Introduction to UOS Architecture White Paper

51 Pages·2016·1.65 MB·English

Introduction to the PlanIT
Urban Operating System™
Architecture
June 2016, Vers ion 18
In t r o d u c t i o n t o P l a n I T U O S A r c h i t e c t u r e

The content contained herein includes confidential (non-public) information including intellectual
property relating to creations of artistic works, inventions, business policies, practices, methodologies,
data, symbols, names, images and designs used in commerce and details of commercial relationships
with third parties. All such information is the sole property of Living PlanIT S.A.

Living PlanIT asserts its rights to the following Trademarks: PlanIT Edgeless Computing™, PlanIT Urban
Operating System™, PlanIT UOS™, PlanIT OS™, PlanIT Crumbs™, PlanIT PlaceApps™, PlanIT Valley™,
PlanIT Assurance™, PlanIT Labs™. Any reference to these names in this content shall be considered as an
assertion of these Trademarks.

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Contents
Introduction to PlanIT UOS ...................................................................................................................... 5
Urbanization and Emerging Technologies ........................................................................................... 5
PlanIT UOS in the Context of Future-proof Cities ................................................................................ 5
Living PlanIT ......................................................................................................................................... 6
PlanIT UOS Overview ........................................................................................................................... 6
PlanIT UOS Architecture ...................................................................................................................... 7
Sensor/ Actuator Network Layer...................................................................................................... 8
Controls Layer .................................................................................................................................. 8
Supervisory Layer ............................................................................................................................. 8
Applications (PlaceApps) .................................................................................................................. 9
Benefits of PlanIT UOS Architecture .................................................................................................... 9
PlanIT UOS in Practice ........................................................................................................................ 10
PlanIT UOS and the Distributed/ Cloud Architecture ......................................................................... 11
Controls Layer Distribution ............................................................................................................ 11
Controls Layer Cloud Deployment ................................................................................................. 12
Supervisory Layer Distribution ....................................................................................................... 12
Supervisory Layer Tiering ............................................................................................................... 13
Supervisory Layer Cloud Deployment ............................................................................................ 13
Supervisory Layer Hybrid Deployment ........................................................................................... 13
Leading Ideas for a Sustainable Urban Future ............................................................................... 13
PlanIT UOS Architecture Features & Considerations ............................................................................. 14
Key Features ...................................................................................................................................... 14
Unified, Shared Model ................................................................................................................... 14
Data Architecture ........................................................................................................................... 14
Data Management ......................................................................................................................... 15
Data Access .................................................................................................................................... 15
Publish-Subscribe Interface (Near-Real-Time Data) ....................................................................... 16
Business Rules Engine and Framework .......................................................................................... 16
Scalability ....................................................................................................................................... 17
Security .......................................................................................................................................... 17
Privacy ............................................................................................................................................ 19
Multinode ...................................................................................................................................... 19
Analytics ......................................................................................................................................... 21
RTC (Real-Time Control) ................................................................................................................. 25
Modeling Services .......................................................................................................................... 27
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Information Traceability and Rights Management ........................................................................ 27
PlanIT UOS Capabilities Summary ...................................................................................................... 28
Deployment Models .......................................................................................................................... 29
Why Cloud Deployment? ............................................................................................................... 29
Why On-Premise Deployment? ..................................................................................................... 30
Why On-Premise RTC Deployment? .............................................................................................. 30
Why On-premise Core Deployment? ............................................................................................. 31
Why Hybrid Deployments? ............................................................................................................ 33
Hardware/ Host Strategy ................................................................................................................... 33
Interfaces and Protocols ........................................................................................................................ 35
Overview ............................................................................................................................................ 35
PlanIT UOS Architecture .................................................................................................................... 35
API (Application Program Interface) .............................................................................................. 35
DSI (Distributed Scale Interface) .................................................................................................... 36
SCI (Sensor & Controls Interface) ................................................................................................... 37
Standard Protocols ........................................................................................................................ 37
Adaptable Transports .................................................................................................................... 38
Existing Drivers/ Legacy Systems ................................................................................................... 38
New Drivers ................................................................................................................................... 42
EAI (External Asset Interface)......................................................................................................... 42
Open Specification Philosophy .......................................................................................................... 43
Innovation and Open Standards .................................................................................................... 43
Open Source vs. Open Specification/ Open Protocol ..................................................................... 43
References ..................................................................................................................................... 46
Appendix 1 – Recommended Privacy Policy for PlanIT UOS-based Solutions ........................................ 47
Appendix 2: UOS Prerequisites for Installers ......................................................................................... 48
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 48
Overall Hosting Environment ......................................................................................................... 48
SQL Server Installation Type .......................................................................................................... 49
Network Access and Domain-based Machine Names .................................................................... 49
SSL Certificate ................................................................................................................................ 50
External User ID (OAuth 2/ Open ID Connect ID) ........................................................................... 50

