The Amazon spans 2.1 million square miles of rain forest spread over nine countries. And on its edges are miles of agricultural fields, whose farmers routinely burn in order to control pests and weeds, and to encourage new growth.

Brazil is the largest cattle exporter in the world with over 200 million head of cattle. Ranchers often set fires to clear land for grazing, reports the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. However, these long-practiced techniques have raised concerns of the threat that accidental forest fires could pose during drought years. Climate change, which is beginning to show its effects around the world, could exacerbate this threat.

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Global trade flows through shipping containers. Manufacturers depend on them to get raw materials in time and to ship finished products to market. IoT is being applied to monitor containers and make sure that their contents aren’t damaged or stolen.

Inter-modal containers

Containers have standardized dimensions, which lets transporters easily ship, stack and store them. There are over twenty million containers in motion right now. Containers are pre-filled which reduces the time that trucks need to get loaded. Their standard size allows them to be easily transferred between trucks, planes, ships and trains.

Global supply chains based on containers enable manufacturers to minimize their costs with ‘just-in-time’ inventory. This makes it important to track containers’ location and the condition of their contents.

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Robots and IoT devices are similar in that they both rely on sensors to understand their environment, rapidly process large streams of data and decide how to respond.

That’s where the similarities end. Most IoT applications handle well-defined tasks, whereas robots autonomously handle anticipated situations. Let’s consider both from six different vectors:

1. Sensor

• IoT – Binary output from stationary sensor. “Is the door open or closed?”
• Robots – Complex output from multiple sensors. “What is in front of me? How do I navigate around it?”

2. Processing

• IoT – Simple data stream of signals handled with well-known programming methods.
• Robots – Large complex data streams handled by neural network computing.

3. Mobility

• IoT – Sensors are stationary and signal processing is done in the cloud.
• Robots – The sensor laden robot is mobile and signal processing is done locally and autonomously.

4. Response

• IoT – The action to take in response to a situation is well defined.
• Robots – Multiple actions could be taken in response to a situation.

5. Learning

• IoT – The application typically does not ‘evolve’ on its own and develop new features.
• Robots – Machine learning and other techniques are used to let the robots ‘learn’ and increase their capacity to deal with new situations. E.g. self-driving cars collectively get smarter as more situations are deal with.

6. Design

• IoT – Stationary sensors. Processing done centrally where power is readily available. Need for communication channels between sensor and the cloud.
• Robots – Weight, size and power demand are important design considerations. Communication capability is less important.

Topology

IoT applications are centralized with edge devices with little intelligence of their own. Low cost sensors transmit signals to a control center in the cloud which analyzes the data stream and decides the action to take. The cost of the central hub can be amortized over thousands of sensor-based applications making IoT applications more affordable. Network connectivity and latency limit the range of applications that IoT can meet.

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Officials blamed a power surge for the blackout on Dec. 28th that left LaGuardia airport in the dark for about 45 minutes, grounding flights. A look at the trend of power outages at American airports shows a disturbing pattern and possibly sinister cause.

Background

Attacking an adversary’s infrastructure is asymmetrical warfare. It causes a lot of damage for a very small cost. Cyberattacks are an ideal weapon as they disguise who might be behind them, making retaliation much harder.  Attacks on the power grid for airports are especially devastating as they ground flights, stranding passengers and disrupting business nationwide. Just take a look at recent power outages:

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IoT is being weaponized. The same sensors, networks and real-time data analysis used monitoring classrooms can morph into weapons for targeted killing. How do such malicious drones operate and what can be done to protest against their airborne threat?

Background

Here are three data-points of weaponized drones.

1. The recent assassination attempt on the President of Venezuela with drones. “Aug 4, 2018. CARACAS, Venezuela — A drone attack caused pandemonium at a military ceremony where President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was speaking on Saturday, sending National Guard troops scurrying in what administration officials called an assassination attempt.”
2. The use of drones to shoot down incendiary kites in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ”IDF reservists to help; troops able to shoot down flying objects 40 seconds from detection”
3. Slaugtherbots. “A video by the Future of Life Institute and Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at Berkeley presenting a dramatized near-future scenario where swarms of inexpensive microdrones use artificial intelligence and facial recognition to assassinate political opponents based on preprogrammed criteria.”

How do they work?

Drones are aerial IoT devices. They’re mounted with sensors that relay their location, altitude and other sensor readings such as images to a back-end system or controller which determines what action the drone should take. Such drones have to remain within sight for a human control to operate them. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stipulates that Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) users must (1) Register their UAS with the FAA (2) Fly the UAS within visual line-of-sight. The examples above with the Venezuelan assassination attempt and shooting down incendiary kites both involve human controllers.

