Isee PR, Author at Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF)

White Paper: Two of a kind: Using open standards to develop successful digital twin strategies

Posted on: December 4, 2024

Digital twin technologies are transforming the way smart cities are planned and managed, enabling more informed decision making and data driven urban development. However, achieving their full potential requires secure, interoperable frameworks that support seamless communication and collaboration.

This white paper delves into how the OCF Secure IP Device Framework provides a robust foundation for digital twin ecosystems. By leveraging open standards, it ensures interoperability across diverse systems, enhances data security, and eliminates vendor lock-in.

Discover how OCF’s innovative approach enables smarter urban planning, optimises resource usage, and contributes to the development of inclusive, sustainable smart cities aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Read the white paper here.

OCF publishes Matter bridge to strengthen smart home interoperability

Posted on: June 5, 2024

5^th June 2024: The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) published an update to its Secure IP Device Framework to bridge with the Matter device ecosystem. The update enables OCF and Matter devices to coexist and interact within the same smart home, strengthening interoperability, enhancing the user experience and improving return on investment for the homeowner.

“Full smart home and building automation has always been our priority, and is only possible through interoperability,” comments Brian Bishop, OCF President. “The explosion in IoT innovation, frameworks, regulations and more has created fragmentation, making interoperability a challenge. Bridging different ecosystems is a key step in addressing this, enabling Matter devices to be onboarded and managed within an OCF smart home network, and vice versa. This gives consumers and installers the choice, flexibility, and enhanced smart home experience they crave.”

The OCF-Matter bridge is composed of derived models that map connections between the two standards, enabling the devices to speak the same language and appear on the same network. This development is also relevant to support the convergence between residential and commercial buildings as infrastructure projects adopt unified building management systems and work towards cognitive buildings.

“The Connectivity Standards Alliance is proud to see initiatives like this as a result of the efforts from our mutual members,” said Tobin Richardson, President & CEO, Connectivity Standards Alliance. “The announcement of the OCF-Matter Bridge exemplifies our shared commitment to reducing barriers to interoperability and enabling opportunities for connectivity and innovation across diverse devices and platforms.”

Learn more about how OCF is enabling secure IoT interoperability in smart homes, buildings and cities.

Full details on the OCF-Matter specification can also be found here.

About Open Connectivity Foundation

The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) is a global, member-driven technical standards development organization. Its 500+ members are working to enable trust, interoperability, and secure communication between IP-connected IoT devices and services. It does this by fostering collaboration between stakeholders across the IoT ecosystem to deliver the freely-available ISO/IEC specifications, including the Secure IP Device Framework, its open-source reference implementation, and an industry-recognized certification program. This enables innovative new secure use cases and user experiences, reduces development costs, integration complexity and time to market, and simplifies regulatory compliance to IoT security and privacy baselines.

OCF members work across the enterprise layers of infrastructure, applications, and data. They collaborate to co-create and deploy systems in an open and standardized way, enabling devices to communicate over IP, regardless of form factor, operating system, service provider, transport technology, or ecosystem.

The vertical-agnostic technology has already seen significant adoption in the smart home sector and is now enabling the transition to secure, intelligent, Building Automation Systems (BAS) based on IP connectivity networks.

Adoption of OCF’s standard grows with Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) recognition

Posted on: February 14, 2024

14 February 2024 – The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) has announced that its Secure IP Device Framework (ISO/IEC 30118) has been adopted as a national standard in India. The standard, developed by a joint global collaborative effort, has been accredited by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), demonstrating the commitment of the Indian government to enabling trust, interoperability, and secure communication in its rapidly growing smart home and smart city ecosystems.

“We are excited to announce the adoption of the OCF Framework as a national standard in India. We have completed this adoption process following rigorous consultation and analysis,” said Ankur Basal, OCF India Forum member and Convenor for the BIS-LITD27 Work Group. “This recognition from the Indian government reinforces the credibility and reliability of the standard to play a significant role in supporting India’s aspirations for a more digitally connected society to support the wider realization of the Smart City Mission program in India.”

Strengthening IoT interoperability through standardization

India is working to deliver over 100 smart cities across the country to solve challenges associated with rapid urbanization. Smart cities can solve wider societal challenges such as transport management, healthcare, and energy consumption by providing and utilizing more accurate and up to date information, allowing everyone from governments to consumers to make more informed use of resources.

The OCF standard is poised to help solve these problems in India, as it provides businesses the opportunity to develop IoT technology based on OCF standards, ensuring interoperability between devices designed for use in smart homes and smart buildings. The standard will also support nationally connected smart city infrastructure as it is interoperable with industry standards such as oneM2M and MQTT which are currently in use. The OCF has several pilot projects for smart traffic management, health care, green energy and smart lighting in progress.

