Evolution

The Internet of Things is changing the way people live and work By Deng Yaqing

As environmental protection continues to top the Chinese Government’s agenda in recent years, many local departments are employing real-time monitoring and control to pinpoint and tackle sources of pollution.

“Different types of sensors are placed in possible pollution sources like industrial parks and construction sites. Once the concentration of discharged pollutants is beyond the accepted limits, environmental supervisors are informed and provided with data, videos and solutions. They are then able to identify specific targets and take action to eliminate pollution,” said Huang Song, who works for a company that provides such services to local environmental protection bureaus, construction committees and city management bureaus.

The young man joined Grand Science & Technology three years ago and has witnessed its rapid expansion based on the robust development of the Internet of Things (IoT) industry in China.

“When it was first established a few years ago, the company had a small staff. Now, it is based in a dozen cities and has more than 100 employees,” Huang told Beijing Review, suggesting that increasingly advanced IoT technologies have significantly improved the efficiency of environmental monitoring and pollution control.

Ready for takeoff

This is just an example of IoT application in human society. McKinsey & Company, a worldwide management consulting firm, estimates IoT application could have a total economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion per year by 2025.

IoT, a term used to describe the use of sensors and other Internet-connected de- vices to track and control physical objects, has blazed new ways of doing business. Things ranging from smart bracelets and shared bicycles to self-service stores and smart cities, are all feeding off IoT technologies, secretly infiltrating into daily life and work.

According to a study by Gartner, a global research and consulting company, IoT is not a new technology anymore since it has gradually integrated into living and production activities.

For example, there are more than 320 million IoT connections in China, most of which are realized through wide-area networks, while the number of connections through local-area networks is even larger, according to public data released by domestic telecom operators.

“These connections have opened up new space for enterprises residing upstream or downstream of the IoT industrial chain, creating new value for IoT users in various sectors,” said Zhao Xiaofei, CEO of IoT101, a think tank focused on information services for IoT companies, in an interview with Beijing Review.

By connecting non-intelligent objects, collecting related data through these connections and sending the information to a platform for analysis, people can find solutions and further improve the objects, Zhao explained.

The concept of IoT first came into the spotlight in 2009, when then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a speech in the city of Wuxi, east China’s Jiangsu Province, calling for rapid development of IoT technologies.

At the time, however, it was just a hot topic without any real advancement. From 2009 to 2011, rapid progress was made in the development of radio frequency identification. By 2013, smart home and intelligent hardware began to sprout and become fashionable in the Chinese market.

“It was when low-power wide-area networks became available in the past two years that real ground was broken in IoT application,” said Zhao, noting that the