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Twelve boys and their coach trapped in a cave deep underground with dwindling air and the danger of being flooded by rising water levels. How did a determined international team find and rescue the boys? How did sophisticated geographical information systems (GIS), IoT sensors and 3D simulations assist the rescuers?

Tham Luang Nang Non is six mile long underground cave complex in Thailand’s Chiangrai province. A boy’s soccer team was reported missing in July 2018. Thai Navy SEAL divers' found them in a cave that could only be reached after a six hour underground journey in the dark, swimming through narrow tunnels and climbing boulders. An international rescue teams with experts from Thailand, China, Japan, Australia, the US and Britain were able to rescue them.

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Scott Pruitt, EPA Administrator’s assertion that “global warming might be beneficial” may be reassuring to some, but others living close to the coast prefer the safety of an early warning when they might be flooded from rising sea levels.

Predicting floods from storm surges, rain, hurricanes and tides over miles of coastline is hard. How do your monitor water levels over such a broad area? How can floods be predicted with these data streams? How can thousands of people be alerted?  The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) is pioneering an innovative approach that combines IoT sensors, advanced mapping and Alexa.

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently advised "consumers to throw away any store-bought romaine lettuce and warned restaurants not to serve it amid an E. coli outbreak that has sickened more than 50 people in several states."

This problem highlights the dangers of modern supply chains. They help lower costs and improve business efficiency, but they’re complex and a single failure can sicken people thousands of miles away. The food we eat and the medicines we use come from remote suppliers, transported in refrigerated trucks, and stored in different warehouses. How can perishable commodities be tracked from suppliers to customers? How can the temperature conditions during shipment be monitored to avoid contamination? How can spoilt products be quickly recalled even if they’re in transit or stored in a warehouse?

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Sea turtles have been survived for millions of years, but now face extinction.  as poachers. How do you protect sea turtles eggs on remote, miles-long beaches in developing countries from poachers working in the dark?

Global System for Mobile Communications, or GSM, enabled IoT trackers may provide an answer to this scourge.

Background

Poachers kill sea turtles for their shells and their eggs are considered a delicacy and aphrodisiac. Sad but true. The trade of sea turtle products is restricted, but that doesn’t stop poachers. Tracking this illegal trafficking is difficult. The transit routes and final destinations are unknown.

Sea turtle products are the second most frequently trafficked wildlife product smuggled from Latin America to the US. Eggs are a quarter of illegal imports and most originate in Mexico or Central America. This trade is devastating to turtle populations. A recent shipment of a thousand turtle eggs that was intercepted at the Mexico/U.S. border represented nearly 5 percent of the year’s total egg production for the beach from which they were poached!

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Most IoT systems assume there will be some form of connectivity. But what happens when there isn’t any Bluetooth, WiFi or cellular connectivity? R2D2, the adorable robot from Star Wars, may have the answer with the bird-like noises he used to communicate.

How can sensors share data when connectivity isn’t available? How can IoT devices be designed to last longer without being recharged? How can legacy equipment be retrofitted affordable to communicate with other devices?

Most IoT devices communicate through either a Bluetooth, WiFi, LoRaWAN, SIGfox or cellular connection. The mode chosen is determined by the size of the payload to be transmitted, distance to be traversed, and the power available to the transmitting device. Walls, other electronic equipment and conflicting radio signals also influences the selection of the protocol to be used. What’s needed is that can work in ‘noisy’ environments and work with very little power.

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President Ronald Reagan once advised “trust, but verify” about nuclear disarmament. The same could be said about some official information on public health and safety issues. Remember Flint, Michigan?

LeeAnne Walters is a mother of four in Flint, Michigan. She was alarmed when her entire family started losing clumps of hair and her twins kept breaking out in rashes, reported Mother Jones. The family was suffering from the effects of lead in Flint’s water supply. Frustrated with the city’s response, Walters contacted a manager at the EPA which helped unleash a chain of investigations into the crisis.

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It’s heartbreaking. Gun violence kills 93 Americans every day while politicians send their thoughts and prayers. 2017 has seen two of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.

How can technology help reduce mass shootings? How can shooters be authenticated before they can fire? How can the police be alerted when a large number of firearms are present at an unusual location? Can an excessive number of shots fired be prevented?

Background

Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world’s guns. And approximately one in three gunmen is American according to a study by Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama. Firearms are an $11 billion per year industry with over 300 million existing guns in circulation. About 40% of Americans say they own a gun or live in a household with one. A recent survey reports that the US has the highest rate of murder by firearms in the developed world. Mass shootings cost Americans over $229 billion per year.

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When people doubt that an election will be conducted fairly, their trust in the outcome and their leaders naturally erodes. That’s the challenge posed by electronic voting machines. Technology holds the promise of letting people vote more easily and remotely. But, they’re also prone to hacking and manipulation. How can trust be restored in voting machines and election results?

