NEC pushes interoperability of smart city tech

NEC Laboratories Europe has teamed up with four other ETSI members to initiate a new ETSI Industry Specification Group on Context Information Management (ISG CIM), together with the Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) organization.

The ISG CIM will specify open standards for the context information management layer, running “on top” of IoT platforms, enabling implementation of context-aware behavior in smart applications.

This context information management layer accesses and updates information coming from different sources (IoT networks and information systems) that comprise the semantics of information, including data source, time of validity, ownership and many more.

This will extend the interoperability of applications, helping smart cities to integrate their existing services and enable new third-party services.

Cities are striving to use digital services to advance the quality of life of their residents, the efficiency of their operations, the growth of their economies and to increase their sustainability.

At the moment, telecommunication systems, city infrastructure databases, car traffic management systems, and new Internet of Things (IoT) solutions all have their own specifications, and smart cities are held back by lack of interoperability for exchange of information between these platforms — which the new ISG CIM aims to overcome.

A focus of the group will be collaboration with other standardization activities in related areas, including ETSI TC SmartM2M and ETSI PP oneM2M. Groups such as EIP-SCC, W3C or ITU-T, and open source IoT software platforms such as FIWARE and OM2M will be closely consulted.

The goal is to interoperate and to re-use existing work as much as possible. The ISG CIM work is intended to align with the EU’s standardization policies for the Digital Single Market.

The five ETSI members of the new ISG CIM are Easy Global Market, imec, NEC, Orange and Telefonica. Beyond the initial focus of smart cities, the approach will be transferable to other applications, such as smart agriculture and smart industry.

Organizations from all areas are welcome to join the ISG CIM initiative — non-ETSI as well as ETSI members, including research organizations, software houses and system integrators, SMEs, industrial partners, city groups and other stakeholders.