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Introduction to PlanIT UOS
Urbanization and Emerging Technologies
By the year 2050 more than 66% of the world's population is projected to live in cities with a continuing
population growth estimated to add 2.5 billion people to the world’s population by that same year,
unabatedly consuming the bulk of the world's resources (United Nations 2014). The world of
government is changing amid increasing pressure to deliver to citizens, services that are not only
economically sound, but environmentally viable and socially responsible. However, change must be bold
and swift if local and regional governments are to meet the increasing demand for services in a way that
engages all citizens. Therefore, a new form of communication and provision of integrated services
underpinned by cyberspace are quintessential for the improvement of delivery and performance of
future citizens. The emergence of Internet services and an “always-on” culture has simultaneously
raised expectations for government delivery – particularly amongst younger citizens. Solutions are
urgently required to manage city resources efficiently while also providing a platform for citizen services
as a key enabler to economic and social development.
As with other sectors that have benefited from technological innovation, urban development and
operations will be significantly improved through the application of converging methods and
technologies including:
 Systems thinking – design architecture and interoperability that enables elements of the system to
collaborate with others to maximize the use of resources i.e. surplus energy produced from
renewable sources stored in water systems and automotive platforms etc.
 Product lifecycle design and management – application of manufacturing methodologies and
techniques commonplace in other industries that takes advantage of modeling and simulation to
design for future operations which in turn informs and enhances the design and fabrication of
complex assets i.e. simulation of urban physics, spatial relationships, materials, human ergonomics,
logistics and environment to predict outcomes and make informed engineering and design choices
that reduces lifecycle costs and enables the continued augmentation of environments to meet
users’ needs.
 The Industrialization of the Internet (sometimes referred to as “Machine to Machine
Communication”/ “M2M” – or latterly the “Internet of Things” or “IoT”) – the Internet has evolved
from simple information sharing, through communication and collaboration and is now entering the
era of ubiquitous connected devices. These devices may be simple sensors or actuators, materials,
mobile devices such as smart phones or wearable medical appliances through complex machines
and infrastructure. Control systems are commoditized and replaced by network hardware that
connect, interrogate (sense), analyze and control (actuate) devices, in turn harvesting intelligence
that enables continuous improvements in the efficiency and reliability of city and citizens services.
PlanIT UOS in the Context of Future-proof Cities
This white paper explains the PlanIT Urban Operating System™ (“PlanIT UOS™” or “UOS”), the industrial
Internet platform and principal infrastructure that is integral to successfully envisioning, retrofitting,
building and managing cities in the 21st century (“Smart”, “Intelligent“ or “Living Cities”). This includes
recognition of the need for continual evolution; the importance of clear metrics and analytics; the
increased connection between urban dwellers and the buildings in which they live and work; a sense of
possibility and openness; increased efficiency; generative structures that learn; agile infrastructures
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that serve multiple functions and respond to environmental and other changes; and resilient systems
that can recover without breaking down or malfunctioning and that resist obsolescence (Resilience
Engineering Association 2014). Many experts and commentators cite Living PlanIT as being the leading
contender in providing more considered solutions to the problem of smart urbanization. We thus
envision Living Cities as generative, inclusive, agile, dynamically evolving and resilient.
PlanIT UOS provides the essential platform that enables networked sensors and actuators to be
deployed at scale, coordinated through a unified and secure real-time control layer which also shares
and collects data across the entire urban landscape. This time series data converges with PlanIT UOS
spatial analytics to be mined for further insight enabling continual incremental efficiencies and
applications that enhance urban services to drive economic, social and environmental development and
new forms of human interaction.
PlanIT UOS also provides a set of data and application services that facilitates the leveraging of building
and city facilities and information by applications known as “PlaceApps”, making them location and
context-aware. This enables the application developer community to quickly and simply build
applications in that urban context for delivery to citizens, governments, service providers, and real
