Using Metrics in the Industrial IoT Value Chain to Drive Trustworthiness
IIoT systems include a value chain related to
the use of data. This data value chain starts
with the production and collection of data
from assets and their environment in the
physical world. That data is then
contextualized and processed to become
intelligence and knowledge. This knowledge,
in turn, is analyzed in a business context to
translate into decisions and actions that can
be used to improve or create new business
operations or products in order to drive
business value. Metrics defined at various
stages of the data value chain can also be
used to establish and manage the assurance
of trustworthiness, providing confidence in
the IIoT system. This is especially important
in IIoT systems that can include many
distributed components. This data value
chain sequence is illustrated in Figure 1.
I NTRODUCTION
Confidence that an Industrial Internet of
Things (IIoT) system will operate according
to expectations is based on assurance that
several aspects of the system are under
control: security of its data and of its
equipment, safety for people and assets,
reliability of operations and subsystems,
resilience of these in case of hardship, and
privacy concerns for all kinds of personal
data handled.
This set of properties – security, safety,
reliability, resilience, privacy – has been
identified in the Industrial Internet
Consortium (IIC) Industrial Internet
Vocabulary Technical Report 1 , IIC Industrial
Internet Reference Architecture 2 and ISO-
IEC/JTC1/SC41 3
as
defining
the
trustworthiness of a system. While these
properties were looked at separately
(mostly) in the past, their grouping in a single
concept – trustworthiness – makes more
sense in IIoT systems because of their
increased interdependency. This is due to
the intricacy of the digital and the physical,
the level of automation and the extent to
which people and processes depend on it,
the overall complexity of these systems and
the increased digitization and volume of
data generated.
Assurance of trustworthiness is established
based on the IIoT data value chain. This
assurance reflects measures that either
prevent adverse results from occurring or
anticipate and mitigate potential effects
when issues occur. Regardless, the data
value chain and metrics are essential to
maintain confidence in the trustworthiness
of the IIoT system.
Trustworthiness metrics are an important
concept supporting the management of
trustworthiness in an IIoT system. The
definition of metrics may aid in
1
The Industrial Internet of Things Volume G8: Vocabulary, IIC:PUB:G8:V2.1:PB:20180822, Version 2.1, August 2018, IIC.
https://www.iiconsortium.org/pdf/IIC_Vocab_Technical_Report_2.1.pdf
2
The Industrial Internet of Things Vol G1: Reference Architecture (IIRA), IIC:PUB:G1:V1.80:20170104, Industrial Internet
Consortium, January 2017, https://www.iiconsortium.org/IIRA.htm
3
Information technology – Internet of Things Reference Architecture (IoT RA), ISO/IEC DIS30141:20170628, ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 3,
June 2017.
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IIC Journal of Innovation