NIST AND PARTNERS LAUNCH INTERNATIONAL WORKING GROUP TO DEVELOP CONSENSUS FRAMEWORK FOR SMART ARCHITECTURES

The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and several partners have launched a new international technical working group that will develop a white paper defining common architectural principles and a vocabulary for smart city technologies. In consultation with city stakeholders, the group will do a comparative analysis of existing architectural efforts and produce a framework document that can be used to bring greater coherence to standardization activities taking place internationally in various standards developing organizations. Other international partners supporting the initiative are the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP), the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) and others.

 

It is planned conducting seminars to start the Project. Participation in the actibities is open to everyone. The kick-off workshop for the initiative is planned on 24-25 March 2016 in Gaithersburg (Maryland, USA) in conjunction with the NIST Global City Teams Challenge and on 14-15 April 2016 in Rome, Italy hosted by ENEA (the Italian National Agency for New Technologies). Both workshops will have similar formats with in-depth presentations from experts from different geographic regions. NIST has set up a collaboration website (https://pages.nist.gov/smartcitiesarchitecture/) where you can find more detailed information about the Project and seminars (https://pages.nist.gov/smartcitiesarchitecture/events/kickoffworkshops/). Moreover, on the website there is a possibility for interested parties to be informed and discuss the project.

 

Chris Greer, director of NIST’s Smart Grid and Cyber-Physical Systems Program, commented “The growth of the smart cities market is currently hindered by ICT deployments that are customized and not fully interoperable or scalable, as well as by the lack of convergence around architectural design principles and a common language / taxonomy. We want to enable the full spectrum of standards activities to cooperate and harmonize their efforts to enable smart city solutions that meet the needs of modern communities.”