Pre-Standardization Study Report on Unified, Secure & Resilient ICT Framework for Smart 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 and Identify the Gap Areas in Standardization that are critical to India as a Nation.

It provides insights into the Global Smart Cities Standardization Initiatives under progress and contextualises them to the Indian scenario, challenges and unique perspective…

The Smart infrastructure panel, LITDC/P 2 comprises of a comprehensive mix of experts from government, industry, academia, research, design, management & consulting in the relevant fields. Panel held its first meeting on 29th January 2016, and since then it has held 6 meetings and tracked & reviewed the relevant standardization activities in the Global SDOs, Industry Consortia and other Fora. The panel members also reviewed the needs of Indian Stakeholders in the respective domains and identified the Gap Areas in the Standards to meet the Indian Requirements. To address the extensive work multiple Work Groups, Study Groups and Task Groups have been formed to focus on respective areas and share their learning with other members of the panel.

The essential focus is on “Unified, Secure & Resilient ICT Backbone for Smart Cities/Smart Infrastructure” and members conducted an in-depth study & analysis to Recommend an India appropriate “Reference Framework for Unified, Secure & Resilient ICT Backbone for Smart Infrastructure”, which 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. Implementing and deploying the proposed comprehensive framework in any city for the multitude of heterogeneous & diverse applications use cases and citizen services can achieve this crucial imperative for the smart city stakeholders.

The evolved Comprehensively Unified ICT Architecture has been remodelled from the Hourglass Architecture to a “Classic Saucer Champagne Glass” Architecture 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 Gateways (application or Vertical Agnostic) and the Common Service Layer representing the Common Service Functions in the Gateways, as well as, in the Cloud…

It is the “Long Stem” of the “Champagne Glass 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.

The major focus of the exercise was to develop the framework for such a unified, harmonized and yet standards based Comprehensive ICT Infrastructure, including:

The “end to end last mile communication protocol” defining explicitly and comprehensively layer by layer, frame by frame with complete interoperability at the network, semantic or at syntactic level.
The Common Service Layer Framework for Diverse applications and use cases with standardized common service functions.
The Unified IT Architecture based on Enterprise Architecture enabled by Service Oriented Architecture Methodology with Unified Data Reservoir/Repository for structured, as well as, unstructured data in the city.

It is hoped that if a Reference Solution based on such an approach could be developed, it could be used as a Road Test 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 Gaps.