Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies is partnering with LifeSource Health Inc. and the Netherland-based The Things Network to provide a global internet community with partnering countries and universities.

The internet of things is a development of the internet that would enable physical objects to have network connectivity and communication via the internet.

Lee McKnight, an associate professor in the iSchool, teaches a cloud management course that includes an internet of things lab, in which students are introduced to a growing low-cost, long-range, internet of things open connectivity ecosystem.

With the collaboration, McKnight said the initial lab developed by iSchool and LifeSource can join The Things Network community and share resources with 60 other countries and universities around the world.

“I noticed it’s in New York City and is in Ithaca and it should be in Syracuse too,” McKnight said, adding that there is no contracting relationships between members in The Things Network platform. “Everybody is volunteering and everybody is collaborating together.”

Thanks to The Things Network, applications such as LifeSource can connect to the network and provide emergency medical professionals and first responders with access to patient information without using a normal 4G cellular network, McKnight said. The collaboration could strengthen LifeSource’s new “At The Scene” mobile application for emergency medical care and expand The Things Network community, he added.

Johan Stokking, tech lead of The Things Network, said the company is building a crowdsourced data network along with a community comprised of companies, cities and educational institutions to build a network of gateways using LoRaWAN technology, a long-range and low-power radio frequency protocol.

“Internet is developed for human interaction, so it’s designed for desktop computers, laptops and mobile devices,” Stokking said. “Internet of things is a way of connecting things to the internet and making them parts of the internet just like you and I are the users of the internet.”

McKnight said the partnership is an opportunity for collaborative learning and an easy way to learn with the high affordability offered by The Things Network.

“You could build your own node and start receiving data using Raspberry Pi or very cheap devices and cover the whole city of Syracuse,” he said.

With internet of things technology, McKnight said devices like mobile phones, laptops and sensors can be connected with each other without the need of human-to-human interaction. The cooperation applies the concept of internet of things and serves as an educational purpose, he added.

Stokking said he and his team are working to provide a platform and ecosystem for the internet of things.

“One of the things we are working on is making it very easy for people to get started with The Things Network,” Stokking said.

The Things Network provides an infrastructure to iSchool to set up a gateway to create prototypes and build applications, he added.

“I think it’s good to work with educational institutions because they are spreading knowledge and working with young people with new bright ideas,” Stokking said. “Internet of things is so new that it’s a developing area that we are interested in working with educational institutions because of the same interests as a community.”

From the university’s standpoint, McKnight said there is a need for more graduates that understand the internet of things technology and cybersecurity risks that it has raised because he said this is a growth area in the future.

He added that he hopes that through his cloud management class, students can understand the relationship between cloud resources and data centers as well as managing things securely to prevent vulnerability and attacks.

Published on November 6, 2016 at 7:19 pm

Contact Chieh: chchen@syr.edu