estate developers and operators alike.
This allows cities and its citizens to make better decisions about their use of financial, natural and human
resources, thereby creating a more sustainable city and dramatically improving the level of engagement
a city has with its citizens and creates the flexibility cities need to make them “future-proof.”
Living PlanIT
Technology
Living PlanIT is a technology company that created the world’s first Urban Operating System (UOS)
which, in combination with the products it supports, unlocks the full potential of data to make cities
better, safer and more vibrant places to live.
Recognition
Most recently, Living PlanIT has received the 2015 Global Smart Infrastructure Platform Visionary
Innovation Leadership Award from Frost & Sullivan. Living PlanIT contributes to the Clinton Global
Initiative on Smart Cities and Infrastructure, is a member of the UK Government's Smart City Ministerial
Forum and board member of the Cities Standards Institute. The company has received numerous
awards including “Best Investment in High Tech in Europe” from the World Investment Conference,
“Technology Pioneer Award” from the World Economic Forum, “Business Internalization Award” from
UK Government Trade & Investment, “Growth Excellence and Leadership Award for Smart City Projects”
from Frost & Sullivan and both “Best Company for Innovation in Urban Development Technologies” and
“CEO of the Year” from IAIR in 2015.
Scale
Living PlanIT has built an extensive partner network around the concept of a shared, unified approach
to smart urban technology architecture in which machine intelligence moves ever closer to originating
sources of data and control. We call this architecture PlanIT Edgeless Computing™ and it is implemented
throughout the PlanIT Urban Operating System™, providing a framework for resilient and secure
computer and systems architecture for digital and biological sensing, control, analytics, machine
learning, applications and visualization techniques.
PlanIT UOS Overview
The PlanIT Urban Operating System is a standards-based middleware product that provides real-time
sensing, control, spatial analytics, data integration, security, support and provisioning of ubiquitous
context relevant applications for the Internet of Things. The UOS platform accelerates the development
and deployment of urban technology and connected devices. It provides software-based flexible real-
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time control, as well as supervisory control, data acquisition and lifecycle management. Its real-time
and historic analytical functions, together with a comprehensive Services Oriented Architecture API,
simplify the building and operation of advanced data-driven and control-based applications on a variety
of end-user devices.
Living PlanIT primarily focuses PlanIT UOS on:
 Living Cities/ Smart Urban Developments – the emerging market for increasingly intelligent,
sustainable buildings and infrastructure, whether deployed in new cities, major regeneration
projects in existing cities, or individual developments.
 The Internet of Things – the “connected device” market, based on increasingly pervasive networks
and providing remote sensing and interaction with a wide array of embedded and mobile devices,
ranging from smart-phones to vehicles, to robotic devices, to sensor “motes”.
Because the majority of places where the Internet of Things will be successfully deployed are
increasingly smart urban built environments, these markets are essentially convergent.
The majority of applications are delivered by a growing ecosystem of partners, within projects in which
Living PlanIT is engaged, as well as directly through their own channels that look to drive specialized
applications targeted at enhancing the design and delivery of smart cities and connected devices.
Living PlanIT supports optimized deployment of PlanIT UOS through the provision of professional
services under the umbrella of PlanIT Assurance, which is Living PlanIT’s professional services and
related deliverables pertaining to the models for economic, social and environmental development,
enabling technologies and systems, design, implementation and operations of cities, urban
development, infrastructure, and associated vertical applications. Services particularly germane to
successful PlanIT UOS deployment are likely to involve activities such as Urban Network design, UOS
infrastructure planning and commissioning, and operations and analytical support.
PlanIT UOS reduces the cost of providing control architectures in an urban context as well as advanced
information and interaction management, in both private and public cloud contexts, by making
extensive use of standard hardware and software components from partners. Further, by providing a
unified and shared platform for all applications, sensors, and data, deeper insights are enabled because
more naturally aligned information is available to interpret, in turn driving a richer history to provide
predictive models and optimization. This means cheaper infrastructure, progressively more efficient
operations and lower operating costs, and better consumer and user experiences.

