Moving from “Hourglass Architecture” to… “Classic Saucer Champagne Glass Architecture” for Smarter Cities…

BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) the National Standards Body of India, has taken the initiative for identifying standardization need with respect to India specific requirement for Unified, Secure & Resilient ICT Backbone for Smart Cities. For this purpose, the first phase of this work has been released in the form of pre-standardization report. The report contains the following three sections:

Last Mile Communication for M2M/IoT Applications in Smart Cities
Common Service Layer Requirements in ICT Architecture for Smart Infrastructure
Comprehensive ICT Reference Architecture for Smart Cities/Infrastructure

This report is an effort by the members of the Smart Infrastructure Panel under Electronics & Information Technology Division Council of Bureau of Indian Standards, the National Standards Body of India to understand the Standardization activities around the globe in context of Smart Cities & Smart Infrastructure; Smart City Stakeholders, Market & Use Cases; and Identify the Gap Areas in Standardization that are critical to India as a Nation.

This pre-standardization study report is aimed at wider dissemination of the knowledge and concerns as well as to help proceed with Standard Development Activities in the respective Areas.

This Unified Secure & Resilient Framework & Architecture, if implemented in Indian Smart Cities, shall enable optimization of the ICT infrastructure and help bring down the Total Cost of Ownership in terms of capital and recurring expenditure in the upcoming smart cities deployments.

The BIS Study Report on Unified Secure & Resilient Framework & Architecture was released on the occasion of the World Standards Day by Hon’ble Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Shri Ram Vilas Paswan.

The outcome of the study resulted in evolution of a new Architecture Model –

Classic Saucer Champagne Glass Architecture

The evolved ‘Comprehensively Unified ICT Architecture’ has been modelled as a “Classic Saucer Champagne Glass” with a wide Flat Bottom Base depicting the multitude of Field Devices & sensors etc. The Saucer Shaped Bowl on the Top, depicting being filled with an ever-increasing spectrum of City Applications and Citizens’ Services. The Long Stem depicts all the Common Layers viz.: the Unified Last Mile Communication, Common Standardized Gateways (application or Vertical Agnostic), the Common Service layer representing the Common Service Functions in the Gateways, as well as, in the Cloud… and the Smart City Middleware & City Data Reservoir in the Cloud.

It is the “Long Stem” of the “Champagne Glass Model” instead of the short & Narrow Neck in the “Hourglass Model” that brings the Harmonization, Standardization & Interoperability in the Architecture, leading to optimization in Operational Efficiency & Life Cycle Cost of the ICT Infrastructure in any Smart City.

It is hoped that if Reference Solutions based on such an approach could be developed, they could be used as Road Tests for the standards in the field of Unified Information & Communication Architecture for ‘Smart City’ and ‘Smart Infrastructure’.

This Reference Framework shall help define n create sharable common elements that shall be interoperable across verticals & hence reduce the Infrastructures’ CAPAX & OPEX.

NEXT STEPS:

Develop Comprehensively Granular Reference Architecture for Unified Secure & Resilient ICT Backbone…
Map relevant Standards to the different blocks & Layers of the Reference Architecture & identify Gaps.
Develop New Standards to fill the identified Gaps.

Come participate in this crucial National imperative…