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Australia needs to be in vanguard of Internet of Things
Date
October 18, 2015
Kate Burleigh
Malcolm Turnbull can recognise the potential by commissioning the development of a national Internet of Things strategy.
Sensors are being rolled out across the backs of four Tasmanian swarms this summer in world-first CSIRO research to track the movements of thousands of bees in the wild.
The Internet of Things (IoT) will fundamentally reshape our economy within our lifetimes.
What appear to be contemporary seismic economic shifts in the form of ride-sharing services, accommodation apps, and online retail will, in retrospect, look like preliminary tremors.
The question for governments around Australia is whether or not to be active or passive in managing the process. The ACT is admirably showing a preference for the former.
The new smart-parking pilot in Manuka, which will see drivers connected via their smartphones to the availability of car spaces may seem like a modest, albeit useful, innovation.
But it is, in reality, a leading Australian step in embracing the Internet of Things, a development that British Prime Minister David Cameron has declared the "new Industrial Revolution".
And while Britain may be uniquely qualified to judge industrial revolutions, it is hardly alone in diverting attention and resources to the shift. China, Singapore, Brazil, Germany, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates ? all have established national strategies around IoT.
Yet in Australia discourse about IoT has too often become snagged on 1990s ideas about fridges that can order milk and web browsers built into washing machines.
IoT is not primarily about gadgetry or screens ? it is about creating data and using it to solve problems.
Technology now exists, and is being improved exponentially, to allow everyday objects to communicate with each other over the internet.
Tiny sophisticated sensors, similar to the ones being installed in Manuka, can be attached to anything ? buildings, cars, fields, animals, people.
Such is the speed of progress that some 50 billion devices are projected to connect to the internet by 2020.
The many "things" we created via the first industrial revolution are set to become an integrated network via the second.
The potential such data opens up for economic productivity, innovation, and quality of life more broadly is near infinite.
Sensors on cars, roads, and parking spots could eliminate traffic congestion. Sensors on farms could facilitate more efficient crop cultivation. Sensors on people could keep track of medical data for use on a personal and societal level.
The data these devices will generate will, in effect, become a rich new resource to be mined for economic return. The winners in the global economy will be those who can leverage this new resource most effectively.
Governments ? federal, state, and local ? should have a good idea of what they want the Internet of Things to mean for Australia, and what they want to avoid.
This might involve making government data available to innovative start-ups, making government agencies strategic customers for new innovations, and ensuring there is adequate network bandwidth. In terms of regulations, data security and interoperability need to be ensured at the outset.
Nations across the globe are realising this and there is a tremendous opportunity for Australia to join them.
Our efforts, however, will need to be strategically aimed. It will not be possible to simply throw support behind all aspects of IoT innovation.
For example, the Singaporean government wants the city state to become the world's first "smart" nation by attaching sensors to every corner of the country. Australia's vast continent might not be able to compete on that front ? but our major cities could transform into smart cities. And we could, potentially, be IoT pacesetters in areas where we have a comparative advantage ? agriculture, resources and finance, for example. Simultaneously, we could be strategic early adopters of other innovations being developed around the world.
The other means through which government can assist is education. A lot of recent debate has focused on teaching coding in schools, and it is true we need more young Australians to speak the language of computers. But more broadly, we need to foster an education system that encourages students to usedata to solve problems and to create their own solutions. In a data-rich world, the next generation needs to become skilled at recognisingwhat is the signal and what is noise.
There are some encouraging signs of our potential on a national level. The CSIRO, for example, is leading international research on preventing the decline of honey bees, whose pollination efforts are critical to securing global food security. By attaching tiny RFID tags to bees and analysing the data, Australian scientists are able to monitor bees' movement and behaviour in a way that has never been possible in the past.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he wants to "ensure that all Australians understand that their government recognises the opportunities of the future and is putting in place the policies and the plans to enable them to take advantage of it".
A good place to start then would be to commission the development of a national Internet of Things strategy, to identify strategic areas of focus as well as challenges.
Such a strategy will require, far-sightedness, inclusiveness, and sophisticated thinking. But no one claimed industrial revolutions were easy.
Kate Burleigh is managing director of Intel Australia.
Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/...20151016-gkau1t.html#ixzz3u0BLxQ7s
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