The Memorandum of Understanding recognizes the importance of standards and the effective management of related applications through which the value of this rapidly growing industry is clearly identified and captured.
"The ITU welcomes the participation of academic institutions like Georgia Tech in creating an enabling environment for cutting-edge technologies," said Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary-General. "This agreement represents an important step in addressing the coming era of the Internet of Things."
“The Internet of Things encompasses a wide range of disciplines and technologies for which Georgia Tech has a recognized history of specialized technical expertise,” said WP “Bud” Peterson, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Our cutting-edge work related to sensors, signal processing, cybersecurity, autonomous systems, and computer applications spans numerous academic programs and applied business research here at Georgia Tech, and we want to partner with the ITU to develop solutions for this global challenge.”
This initiative will be carried out in collaboration with ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector Study Group 20 (ITU-T), which deals with IoT technologies and their applications, including smart cities and communities, machine-to-machine communications, and ubiquitous sensor networks. The Study Group is responsible for developing standards to leverage IoT technologies to address urban challenges.
Georgia Tech's interface will be the Georgia Tech Center for the Development and Application of Internet of Things Technologies (CDAIT), a technology think tank dedicated to identifying, understanding, and solving the challenges that arise in the IoT value chain.
Areas of cooperation between the ITU and the CDAIT include:
- Joint Steering Committee. The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and Georgia Tech will establish a Joint Steering Committee composed of two representatives from each organization, responsible for overseeing the overall implementation of the collaboration agreement.
- Reflective Leadership. Both parties will encourage industry-focused standards groups and business associations (vertical markets) or industry-focused groups (horizontal markets), open-source communities, de facto standards representatives, and other public and private organizations interested in IoT technologies to participate in relevant IoT discussions with the aim of promoting interoperability in the IoT field across all industrial and geographic markets.
- Global IoT Events. Through this cooperation, the ITU and Georgia Tech plan to jointly organize thematic events such as workshops, conferences, and webinars in the future to foster discussions on standards activities in areas relevant to IoT.
- IoT Standardization, Research, and Education. A key objective of the agreement is the expectation that collaboration will be of particular importance to the standards work of certain ITU-T Study Groups, such as ITU-T Study Group 20 on "IoT and its applications, including smart cities and communities (SC&C)," as well as as well as for the research and teaching activities of CDAIT.
