Industry Specification Group (ISG) cross-cutting Context Information Management (CIM) Activity Report 2022

Chair: Lindsay Frost, NEC Europe

Developing specifications for applications to publish, discover, update and access context information for smart cities, smart agriculture, digital twins and other areas.

 

Digital transformation – from smart cities and smart manufacturing to machine leaning and AI – requires interoperable and reliable sharing of information, together with its provenance, information regarding its accuracy and unambiguous definitions of its content.

The primary responsibilities of ETSI’s Industry Specification Group on cross-cutting Context Information Management (ISG CIM) are to:

  • Develop technical specifications for publishing, accessing and updating contextual information, integrating information from all digital sources: linked data databases, administrative databases, IoT software and third-party applications,
  • Develop technical specifications and reports that enable development of interoperable software implementations of a cross-cutting Context Information Management (CIM) Layer using a RESTful interface called the NGSI-LD API, thus aiming to bridge the gap between abstract standards and concrete implementations,
  • Define and maintain the NGSI-LD API (currently in version 1.6) that enables close to real-time update/access to information from many different sources (not limited to IoT),
  • Enable applications to register context providers, to update context, to get actual and historic context information, to subscribe for notifications on context changes,
  • Identify appropriate ontologies and data publishing platforms,
  • Promote the NGSI-LD API as a tool and engage with ETSI, oneM2M, IoT and Open Data communities to improve interoperability at the semantic and context layers.

 

ISG CIM activities of note during 2022 have included:

  • Publication of an incremental release of the NGSI-LD API, a deliverable on security and a deliverable on Digital Twins:
    • GR CIM 007 V1.1.2) ‘CIM Security and Privacy (SEC)’ in March ‘22
    • GS CIM 009 V1.6.1 in August ‘22
    • GR CIM 017 V1.1.1 ‘NGSI-LD for Digital Twins’ in December ‘22

 

  • Publication of five STF 627 deliverables:
    • GR CIM 018 V1.1.1 ‘Enabling chain of trust from Content Sources to Content Consumers’ in September ’22
    • GS CIM 019 V1.1.1 ‘Handling of provenance information in NGSI-LD’ in August’22
    • GR CIM 020 ‘Guidelines for the deployment of Smart City and Communities data platforms’ in December ‘22
    • GR CIM 021 V1.1.1 ‘Usage of external data models with NGSI-LD API’ in August’22
    • GR CIM 022 V1.1.1 ‘NGSI-LD/oneM2M interworking proxy proposal’ in December’22

 

  • Progress with the following deliverables:
    • RGR/CIM-002-UC (GR CIM 002 V1.2.1) CIM Use Cases
    • RGS/CIM-006v121 (GS CIM 006 V1.2.1) ‘NGSI-LD Info Model’
    • DGR/CIM-0010 (GR CIM 010 V1.1.1) ‘NGSI-LD Interworking’
    • DGR/CIM-0023 (GR CIM 023) ‘Case Study of NGSI-LD Adoptions’
    • DGR/CIM-0024 (GR CIM 024) ‘Study of NGSI-LD Architecture Deployment Scenarios’

 

  • Creation of seven new Work Items (in July ’22) for a new Testing Task Force TTF T026 on NGSI-LD testing Phase 2, planned to start in February 2023:
    • DGS/CIM-0027 (GS CIM 027 V1.1.1) NGSI-LD Testing Framework: Test Purposes Description Language (TPDL) TTF2 D1
    • RGS/CIM-0012v211 (GS CIM 012 V2.1.1) NGSI-LD Test Suite Structure TTF2 D2
    • RGS/CIM-0013v211 (GS CIM 013 V2.1.1) NGSI-LD Test Purposes Descriptions TTF2 D3
    • RGS/CIM-0014v211 (GS CIM 014 V2.1.1) NGSI-LD Test Suite TTF2 D4
    • RGR/CIM-0015v211 (GR CIM 015 V2.1.1) NGSI-LD Testing Environment Validation TTF2 D5
    • DGS/CIM-0028 (GS CIM 028 V1.1.1) NGSI-LD Interoperability tests specification TTF2 D6
    • DGS/CIM-0029 (GS CIM 029 V1.1.1) NGSI-LD Implementation Conformance Statement TTF2 D7

 

More information on the group’s activities is available at: https://docbox.etsi.org/ISG/CIM/Open. ISG CIM has a policy of openly publishing intermediate material (as soon as consensus is reached) to enhance feedback. There is a general status report available at that open area, titled NGSI_Status.pdf.  Where possible, the material is also presented at public technical events to engage with the community.

