ETSI sets standards for smart city data context

The vast amount of data created by a smart city data risks being of limited use unless it is supported by context, according to European standards body ETSI, which is attempting to formalise contextual information.

ETSI said:

Data without context are meaningless. The context seems obvious to humans: the temperature sensor is attached to an air-conditioner in the house, the database of vehicle registration numbers is used by a policeman in the city, the tweet comes from a person who has just witnessed something interesting and the webcam shows a particular city street with its name embedded in the video frames.

Taken away from its context, each piece of information is nearly useless. And software searching for useful information may only find it if the context is available – published with the data.

It is proposing A context information management [CIM] system which would act as a clearing-house for publishing, discovering, monitoring and maintaining data according to relevant contexts for smart applications.

Towards this, ETSI has created the ‘Industry specification group on cross-sector context information management’ (ISG CIM) – which will first meet in Sophia Antipolis on 9-10 February.

“With the rapid development of technologies such as big data, semantic web, complex workflow or autonomous decision making, the need for interoperable context information is becoming huge”, said ISG CIM convenor Lindsay Frost. “The ISG CIM will specify protocols running on top of IoT platforms and allowing exchange of data together with its context, helping smart cities to integrate their existing services and enable new third-party services.”

Context will include: what is described by the data, what was measured, when, where, by what, the time of validity and ownership.

The ISG is intended to develop specifications for a common context information management API, data publication platforms and standard data models, said ETSI. It will work with ETSI’s SmartM2M technical committee and ‘oneM2M’ (a global standards initiative M2M and IoT comms).

Participation ISG CIM is open to all ETSI members as well as non-member organisations who signing ISG agreements. Those already in the group are listed here, and include Orange, Telefonica, NEC and IMEC.