Internet of Things - Government Applications

IoT supports the development of smart nations and smart cities. This includes enhancement of infrastructure previously discussed (e.g., healthcare, energy, transportation, etc.), defense, and also the engineering and maintenance of communities.

City Planning and Management

Governing bodies and engineers can use IoT to analyze the often complex aspects of city planning and management. IoT simplifies examining various factors such as population growth, zoning, mapping, water supply, transportation patterns, food supply, social services, and land use. It gathers detailed data in these areas and produces more valuable and accurate information than current analytics given its ability to actually “live” with people in a city.

Smart trashcans in New York tell garbage collectors when they need to be emptied. They optimize trash service by ensuring drivers only make necessary stops, and drivers modify their route to reduce fuel consumption.

In the area of management, IoT supports cities through its implementation in major services and infrastructure such as transportation and healthcare. It also aids in other key areas like water control, waste management, and emergency management. Its real-time and detailed information facilitate more prompt decisions in contrast to the traditional process plagued by information lag, which can be critical in emergency management.

Standard state services are also improved by IoT, which can automate otherwise slow processes and trim unnecessary state expenses; for example, it can automate motor vehicle services for testing, permits, and licensing.

IoT also aids in urban improvement by skipping tests or poor research, and providing functional data for how the city can be optimized. This leads to faster and more meaningful changes.

Creating Jobs

IoT offers thorough economic analysis. It makes previous blind spots visible and supports better economic monitoring and modeling. It analyzes industry and the marketplace to spot opportunities for growth and barriers.

National Defense

National threats prove diverse and complicated. IoT augments armed forces systems and services, and offers the sophistication necessary to manage the landscape of national defense. It supports better protection of borders through inexpensive, high performance devices for rich control and observation.

IoT automates the protection tasks typically spread across several departments and countless individuals. It achieves this while improving accuracy and speed.

Internet of Things - Consumer Applications

Consumers benefit personally and professionally from the optimization and data analysis of IoT. IoT technology behaves like a team of personal assistants, advisors, and security. It enhances the way we live, work, and play.

Home

IoT takes the place of a full staff −

• Butler − IoT waits for you to return home, and ensures your home remains fully prepared. It monitors your supplies, family, and the state of your home. It takes actions to resolve any issues that appear.
• Chef − An IoT kitchen prepares meals or simply aids you in preparing them.
• Nanny − IoT can somewhat act as a guardian by controlling access, providing supplies, and alerting the proper individuals in an emergency.
• Gardner − The same IoT systems of a farm easily work for home landscaping.
• Repairman − Smart systems perform key maintenance and repairs, and also request them.
• Security Guard − IoT watches over you 24/7. It can observe suspicious individuals miles away, and recognize the potential of minor equipment problems to become disasters well before they do.

This smart, connected stove from Whirlpool allows two different heat settings on the same surface, remote monitoring, and remote control.

Work

A smart office or other workspace combines customization of the work environment with smart tools. IoT learns about you, your job, and the way you work to deliver an optimized environment. This results in practical accommodations like adjusting the room temperature, but also more advanced benefits like modifying your schedule and the tools you use to increase your output and reduce your work time. IoT acts as a manager and consultant capable of seeing what you cannot.

Play

IoT learns as much about you personally as it does professionally. This enables the technology to support leisure −

• Culture and Night Life − IoT can analyze your real-world activities and response to guide you in finding more of the things and places you enjoy such as recommending restaurants and events based on your preferences and experiences.
• Vacations − Planning and saving for vacations proves difficult for some, and many utilize agencies, which can be replaced by IoT.
• Products and Services − IoT offers better analysis of the products you like and need than current analytics based on its deeper access. It integrates with key information like your finances to recommend great solutions.

Internet of Things - Common Uses

IoT has applications across all industries and markets. It spans user groups from those who want to reduce energy use in their home to large organizations who want to streamline their operations. It proves not just useful, but nearly critical in many industries as technology advances and we move towards the advanced automation imagined in the distant future.

Engineering, Industry, and Infrastructure

Applications of IoT in these areas include improving production, marketing, service delivery, and safety. IoT provides a strong means of monitoring various processes; and real transparency creates greater visibility for improvement opportunities.

The deep level of control afforded by IoT allows rapid and more action on those opportunities, which include events like obvious customer needs, nonconforming product, malfunctions in equipment, problems in the distribution network, and more.

Example

Joan runs a manufacturing facility that makes shields for manufacturing equipment. When regulations change for the composition and function of the shields, the new appropriate requirements are automatically programmed in production robotics, and engineers are alerted about their approval of the changes.

Government and Safety

IoT applied to government and safety allows improved law enforcement, defense, city planning, and economic management. The technology fills in the current gaps, corrects many current flaws, and expands the reach of these efforts. For example, IoT can help city planners have a clearer view of the impact of their design, and governments have a better idea of the local economy.

Example

Joan lives in a small city. She’s heard about a recent spike in crime in her area, and worries about coming home late at night.

Local law enforcement has been alerted about the new “hot” zone through system flags, and they’ve increases their presence. Area monitoring devices have detected suspicious behavior, and law enforcement has investigated these leads to prevent crimes.

Home and Office

In our daily lives, IoT provides a personalized experience from the home to the office to the organizations we frequently do business with. This improves our overall satisfaction, enhances productivity, and improves our health and safety. For example, IoT can help us customize our office space to optimize our work.

Example

Joan works in advertising. She enters her office, and it recognizes her face. It adjusts the lighting and temperature to her preference. It turns on her devices and opens applications to her last working points.

Her office door detected and recognized a colleague visiting her office multiple times before she arrived. Joan’s system opens this visitor’s messages automatically.

Health and Medicine

IoT pushes us towards our imagined future of medicine which exploits a highly integrated network of sophisticated medical devices. Today, IoT can dramatically enhance medical research, devices, care, and emergency care. The integration of all elements provides more accuracy, more attention to detail, faster reactions to events, and constant improvement while reducing the typical overhead of medical research and organizations.

Example

Joan is a nurse in an emergency room. A call has come in for a man wounded in an altercation. The system recognized the patient and pulls his records. On the scene, paramedic equipment captures critical information automatically sent to the receiving parties at the hospital. The system analyzes the new data and current records to deliver a guiding solution. The status of the patient is updated every second in the system during his transport. The system prompts Joan to approve system actions for medicine distribution and medical equipment preparation.

IoT - Media, Marketing, & Advertising

The applications of IoT in media and advertising involve a customized experience in which the system analyzes and responds to the needs and interests of each customer. This includes their general behavior patterns, buying habits, preferences, culture, and other characteristics.

Marketing and Content Delivery

IoT functions in a similar and deeper way to current technology, analytics, and big data. Existing technology collects specific data to produce related metrics and patterns over time, however, that data often lacks depth and accuracy. IoT improves this by observing more behaviors and analyzing them differently.

• This leads to more information and detail, which delivers more reliable metrics and patterns.
• It allows organizations to better analyze and respond to customer needs or preferences.
• It improves business productivity and strategy, and improves the consumer experience by only delivering relevant content and solutions.

Improved Advertising

Current advertising suffers from excess and poor targeting. Even with today's analytics, modern advertising fails. IoT promises different and personalized advertising rather than one-size-fitsall strategies. It transforms advertising from noise to a practical part of life because consumers interact with advertising through IoT rather than simply receiving it. This makes advertising more functional and useful to people searching the marketplace for solutions or wondering if those solutions exist.