IoT in Smart Cities’ Utility Systems: from prototype to production

Smart Cities, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Smart Grids and etc. are products of Industry 4.0 that are on verge on becoming mass-implemented after years in development by different companies and startups. While these technologies are nowhere from being completely novel, they have significant undiscovered potential. Companies invest millions into research and development and often fail to achieve desired outcome due to blurred vision, prolonged development and other reasons. This paper analyzes errors during system modeling cycle while also proposing framework for developing IIoT system in Smart City that enables companies to accelerate development of new products while also reducing costs. IIoT system developed by the authors of this paper is an end-to-end solution for Smart Cities that mainly focuses on gathering data of housing sector’s utility systems such as water pressure and temperature, voltage and others. During development several working prototypes had to be scrapped due to not meeting requirements of potential and real customers. Over time an approach that allowed rapid incorporation of customer requests into the solution was developed. It includes modular hardware coupled with microservice-based cloud software and agile software development. Application of this approach allowed to satisfy needs of increasing number of customers. Keywords—Industrial Internet of Things, Smart City, IIoT system, Digital transformation