The Internet of Everything (IoE) is a fairly new term arising from the growing Internet of Things (IoT) devices deployment, closely related. The interconnection between IoE and IoT has brought confusion as to the difference there is between both. A simple explanation would be that IoT connects digital devices, and IoE is the intelligent connectivity between physical devices, people, processes, and data.
IoE is an expansion of IoT because it encompasses the whole Big Data collection. Building interconnectivity to acquire data produced by devices and people, forming the raw data into actionable information, and offering processes that send the refined data to the right person or machine when needed. This holistic connectivity can help the performance of supply chain industries, smart cities, or water management systems.
IoE functions within the principle of billions of sensors, devices, machines, people, appliances, etc., interconnectivity, producing immense amounts of data that will need to be analyzed, refined, and communicated to provide valuable insights, focused on efficiency, sustainability, and new perspectives. This reality creating such an overwhelming amount of raw data is unviable for humans to be able to analyze.
Therefore, there is a need for technological innovations to be implanted into this evolution to make it possible to take advantage of raw data creation. The Internet of Everything is the orchestrator of this change, in a quest, via digital, for better methods to perform business, achieve sustainable UN goals, or provide societies with higher standings of living.
To acquire this level of internet connectivity, the key components of the IoE market are hardware, software, and services. The main actors in the IoE play reside in the four pillars mentioned in the introduction:
· People
· Data
· Things
· Processes
People's massive adoption of internet-connected devices creates a swarm of data predicted to grow exponentially. Currently, the connection is primarily based on wearables (healthcare sensors, fitness trackers), smartphones, computers, laptops, tablets, etc. Soon, where IoE will be fundamental, data produced by people will come from their homes, vehicles, leisure resorts, waste, and much more.
An injection of data that IoE, with the power of, e.g., AI algorithms, will be able to analyze and thus, “understand” human issues. Delivering relevant and specific information according to the people’s personal or business needs, helping them to make decisive decision-making, to reach optimal living standards or business goals.
Given the astonishing amount of today's data, a recent study indicated that our daily digital footprint reaches 2.5 quintillion bytes. To put this number into perspective, if we laid out two quintillion pennies flat like a carpet, it would cover the earth's surface — twice. Apart from the sheer size of the data, there is another issue; raw data, which has no value. It is like raw petroleum; it needs to be refined to be of use.
With IoE, this is possible. Once it is summarized, classified, and analyzed, it turns into priceless information that can be used to favor social engineering, industrial innovation, sustainable procedures, and in essence, empower intelligent solutions.
The Internet of Everything adds to the Internet of Things the capacity to interconnect the devices, sensors, machines, etc., to the network, providing IoT the critical paths and injecting the generated data back into the system for people and machines to actuate them and on a real-time basis.
IoE gives IoT another access point to output and input data on their real-time status and sends it to the needed destination across the network. An autonomous approach that wasn't possible before the orchestration of the Internet of Everything wasn’t possible, resulting in a more dynamic data flow.
As we have introduced above, the mind-boggling amount of data created in the near future, predictions indicate that over 25 billion IoT devices will be connected worldwide by 2030, will need a new type of processing approach. Therefore, different processes are required to orchestrate a well-designed IoE infrastructure.
These innovative processing approaches are based on artificial intelligence, machine learning, social networks, and other technologies, ensuring that the right information reaches the right person and machine at the right time. In essence, the goal of IoE processing is to guarantee the best possible usage of Big Data.
Having presented an overview of how the Internet of Everything works and how it interconnects its four main pillars — people, data, things, and processes. We dive into one of the primary generators of data, cities. Actioning IoE into Smart City projects will create a wealth of information applicable to many private, public, and industry sectors.
To present this new vision, where the Internet of Everything is the driving force behind the IoT devices deployment and the AI’s (Artificial Intelligence) analysis capacity. We present some examples of sectors inside a Smart City that will benefit from these technologies.
Cities are great consumers of energy. In fact, over two-thirds of the world’s energy consumption comes from cities, and they account for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions. With such figures, smart energy metering is fundamental to adjusting these consumption levels. Implementing AI analysis of the data that energy meters generate can help. Some of these are:
· Reduce wastage and loss.
· Improve the efficiency of grid operation.
· Optimize storage.
· Enhance predictive infrastructure maintenance.
These benefits automatically adjust power inputs, leading to substantial savings, securing supplies, and fewer outages. These are great advantages for public and private sector entities, but smart meters are also helpful on a smaller scale. Using them can help customers tailor their energy requirements and thus, customizes tariffs providing a more efficient supply.