Voting demands the ultimate IoT machine (to borrow a line from BMW). The integrity of these machines with their combination of sensors, security and data analysis produce the results that impact every aspect of all our lives.

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Car designers do it with wind tunnels. Architects do it models. But how do you test the design of a complex IoT system?

It isn’t easy with potentially thousands of sensors sending millions of readings continuously. How do you check to make sure that your IoT design will work properly in real life? Check to make sure that different error conditions are handled properly, and corrective action taken on time?

Simulated IoT devices can eliminate the guesswork from designing complex systems.

Background

Dr. Michael Grieves at the University of Michigan first proposed the idea of a “digital twin”. A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical device to make sure that the design performs as intended. He defined Digital Twin Prototype (DTP) as an asset’s information. Such as a 3D model of the device, its Bill of Materials and Processes to fully describe the asset and how it should work. These digital proxies generate sensor readings and communicate just as their physical counterparts and help IoT designers with:

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Fires have laid to waste huge swaths of Northern California. The deadly blazes have burned through more than nearly 400 square miles forcing 100,000 people to evacuate, and destroying over 8,400 structures.

How do firefighters respond to such a disaster? Where are they dispatched? When and where are evacuations ordered? How can a fire being propelled by 78mph gusts of wind be contained? How do planes know where and when to deploy fire retardant?

Sensors, drones, fire-cams, crowdsourcing and geographical information systems all help minimize damage and deaths.

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Is it acceptable for someone to run over peaceful protesters? When new regulations being proposed say it is, perhaps it’s time for technologists to see how they can help.

Given recent tragedies, how can peaceful protesters be protected? How can technology help protect lives? Could a portable, IoT system help safeguard freedom of speech?

Background

The First Amendment is clear. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

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Tracking storms and weather patterns accurately has become even more critical as weather records fall like bowling pins.

What causes hurricanes? How are ocean temperatures monitored across thousands of square miles? What kinds of sensors are used? How is this data converted into actionable intelligence to save lives and protect property? What role does global warming have to play?

We should all know this given the devastation from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

What causes hurricanes?

Hurricanes are severe storms with winds that rotate at 74 miles per hour or more around a central, low-pressure core. They result from weather disturbances that pull in warm surface air to interact with warm seawater. Hurricanes occur close to the equator where the seawater is hot enough to power the storms and the rotation of the Earth makes them spin.

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Hurricane Harvey has dumped over 50 inches of water across Texas. Thousands of people displaced. Roads flooded. Communication channels disrupted.

How are relief efforts coordinated? How are emergency personnel given the information they need? How can data be collected with broken communication channels and little cellular coverage? How can information from multiple sources be aggregated and presented in an actionable form?

Here’s how Esri Disaster Response Program is helping first responders and the Texas Division of Emergency Management. Information on local conditions such as water levels, flood gauges, road closures and traffic conditions are essential to coordinate relief efforts.

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If you’ve been stuck in traffic, you’ll appreciate Atlanta’s innovative new approach to keep things moving smoothly.

Traffic jams are unpredictable and collecting real-time data over a large area is difficult. The City of Atlanta streamlines traffic with a city-wide system where every driver becomes a mobile traffic sensor and crowdsourced data improves traffic flow.

Background

The City of Atlanta was struck by what Atlanta Mayor Reed termed the single largest transportation disaster on March 30, 2017.  A bridge on one of the main traffic arteries into the city, I-85, collapsed due to a maliciously set fire from beneath. Traffic gridlock lasted for months. Atlanta which belongs to the 100 Resilient Cities program set to work. Stephanie Stuckey, Chief Resilience Office for Atlanta turned to the Esri Disaster Response Program, to find a way to ease the traffic burden. A partnership was formed with Esri, a global smart-mapping leader and Waze to build the foundation of Intelligent Transportation Systems.

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The installed capacity of solar power in the U.S. now exceeds all other forms of power generation.

Generating solar power at scale with thousands of panels requires new approaches to monitoring and management. Since 2004, SunPower has designed, constructed, managed and supplied high performance solar power plants around the world. More than 3 gigawatts of solar plants rely on SunPower technology today. 

How does SunPower monitor thousands of solar panels across hundreds of power plants? How are performance issues remotely diagnosed and troubleshot in real-time? How are false alerts distinguished from real ones? 

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Can rent-to-buy plans make IoT devices affordable for thousands who need them, but can't afford to buy one?

Solar panels can help African farmers with lighting and power, but are often out of reach. How can the purchase price be split into small installment payments that are manageable. How can IoT enable such a business model? How can low-cost devices communicate when both cellular and radio based transmitters aren't viable? How are such devices distributed and payments collected across a vast continent?

