Technology standards body OneM2M has launched an initiative to promote sustainability via IoT technologies and open-standard systems.

The industrial IoT can add $14tn of economic value to the global economy by 2030 according to the World Economic Forum’s Guidelines for Sustainability. However, while technology driven change can be a tremendous driver for value creation, some of its side effects, including wasteful usage patterns and throwaway technology, can undermine total gains.

This highlights why organisations need to factor first- and second-order sustainability principles in their technology and design choices.

Since 2012, OneM2M has led a multi-national, open and collaborative approach to create an extensible standard for IoT systems. From the outset, participants recognised the importance of defining a general-purpose architecture applicable to a wide range of application domains. The intention was to avoid competing standardisation efforts at the technical and national levels.

OneM2M also encourages interoperability by helping developers reuse existing and established technologies, some of which are specific to individual industry domains. Its principles align with sustainability objectives that seek to reduce duplicative efforts while prolonging the usefulness of legacy investments and fostering economies of scale.

The body is now launching an industry facing initiative on sustainability. It aims to promote the beneficial impact of IoT systems, the importance of open-standards and the significant role that the OneM2M standard has in improving the sustainability of IoT deployments.

“The concept received strong cross-member support when first discussed and reflects the priority that corporations are putting on this issue,” said Dale Seed, convenor of OneM2M’s sustainability initiative, from Interdigital and Convida Wireless. “By launching this initiative, we want to help businesses build sustainability using IoT systems. We also want to show them how to choose sustainable technologies and prepare for the new innovation possibilities that these technologies enable.”

On top of its member base, participation in the sustainability initiative is open to the wider technology and software services communities. This is because most IoT systems rely on partnerships among suppliers along business and operational value chains. Since the IoT and associated technologies such as AI, cloud computing and mobile internet are enablers of digital transformation, the initiative also aims to work across industry domains.

“Mobile networks and IoT technologies are among the topmost candidates for enabling sustainability in the way that organisations manage their environmental footprint,” said Enrico Scarrone, steering committee chair at OneM2M. “This new initiative offers a way to help organisations build IoT systems based on an open standards framework that is scalable and minimises waste by reusing established technologies and legacy systems.”

Building on the contributions of more than 250 members organisations, OneM2M specifications provide a framework to support end-to-end IoT systems, applications and services. The horizontal architecture and framework for its technical specifications have been developed in an open and collaborative environment, with a clear governance framework. These factors facilitate trust in its specifications, cross-vendor interoperability tests and certification efforts.

OneM2M is a global standards initiative that covers requirements, architecture, API specifications, security and interoperability for M2M and IoT technologies. It was formed in 2012 and consists of eight standards development organisations: Arib (Japan), Atis (USA), CCSA (China), Etsi (Europe), TIA (USA), TSDSI (India), TTA (Korea) and TTC (Japan), together with industry fora or consortia and more than 200 member organisations. Its specifications provide a framework to support applications and services such as the smart grid, connected car, home automation, public safety and health.