“We are pleased that the OCF Framework has been selected as a national standard in India as governments across the globe continue to realize the need to develop open infrastructure supporting smart city and smart home development,” comments Brian Bishop, OCF President. “This announcement showcases the potential for smart device innovation to be driven at a regional level as the OCF standard allows SMEs to create products, providing local governments in India the opportunity to develop new supply chains.”

An opportunity for national growth

The ability to use the Secure IP Device Framework ensures that future Indian IoT products and solutions will be secure by design and fit for a global market. OCF has done the legwork to map the standard to key industry and government IoT security baselines around the world. This means Indian developers can compile their compliance to IoT security baselines, as they will have already aligned with security requirements from standards such as NIST 8529, CAC2 Conveners, ENISA IoTSec, UK IoT Requirements and ETSI IoT Baseline Requirements through OCF certification.

Open Connectively Foundation and its members are ensuring that the interoperability needed for the Internet of Things exists, in order to create seamless, amazing experiences for end users. The OCF Certification Program includes conformance testing to ensure robust and secure connectivity, and to help manufacturers create products that “just work” with other OCF Certified IoT devices regardless of their form factors, operating systems, service providers or transports. India’s adoption of the OCF standard ensures clear routes for manufacturers are in place to allow them to create flexible products at scale.

OCF is the global, member-driven technical standards development organization working to enable trust, interoperability, and secure communication between IP-connected IoT devices and services.

Learn more about how OCF is enabling secure communications in smart cities and government infrastructure.

About Open Connectivity Foundation

DPC & Enturi wind energy data transparency project adopts OCF standard

Posted on: September 18, 2023

18 September, 2023 – Smart city and digital transformation specialists, Data Performance Consultancy (DPC), and wind turbine pioneer Enturi, have announced their partnership for a standards-based wind turbine and data management project. The collaboration will adopt the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) Secure IP Device Framework and pair Enturi’s wind turbine with DPC’s trusted data expertise to support both businesses and individuals in achieving their sustainability goals through the use of trusted and transparent data.

DPC is supporting the integration of sensors into Enturi’s portable and decentralised wind turbines. The turbines can then connect to DPC’s cloud platform to manage the secure communication and management of data. This approach enables:

A customer application to control the turbines remotely and access live and historical data, a current challenge for the industry.
Preventative maintenance via real-time data analysis.
Data analysis to monitor and understand the impact of decisions on journeys to net zero.
Transparency of data to, for example, open up data access for carbon accounting as part of companies’ decarbonization journeys.

Brian Bishop, CEO of DPC and OCF President commented: “Our work with Enturi is a perfect example of how a standardised approach to connectivity and trusted data is enhancing strategies across industries. As the renewable energy industry innovates, both organisations and consumers must have complete confidence that their data is safe. By using the OCF framework, DPC is able to not only comply with UK green energy metering requirements, but with ISO/IEC standards to ensure the secure communication of wind energy data.”

In February 2023, Enturi was awarded £98,000 of Innovate UK funding to accelerate system development through advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation and rapid prototyping. Alex Shakeshaft, CEO and Co-Founder of Enturi, adds: “Monitoring and reporting on decarbonization in a secure yet transparent way is a huge challenge for the renewable energy industry. We are thrilled to collaborate with DPC to ensure both organisations and individuals can easily monitor and report on their sustainability goals. Our vision is to diversify clean technologies to enable businesses and communities to access renewable energy solutions to make significant contributions towards net zero goals, energy security, and energy costs.”

DPC is a Gold Member of OCF, a member-driven technical standards development organisation working to enable IoT devices and services to communicate through a trusted open internet protocol (IP) framework which dynamically aligns with baselines for IoT security and privacy regulations, offering peace of mind and enriched experiences. For more information about the OCF or to become a member, please visit the website.

-ENDS-

For further media information, please contact Fraser Kay: fraser@iseepr.co.uk / or on +44 (0) 113 350 1922

About the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF)

About Data Performance Consultancy Limited

The company has been carrying out research on smart cities and digital twins for over 10 years and currently sits on UKRI’s panel of experts, representing the UK Government on Smart City Missions and advising other governments to develop strategy and policy in this area. They have built a core architecture for a digital twin framework called Buttress and a front end application layer called nodeStream.

nodeStream is an enterprise-grade web3-native management tool that enables enterprises to gain full-depth insight into their supply chain. Most importantly nodeStream is designed to streamline supply-chain interactions saving time whilst improving visibility. For SME suppliers it simplifies and streamlines regulatory and procurement activities, saving time and maximising opportunities.

Key features:

Deep visibility into supply chains through validation and automation.
Many powerful, trustless interorganizational workflows for validation, compliance and productivity.
NSAudit is a DLT-backed enterprise audit tool that matches individuals to actions.
Powerful tools for interacting with suppliers through real-time workflows.
Suppliers typically interact with Nodestream daily.
Multi-tenant, private cloud or on-premise data hosting.
Mint unique NFTs for suppliers to own, to reflect attainment of procurement statuses.
Connectivity to the only ISO approved standard for IoT security.