Angaza’s approach combines IoT devices enabled with SMS based installment payments. 

Background
Around 1.2 billion people live without access to electricity. Off-grid energy appliances and services can address this issue, especially in developing countries. The Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA) expects the off-grid energy and appliance market to be a $50 billion per year opportunity.

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It’s 2020, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is in decline. What happened? People whisper that it started in 2017 when net neutrality was killed.

In the spirit of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, here’s what may unfold if net neutrality becomes "pay to play."

Loss of net neutrality: The beginning

The regulations were changed with the promise of providing "better" internet access. Internet carriers were given free rein to charge what they liked for traffic on their networks. “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty carriers are free to rule at last,” exclaimed Bill Paider, a fictional carrier executive paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr. "We've even published a Carrier Code of Conduct to guide our improved public service!"

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Many industrial IoT systems have open doors that create unintended vulnerabilities. 

What information could be exposed by open communications protocols? How do hackers identify vulnerable systems? What security resources are available? How do IoT firewalls protect against such threats?

TCP Port 502 vulnerabilities

Many industrial systems use TCP Port 502, which allows two hosts to establish a connection and exchange streams of data. TCP guarantees delivery of data and that packets will be delivered on port 502 in the same order in which they were sent. This creates the risk of remote attackers to install arbitrary firmware updates via a MODBUS 125 function code to TCP port 502. Scans from services such as Shodan identify systems that have an open TCP port 502 that could be vulnerable.

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What could go wrong with IoT devices? A lot when it comes to dozens of such devices working close to one another if not tested for interoperability first. Is the connected thermostat interfering with the smart TV? Or has the IoT-enabled door lock been hacked through the security camera?

How do you to test if the smart appliances from different vendors work with your smart home ecosystem? Is one compromising the security of another? How do consumers really use their IoT devices?

Underwriters Laboratories (UL) uses a real home fitted with IoT appliances and devices as a testing lab to find out.

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The global seafood industry is over $190 billion. Millions of fishers take to the oceans each day to feed local communities and a growing global appetite for seafood.

How can the demand for fish be met while maintaining healthy oceans? A new IoT-based solution holds promise.

Background: The challenge of monitoring fishing boats

Over half of the world’s seafood is exported from developing countries. Much of the catch is from small fishing boats, which are difficult to monitor and protect. Commercial fishing in developing regions typically occurs within 30 miles from land. Establishing a communication channel that can support hundreds of fishing boats spread out over a large area is a challenge. Boats are small and lack dependable power. Devices have to be both affordable and rugged.

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Did you resolve to workout more this year? If you're like many, that resolution didn't last.

One way to improve and strengthen your resolve is to track your workouts. But manually tracking sessions is messy. How many drills were done? What weights were used? How well did you perform the exercises? Should any adjustments be made?

To help, PureCarbon has created IoT-enabled Delta Gloves. They help you keep your exercise resolutions and improve your workouts.

The Delta Gloves

The challenge with monitoring exercise workouts is that they require small sensors with low power requirements and the ability to work without connectivity. PureCarbon’s Delta Gloves use piezoresistive sensors, Bluetooth and advanced data analytics to track weights lifted, exercises performed and the number of reps performed.

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San Francisco depends on a thousand miles of sewers to keep the city running smoothly.

The city collects up to 500 million gallons of waste water in a day when it rains. This waste water is transported to one of three treatment plants where pollutants are removed before being discharged into San Francisco Bay.

Processing sewage is challenging in San Francisco because the city has the Pacific Ocean on three sides of it. During storm conditions, groundwater and storm water can overload the sewage system. Physical, chemical and biological processes remove contaminants from the waste water. This produces environmentally safe water and sewage sludge as a byproduct.

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A homeowner reports a robbery. His IoT-enabled pacemaker doesn’t indicate any change in heart rate during the robbery? Can investigators obtain that information from the service provider? Should they?

+ Also on Network World: Cops use pacemaker data to charge homeowner with arson, insurance fraud +

Issues of privacy increase as IoT sensors collect more information about us. What rights do individuals have over the information collected about them? Can the accuracy of sensor data be trusted?

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During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered people of Japanese descent, many American citizens, to be relocated to internment camps. Even those with as little as one-sixteenth Japanese blood were interned. Over 110,000 Japanese Americans from California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona were affected. Many had just six days to sell all their possessions before being interned!

President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation admitted that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."

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Power grids were bombed in World War II to cripple industrial output. Today, attacks against Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure causes even broader disruptions—without bombs.

The danger is real. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently published guidelines to “provide a strategic focus on security and enhance the trust framework that underpins the IoT ecosystem.” The report explains why security has to be a combined effort.

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