Guest Contribution: Ali Benfattoum, Technology Evangelist for IoT and Smart Cities at Amazon Web Services

Territories have the mission to deliver a good quality of life for their residents while facing growing and complex environmental, economic, and social challenges. Data is critical to gain insights that help optimize hard and soft infrastructure and build and operate efficient and sustainable services. However, one of the biggest challenges territories face is to break down silos and bring data together into one single space from different sources.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and FIWARE joined forces to develop digital cities and solve this issue by bringing on the market the Smart Territory Framework (STF).

The Smart Territory Framework (STF) is a set of tools and standardized modules offered by AWS that can be utilized to build and operate sustainable and effective solutions, in line with global industry standards and based on the open-source offering of the FIWARE ecosystem. This is the compelling solution to build and operate a scalable, efficient, and interoperable platform that creates differentiated value by leveraging on FIWARE open source technologies avoiding locked up data silos.

Breaking down data silos with the Smart Territory Framework

Standalone and vertical solutions with a narrow focus create data silos and prevent territories from creating a holistic strategy that maximizes citizen impact. For example, ignoring the effects on air quality and noise level when measuring the impact of converting a one-way street to a two-way street does not maximize benefits for the citizen experience.

A territory becomes “smart” when it can collect data from multiple and heterogeneous sources and turn data into insights that support informed decisions. This involves interacting with an ecosystem of solution providers and sharing data securely across different departments and with external organizations.

The Smart Territory Framework is designed to be technology-agnostic, modular, and based on open-source technologies and standards, so territories can build new innovative solutions and also integrate legacy systems.

A modular framework for building smart solutions

Modular and built on open-source and standards, the STF also integrates with existing solutions and adds new capabilities and modules over time. The core of the STF consists of two modules: the FIWARE Context Broker and the STF IoT Module.

FIWARE Context Broker

The FIWARE Context Broker is an open-source component that enables the connection and integration of different systems, applications, and services within an organization.

Using the FIWARE Context Broker, territories can assemble and store information from different systems, eventually belonging to different organisations, instead of having them perform in separate silos. It provides geo-located query capabilities as well as a subscription mechanism. This allows an independent module, like a mobile application, to query data filtered by geographical location and also to get notified with a given frequency or when changes in data take place (e.g., an air quality measurement is above a specified threshold value).

STF IoT module

The FIWARE Context Broker is the only mandatory component of any FIWARE platform. Built around the FIWARE Context Broker, the STF IoT module expands its capabilities by enabling territories to ingest IoT data at scale from multiple and heterogeneous sources with advanced device management capabilities. For example, it includes a registry of all the devices and sensors deployed in the territory, regardless of the operating model, the technology, and the connectivity used.

The STF IoT module offers digital twin capabilities, enabling territories to store and retrieve the current state of every registered device in real-time. It also consists of an IoT data lake built on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) that territories can use to query and generate insights about their IoT data and more simply visualise these insights.

The Smart Territory Framework enables users to decouple data producers from data consumers to build scalable and interoperable solutions.

Built on an open standard

The FIWARE Context Broker satisfies the NGSI specification of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Industry Specification Group (ISG) on Context Information Management (CIM). This specification provides an open API for managing and requesting information and an underlying information model based on entities that are digital representations of real-world objects having properties and relationships with other entities.

The STF leverages the collaborative initiative Smart Data Models which is lead by FIWARE together with IUDX (India Urban Data Exchange), TM Forum and OASC. This initiative provides free and open-licensed NGSI compliant data models — more than 900 as of July 2022 — for different industries like Smart Cities, Smart AgriFood, Smart Environment, and Smart Manufacturing. Smart Cities data models, for example, provide a wide range of data models from Smart Parking to Waste Management, from Air Quality to Weather Monitoring, but also cross domain data models like the Device data model used in the STF IoT module for device management.

Using standardized and open API and data models help expand the capabilities of a platform based on the STF by:

• adding new modules and capabilities, new data producers, and new consumers over time,
• accessing a global market of standardized solutions, facilitating the integration with the ecosystem of partners and solution providers,
• building shareable, replicable and reusable end-to-end solutions based on a standardized module that the user can simply deploy and update using AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK), an open-source software development framework to define your cloud application resources using familiar programming languages.

Meet a real successful case! Watch how FIWARE and AWS made the city of Heidelberg sustainable and smarter.

Would you like to receive more insights about joint projects, AWS and FIWARE successfully implemented cases in the industry, or take advantage of the unique opportunity to meet market drivers and experts like Dr. Cameron Brooks, AWS, General Manager, Europe Public Sector, or Ali Benfattoum, AWS, IoT & Smart Cities Evangelist, then join FIWARE Global Summit, 14-15 September 2022, in Gran Canaria (Spain).

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For more information about AWS Smart Territory Framework, please follow the links:
Smart Territory Framework – Foundations for Smart Territories
Smart Territory Framework catalog
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