The system connects disparate data sources, effectively breaking down organisational silos. It also includes a secure data governance and provenance model in which data is shared based on policy not just roles or attributes. The system allows organisations to control data at an asset level, share with their partners in real time and manage the whole of its lifecycle. The use of the DLT also provides governance, in that data is immutable, which is especially relevant for quality inspections.

About Enturi

Enturi Solutions is a pioneering UK start-up developing game-changing distributed renewable energy systems for a plethora of off-grid applications. Building on 2 years of design work, Enturi has developed and validated a pioneering patent-pending micro wind turbine design. Its unique design maximises efficiency. With this core technology, Enturi is developing portable distributed energy systems to maximise accessibility to renewable energy systems, as well as mitigate the current challenges associated with wind energy generation. Enturi aims to address energy diversity and security challenges, accelerate clean energy accessibility, as well as make significant contributions towards the decarbonisation targets.

Moving forward: OCF Korea’s smart bus shelter and smart crosswalk solutions

Posted on: April 17, 2023

By SB Kang, Director of Strategic Business Planning, Yungchang

The Open Connectivity Foundation is sharpening its focus on smart cities.

OCF Korea Forum member, Yungchang Co., Ltd., supported by ETRI, has developed smart bus shelter and smart crosswalk solutions using OCF standards. Following successful development, the solutions are set to be installed in cities across Korea through a series of government contracts.

Enhancing the public transport experience and improving road safety

Yungchang’s smart bus shelter aims to encourage public transport use by enhancing the user experience, improving the urban landscape and ensuring passenger safety. The smart LED powered bus shelter uses Artificial Internet of Things (AIoT) technology to display real time arrival information. Other features include air conditioning and purification, and heated seating. The bus shelter is also equipped with safety features, including intelligent alarm systems that provide passengers with voice guidance from a control center in the event of an emergency. These features combine to ensure passengers can easily access transportation information, enjoy adjustable temperature controls and receive immediate support in the event of an emergency.

The smart crosswalk aims to prevent traffic accidents, promoting both driver and pedestrian safety through features such as flashing road studs and floor lighting to ensure the crossing is immediately visible to pedestrians. A CCTV system is also included to detect vulnerable pedestrians needing more time to cross, this will automatically trigger an extension in the signal time to ensure adequate time for safe crossing.

A limitless choice of IoT devices

Yunchang applied the OCF specifications to generic IoT devices used in smart bus shelters through a process of converting the data received from a generic device into the virtual OCF protocol.

This means the time spent on equipment selection has been reduced. Specific devices requested by customers can also be controlled and managed as IoT devices, and the advantages of the OCF specifications can be applied.

Ensuring secure development

OCF’s ISO/IEC specifications enable secure IoT communication over Internet Protocol (IP), offering a holistic approach to the management and optimization of urban infrastructure. Using the OCF Secure IP Device Framework, designed to enable secure end-to-end implementations that encompass device-to-device, device-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud, made it simple for Yungchang to apply the OCF specifications to both the bus shelter and crosswalk.

In the case of these two solutions, comprehensive security measures were required specifically for the lightweight, low-powered IoT devices used. The OCF standard is ideal in this scenario, guaranteeing security and stability even with lightweight devices.

Thanks to traceable links between security legislation, and the standard’s compliance to both national and international legislation, the implementation will comply with legislation not only in Korea, but worldwide.

By using the OCF standard, solutions will continue operating seamlessly in future as the standard will evolve with changing industrial communications standards. As the OCF standard is also independent of any consumer ecosystem, the infrastructure and associated data for the two solutions can be controlled, managed and regulated according to local Korean requirements.

The open and interoperable nature of the standard also gives solution developers the ability to control multiple smart city projects within an integrated platform. This enables information from multiple projects to be aggregated and additional services to be provided.

Implications for the wider IoT industry

With new IoT technologies being created at speed, the wider industry is rapidly evolving. Top of mind for IoT developers is the need for devices to connect with the cloud to control numerous devices and utilize data effectively. In their efforts to resolve this challenge the variety of IoT devices and applications will increase, making a rise in the number of low-power IoT devices inevitable. With this in mind, the benefits of truly open IoT standards securely supporting these low powered devices cannot be understated.

Yungchang’s smart bus shelter and smart cross walk solutions demonstrate the benefits the OCF specifications bring to the development of smart cities and are a step towards the OCF becoming the standard of choice for infrastructure in the smart city environment.

Learn more about how the OCF Secure IP Device Framework can enable secure end-to end IP communication securely and swiftly.