The second industrial revolution is here with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and it has started to create a profound effect on various businesses and business patterns. IoT is changing the way work and businesses are done from the government to utilities, from logistics and transports, from manufacturing to retail. Let us explore the example of use cases of five vertically different organizations who are going through a radical transformation due to IoT technologies.
Governance
All over the world “smart city initiatives” are transforming municipal life. According to Mr Tim Herbert, Senior vice president of a non-profit trade association CompTIA, the municipal heads and the political leaders have started thinking more creatively about various people-friendly uses of technologies that are integrated to bring different aspects or services of the city in a unified platform. The best thing about this is that both common people and the decision maker are able to make a better decision more quickly because of better and real-time data streams.
A few instances of smart city initiatives are:
- Water management– every year Houston was losing approximately 15 billion gallons of filtered water (it is about 15 percent of its water) due to lack of maintenance. Now the municipal management has implanted sensors and intelligent pump control systems which will allow it to better regulate the water flow and identify maintenance issues all most at a real-time speed. More smart solutions like this could be applied to measuring water quality, controlling the irrigation system, measuring the storm water runoff, flooding and household water management.
- Conservation of Energy – The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has recently declared that they are going to implement their new Real Time Energy Management program (RTEM). The program employs sensors, smart meters and big data analytics to enhance the energy usage of commercial buildings.
- Transportation – the winner of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge Columbus will use its $40 million prizes partially on marshalling electric self-driving shuttles which will operate in connection with a new rapid transit centre. It will let better vehicle to vehicle data trade and communication with other transport infrastructure including traffic signals.
- Public safety – the capital of Denmark Copenhagen has reinstalled smart energy-efficient LED lights in more than fifty percent of their street which is connected with city’s network. This smart lights can automatically adjust their brightness based on the availability of daylight or moonlight or when they sense the presence of walkers or cyclists.
Energy
The traditional power distribution system, as well as pattern of energy utilities of U.S, are going to change with the deployment of IoT.
Along with the big power plant and high voltage transmission lines now there are community solar power, wind farms, micro grids, battery storage and these are to be connected to the existing grid system. To link up a transaction between the producers and the buyers could be using block chain technology needs IoT.
NYPA, The New York State Power Authority is the largest public power organization in the U.S. it has 16 power generating facilities of its own and is supplies 15 to 20 percent of the daily electricity of New York State. NYPA has now connected its power generating machines to analytics software through sensors. This program which is running at their Central Smart Operations centre in White Plains is able to provide a predictive alarm for possible power failures with precision weeks before these happen.
Agriculture
IoT is also revolutionizing agriculture industry. Innovative projects called “Freight Farms” of Boston makes fully mechanised “farms in a box” which is built inside a 40ftX8ftX9.5ft shipping containers. Freight Farms use The Connected Product Management platform of LogMeIn’s Xively (CPM) to build an agricultural unit of growing leafy vegetables inside those containers. By using sensors and connected technologies these farms in a box environment could be controlled so that herbs and leafy greens could grow on schedule and the yield of every week could be predicted. They hope that this will completely change the scenario of agriculture from “when it’s going to rain or when the rain stops” to a completely automated environment and predictable output.
The data generated through this process is also helping others to increase their yield.
Healthcare
Healthcare is also witnessing changes in its business models. A Swedish medical company called Aerocrine makes medical devices that help doctors to diagnose and treat patients with asthma. Two devices Aerocrine makes Niox Mino and Niox Vero are similar to that breathalyser with which police measure blood alcohol level, but these two devices produced by Aerocrine can also measure the precise amount of fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) which is an important biological indicator of airway inflammation. The exact amount of FeNO in the blood of a patient helps the doctor to understand asthma is the cause of the patient’s illness, it can also determine the steroid responsiveness.
Every Niox Mino device of Aeromarine’s is connected to computers and they are now using Microsoft Azure Cloud Services to collect telemetry data from these connected devices and then send the data for analysis.
These data permit the company to observe whether devices are operating within their normal parameters – in specific weather condition, for e.g. at a very high or low level of humidity and it sends an alarm to the customer care team.
Consumer Goods
IoT has also ushered in a new era in the sector of consumer packaged goods (CPG). The famous British beverage company Diageo, who makes Johnnie Walker Scotch whisky is now using smart bottles for their prime Johnnie Walker Blue Label whisky.
These smart bottles have a printed sensor tag produced with the OpenSense technology of Thinfilm Electronics. It is able to detect the sealed and opened condition of the bottle. OpenSense uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology of smartphones’ which allow Diageo to communicate with consumers in a personalized manner.
The personalized communication ranges from guiding consumers to decide on which bottle of whisky to buy and how to best enjoy the product.
The trends are shown in the use of Internet of Things
- The technology of LPWA will go mainstream with a number of use cases and projects
- Regulatory compliance along with security will become top priorities
- Bigger business will implement more as-a-service-models and also welcome IoT as-a-service solutions
- The convergence of Blockchain and IoT will rise
- Artificial Intelligence and data analytics become more and more important in the era of IoT
- The growth of the industrial internet, IT and OT will be hampered by the concern over cyber security
- The consumer sector will start its rapid growth in using IoT
- In the healthcare and industrial market wearables will increase very fast
- There will be a lot of changes in the government sectors on the use of IoT and this will move towards to use cases of IoT with immediate advantages.
- The most of the investment in IoT will be done by Industry 4.0 and manufacturing and will motivate the growth of the Internet of Robotic Things, Fog computing and 5G.
- The growth of global installed base of IoT endpoints will increase from 14.9 billion to more than 82 billion at the end of 2025.
- Global spending on the Internet of Things will increase at a rate of 15.6% till 2020.
- The hardware market of IoT will spend a total amount of $400 billion at the end of 2020.
- Consumer Internet of Things (CIoT) purchases will move from fourth to the third position at the end of 2020.
- The investment in smart homes by the consumers will double within 2020 to an expected amount of $36 billion
- The global market for IoT services will grow at a rate of 24% till 2020.
- The industrial market of Internet of Things is expected to grow to $123.89 billion at the end of 2020.
- Within 2019 at least 75% manufacturers of IoT will enhance their security and privacy capacity.
