Standards body OneM2M has published a whitepaper on IoT and sustainability to promote responsible design principles.

Co-written by industrial stakeholders, it describes the sustainability landscape, surveys potential demand for sustainability products and shows how different organisations are pursuing sustainability objectives. It illustrates the potential of IoT systems, while identifying a set of design principles for achieving sustainability goals more consistently across different industries.

These principles emphasise the value of designing for interoperability, modularity, re-use and scalability. Aided by the use of open standards, these principles can broaden adoption, trigger innovative uses of IoT for sustainability and deliver affordability through economies of scale.

According to studies by Climate Watch and the World Resources Institute, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of around 50 billion tonnes annually are one measure of the environmental aspects of sustainability. Almost three quarters of this total are due to fuel emissions in the transportation sector and energy consumption in industrial processes and residential and commercial buildings. IoT for industrial systems, smart buildings, smart cities and intelligent transportation systems map to the main contributors of GHG emissions.

There are other aspects to sustainability in the form of governance models and social equity. Business leaders and politicians are responding to the different sustainability challenges through a mix of policy interventions, new reporting frameworks, circular-economy strategies and technology. A common theme is the use of information to improve decision making and to make better use of resources.

In this regard, mobile networks and IoT technologies are among the topmost candidates for enabling sustainability. Moreover, four IoT capabilities – remote connectivity, low-power and low-cost devices, IoT data, and cross-silo applications – can help organisations manage their environmental footprint and to tackle different facets of the UN’s sustainability development goals.

In keeping with OneM2M’s inclusive approach to standardisation, organisations from different parts of the industry ecosystem and across the world contributed to this whitepaper. They include Adva Optical Networking, Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI), Centre for Development of Telematics (India), Convida Wireless, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, More-with-Mobile, Orange and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

“This whitepaper contains an informative collection of ideas on an important topic from a diverse set of companies and stakeholders taking part in the OneM2M sustainability initiative,” said Convida Wireless’ Dale Seed, vice-chair of OneM2M’s technical plenary. “Our intention is to inform commercial, policy, sustainability and technology audiences in two ways. The first is to demonstrate how IoT technologies can help society address sustainability challenges and meet sustainability goals. The second is to encourage IoT stakeholders to apply responsible IoT system design and deployment principles.”

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. Its horizontal architecture and technical specifications have been developed in an open and collaborative environment, with a clear governance framework.

Participation in OneM2M’s sustainability initiative is open to the wider technology and software services communities because IoT systems rely on partnerships among suppliers along business and operational value chains.

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 (GlobalPlatform) and more than 200 member organisations.