Internet of Things

About the project

The Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are attracting growing interest from governments, companies and researchers, since they can significantly change the nature of products and services. New opportunities and threats arise, and competition among companies evolves. Our research activities are intended to analyse the evolution of the market and of the application scenario, mainly focusing on the Italian context, and to depict how IoT solutions can be used as a driver for innovation.

Principal Investigators: Antonio Capone, Giovanni Miragliotta, Alessandro Perego, Giulio Salvadori, Angela Tumino

Researcher team: Sanders Batista, Antonio Capone, Mattia Cerutti, Giovanni Miragliotta, Carlo Negri, Alessandro Perego, Giulio Salvadori, Angela Tumino, Roberta Vadruccio, Elisa Vannini

Funders: Multiple

Duration: 2011 – onwards

Partners: Multiple

KEY RESEARCH QUESTIONS

OUTPUTS & IMPACT

KEY RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are attracting growing interest from governments, companies and researchers, since connected objects can significantly change the nature of products and services. New opportunities and threats arise, and competition among companies evolves. Today’s technologies are more and more mature, but their potential is not yet fully exploited. Our research activities are intended to analyse the evolution of the market, and to depict how IoT solutions can be used as a driver for innovation. More specifically, our research activities are structured on the following subjects.

Market and applications: estimation of the size of the Italian IoT market and evolution of the offer (e.g. types of products and services, startups). Collateral issues are analysed as well, namely the value of data made available through connected devices and the implications linked to privacy and cyber security;
Technologies and standards: state-of-the art end evolutions of main IoT technologies (in collaboration with the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering and IoT Lab), in order to understand real potentialities of the technology, and the availability of standards;
B2C applications: IoT opportunities in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets. Particular attention is devoted to Smart Homes, Assisted Living;
B2B applications: IoT opportunities in business-to-business (B2B) markets. Particular attention is devoted to Industrial-IoT (Smart Factory, Smart Logistics & Supply Chain), Smart Metering and Smart Agriculture;
B2Cityzen applications: IoT opportunities for Smart Cities, considering applications driven by municipalities and/or private companies.

Different research methodologies are used, the main ones being case studies, surveys, and quantitative assessment models to evaluate the benefits stemming from IoT applications. Moreover, interactive workshops with companies operating in the IoT landscape are organised, in order to share data and experiences useful to feed and tune the analyses developed by the research team.

OUTPUTS & IMPACTS

Mangiaracina, R., Miragliotta, G., Perego, A., Salvadori, G., Tumino, A. (2017), “Smart parking management in a smart city: costs and benefits”, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Service Operations and Logistics, and Informatics (SOLI), 18-20 September 2017, Bari (Italy), pp. 27-32.
Mangiaracina, R., Miragliotta, G., Perego, A., Salvadori, G., Tumino, A. (2016), “Adopting the Internet of Things technologies in Agriculture: an analysis of the benefits in the organic wine industry”, Proceedings of the XXI Summer School “Francesco Turco” – Industrial Systems Engineering, 13-15 September 2016, Napoli (Italy), pp. 48-53.
Gastaldi, L., Mangiaracina, R., Miragliotta, G., Perego, A., Tumino, A. (2015), “Measuring the benefits of tracking medical treatment through RFId”, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 64, No. 2, pp. 175-193.
Miragliotta, G., Perego, A., Tumino, A. (2012), “Internet of Things: Smart Present or Smart Future?”, Proceedings of the XVII Summer School “Francesco Turco” – Industrial Systems Engineering, 12-14 September 2012, Venice (Italy).
Balocco, R., Miragliotta, G., Perego, A., Tumino, A., (2011), “RFID adoption in the FMCG supply chain: an interpretative framework”, Supply Chain Management: an International Journal, Vol. 16, No. 5, pp. 299-315.