboration website at https://pages.nist.gov/smartcitiesarchitecture/.