 

During 2022 the group continued to liaise with external organizations including H2020 IoT/Smart Cities Projects, AIOTI, TM Forum, W3C, ITU-T (e.g. SG20) and TTA. It has also maintained its cooperation with TC SmartM2M to improve interworking with SAREF and with oneM2M. GSMA and TTA partners are ISG CIM participants.

 

By the end of 2022 ISG CIM membership stood at 38 organizations: 23 Members, 14 Participants and 1 Counsellor (EC).

 

In 2023, ISG CIM plans to continue to:

 

  • Address comments expected from the large open-source communities, and the major organisations representing the users in Smart Cities, such as EuroCities and OASC, as well as organisations implementing open-source portals for cities, for example related to https://living-in.eu/,
  • Collaborate regarding interworking, or referencing of work, in oneM2M, SmartM2M (SAREF), ATTM SDMC, W3C, OGC, as well as organisations such as TTA, TMForum and other groups,
  • Consider adaption or interworking towards important data platforms, especially oneM2M,
  • Promote the work, and also reference related Standardisation work, towards relevant EU Horizon Research projects towards INSPIRE activities, towards AIOTI (WG Standardisation, IoT Security, Privacy, Trust and Semantic Interoperability), and towards standards-related bodies like SF-SSCC, CG Smart Manufacturing, etc,
  • Continue to adapt NGSI-LD and create guidelines to facilitate Digital Twins applications,
  • Consider context information management guidelines (provenance) to enhance AI Data Quality,
  • Adapt the work for congruence with the CyberSecurity, Privacy and Identity Management trends which will in turn be influenced in 2023 by EC policies, directives and regulations, and including trends due to EU eGovernment interfaces,
  • Use workshops and/or presentations at events hosted by EC projects or the EC in order to explain the usage of NGSI-LD and get further feedback on the real-world ‘pain points’ of users,
  • Provide a continuing contact point and meeting place for discourse within ETSI (and externally) for the wide range of themes associated with Context Information management and semantic interoperability.

 

Accordingly, ISG CIM plans to develop/update and publish:

 

  • A new version of RGR/CIM-002-UC (GR CIM 002) “CIM Use Cases”
  • An update of GS CIM 006) “NGSI-LD Info Model”
  • An update of GR CIM 007 V1.2.1) “CIM Security and Privacy (SEC)”
  • A new version of GS CIM 009 “NGSI-LD v1.7.1”
  • A first version of DGR/CIM-0010 (GR CIM 010 V1.1.1) “NGSI-LD Interworking”
  • A new version of RGS/CIM-0012v211 (GS CIM 012 V2.1.1) “NGSI-LD Test Suite Structure TTF2 D2”
  • A new version of RGS/CIM-0013v211 (GS CIM 013 V2.1.1) “NGSI-LD Test Purposes Descriptions TTF2 D3”
  • A new version of RGS/CIM-0014v211 (GS CIM 014 V2.1.1) “NGSI-LD Test Suite TTF2 D4
  • A new version of RGR/CIM-0015v211 (GR CIM 015 V2.1.1) “NGSI-LD Testing Environment Validation TTF2 D5”
  • A first version of DGR/CIM-0023 (GR CIM 023) “Case Study of NGSI-LD Adoptions”
  • A first version of DGR/CIM-0024 (GR CIM 024) “Study of NGSI-LD Architecture Deployment Scenarios”
  • A first version of DGS/CIM-0027 (GS CIM 027 V1.1.1) “NGSI-LD Testing Framework: Test Purposes Description Language (TPDL) TTF2 D1”
  • A first version of DGS/CIM-0028 (GS CIM 028 V1.1.1) “NGSI-LD Interoperability tests specification TTF2 D6”
  • A first version of DGS/CIM-0029 (GS CIM 029 V1.1.1) “NGSI-LD Implementation Conformance Statement TTF2 D7”