Internet of Everything

Book excerpt: This book focuses on the Internet of Everything and related fields. The Internet of Everything adds connectivity and intelligence to just about every device, giving it special functions. The book provides a common platform for integrating information from heterogeneous sources. However, this can be quite reductive, as the Internet of Everything provides links not only among things, but also data, people, and business processes. The evolution of current sensor and device networks, with strong interactions between people and social environments, will have a dramatic impact on everything from city planning, first responders, the military and health. Such a shared ecosystem will allow for the interaction between data, sensor inputs and heterogeneous systems. Semantics is a fundamental component of this since semantic technologies are able to provide the necessary bridge between different data representations, and to solve terminology incongruence. Integrating data from distributed devices, sensor networks, social networks and biomedical instruments requires, first of all, the systematization of the current state of the art in such fields. Then, it is necessary to identify a common action thread to actually merge and homogenize standards and techniques applied in such a heterogeneous field. The exact requirements of an Internet of Everything environment need to be precisely identified and formally expressed, and finally, the role of modern computing paradigms, such as Cloud and Fog Computing, needs to be assessed with respect to the requirements expressed by an Internet of Everything ecosystem.