The developed world has an aging population, which means the workforce of many industries doesn’t have enough human resources to counter this reality. Thus, when experienced professionals retire, they take their valuable expertise, leaving a young workforce orphan.
An orchestration of IoE and AI can transmit knowledge by leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) and pattern recognition. With these innovations, processing unstructured and structured data is a reality, as well as extracting precious information from:
· Past internal communications.
· Training documents.
· Technical notes.
This results in recommendations on how to perform complex maintenance tasks and capture feedback from technicians overtime. Finely tuning future recommendations helps the whole workforce work more productively and safely.
The commercial power that cities have is enormous, as is the pace of the city dwellers, that find it difficult to physically go to a store to buy or ask a question. Chatbots are improving their capacity to communicate and present relevant information to customers, allowing them the flexibility to interact with the store or brand. It also frees employees from the equation to use it in other aspects of the business.
Another vital factor to consider is that citizens can go to the store once instead of various times; this helps reduce CO2 emissions. Instead of driving to the mall to see if there is a product and having to return home because it wasn’t there, an intelligent chatbot deletes this drive, making the buying process more efficient and clean.
Deploying smart security cameras is an excellent benefit for the city because these cameras become a 24/7 interaction with, e.g., police department and fire brigade units. Smart cameras can also analyze patterns that can alert of possible criminal activity before it happens. Therefore, smart cameras can be used by schools and businesses to cut the response time whenever action needs to be taken.
An example of the potential is that a smart security camera can differentiate between people entering an area. It can describe a suspicious person and be capable of alerting first responders in real-time.
There are other benefits that IoE can incorporate into Smart Cities. These are smart parking systems, air pollution reduction, traffic control, adaptive workplaces to improve employee wellness, cognitive power plants, accurate predictions and forecasts, and pavement management. Even AI-Powered Robots can perform complex tasks such as threading a needle, opening doors, shaking hands, and even folding clothes.
IoE has the potential to create enormous benefits for society and industries that act on vital issues, such as reducing energy consumption, giving communities a higher living standard, and cost-efficient processes for businesses. Unfortunately, when it comes to security and privacy issues, current solutions create many vulnerabilities that result in cyber criminality and the breach of private spaces.
Analyzing this problematic situation, one of the major obstacles to accelerating IoT devices deployment is the centralized nature of present digital solutions. Even though the devices and sensors are decentralized because they can perform autonomously, the data generated is stored, processed, and analyzed within centralized solutions.
The Internet of Everything faces vulnerabilities within cybersecurity due to having centralized solutions; because it offers cyber-criminals and cyber-terrorists a single target. Making it relatively easy to hack the systems—a huge problem for implementing IoT devices deployment through the orchestration of IoE.
As we have mentioned, there are innumerable solutions that can be deployed with IoT, and that can bring incredible benefits to society. But being deployed in centralized systems can create malfunctions due to bad actors accessing the network. There are many examples of these cyberattacks in the energy and water management industries.
Another critical weakness with centralized networks is latency, a problem that arises due to the location of server centers. Cities can be far away from Cloud services, and the connected cities to these centralized services are many. In this sense, the bandwidth and distances between data centers and Smart Cities cannot assure real-time data flow on a 24/7 basis. A situation that isn’t acceptable for certain intelligent services, such as first responders, traffic management, or government.
Decentralization is the solution to solve the problem of security, privacy, and latency. Implementing decentralized architectures that can provide cutting-edge services brings robust solutions, eliminating security and privacy issues and latency—offering to Smart Cities a network that works on location and is empowered by all connected nodes.
Indeed decentralized infrastructures can detect DDoS attacks, malware, or phishing, trying to infect the network and isolate it. This functionality gives the system the necessary security because all the nodes that make up the network are empowered to make the system function. Using other tools like blockchain technology that offers immutable data storage and privacy is conducted through Service Manifest.
Obtaining the power to make the network perform through all the connected nodes, i.e., edge computing, will also eliminate the latency problem. Without the need to move data from the location to a server center, real-time data is a reality and on a 24/7 basis. The implementation of AI gives the capacity to process data into information and send it to a specific person or machine at the right moment.
We have built a truly decentralized solution at Internet of Everything Corp, utilizing quantum-safe blockchain technology with an AI-driven analysis. A perfect solution for the IoT devices deployment, generating real-time data to information, and ready for the quantum computing era.
Contact us for more information about our IoE Eden System to orchestrate the IoT devices deployment within Smart Cities, or industry verticals, e.g., automation, real estate, aerospace and defense, healthcare, or construction.