PlanIT UOS Architecture
PlanIT Urban Operating System is sometimes described as the collision of next-generation software-
based Building Management Systems, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and cloud
computing. To put it another way, it provides a unified sensor data acquisition, real-time control,
historical database, analytics engine, and application hosting platform for urban environments, or,
deployed in a public cloud, for remote devices with sensing and actuation capabilities.
PlanIT UOS has been architected to allow flexibility in deployment and also to scale from a small/local
controls scope to large scale domains, ultimately comprising entire cities. Examination of the
architecture shown below helps to explain how this is achieved.
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Broadly the architecture can be seen to have four distinct layers:
Sensor/ Actuator Network Layer
A unified, converged network which is enabled by the UOS but is not considered part of it. UOS
communicates with devices in this layer to collect data, make decisions (sometimes with user input via
applications) and issue commands to controllable equipment. In an urban environment the network will
typically be a local/ metropolitan area network. The equipment at this layer is extremely heterogeneous
in nature and may well involve legacy equipment which may include intermediate controllers.
Controls Layer
The ‘first layer’ of the UOS, deployed with network infrastructure. This provides the most distributed
point of intelligence in the system, and provides the most time-critical responses to incoming data. It
also is where the specific code (or Driver Applications) for interfacing with specific equipment resides if
needed. Control Applications also reside at this level – these are managed through the supervisory layer
of the UOS but run in the PlanIT UOS Real Time Control (or “RTC”) core to provide autonomous,
immediate responses to control requirements, for example the control of a light or a motorized flap
that forms part of an HVAC system.
Supervisory Layer
The ‘second level’ of the UOS provides higher level, more aggregated intelligence from individual
building scale to an entire city or a fleet of distributed devices. This layer collects, manages and provides
insight to data, ensures that data is propagated quickly to where it is needed and provides an Application
Programming Interface (API) for applications to leverage. This is organized and optimized for shared use
across multiple verticals and use cases (where its economic advantages are best optimized) and also for
use by multiple shareholders, with a robust security model to ensure appropriate access to data and
control capabilities.
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Applications (PlaceApps)
These are enabled by the PlanIT UOS and may run in a context that is fully provided by the PlanIT UOS,
but should not be considered part of it (although certain applications may well largely consist almost
entirely of exploitation of the services that form the PlanIT UOS API). Applications enable users to
interact with data and controllable equipment in the urban environment, subject to access granted by
the security model. Applications are portable across UOS deployments, opening up a mass market for
smart urban applications because the details of equipment interfaces are abstracted from the
application by the UOS while the UOS is always the same consistent platform.
The PlanIT UOS SDK provides support for application developers, including platform-specific code
libraries which facilitate use of the PlanIT UOS APIs (particularly those pertaining to security) and provide
other useful functions which enable prevailing IoT models such as composite application development
for mobile devices.
Benefits of PlanIT UOS Architecture
PlanIT UOS ensures scalability and reliability principally by careful control of distribution of functionality.
In general the UOS seeks to centralize management but distribute execution. In practical terms this
means that the Core layer of the UOS adapts equally well in scalable form to cloud, on-premise, and
hybrid deployments, and the RTC layer provides true real-time performance with minimal latency and
high degrees of autonomy due to its distributed nature.
The key differentiators of the PlanIT UOS architecture over traditional Building Management solutions
are as follows:
 A unified sensor network provides cost benefits of an ‘all-shared’ sensor and actuator infrastructure,
as well as richer insights through ‘naturally aligned’ data;
 A common and shared supervisory layer enables optimum reuse of sensor data and control
capability across multiple use cases and guarantees data alignment for use by multiple stakeholders
with appropriate views driven by robust and concrete security;
 Converged networks provide efficiency and better performance with contained cost;
 Lower cost deployment through the use of commodity hardware and software;
 Highly redundant architecture eliminates single points of failure;
 Race-proven controls architecture and highly reliable network hardware helps ensure primary
reliability of control functions;
 Control algorithms are centrally deployed and can be updated in real-time;
 UOS scales to larger control domains through use of near-real-time data propagation;
 Historical data allows for predictive models and continuous optimization of performance;
 Abstraction models for capital equipment enable ‘pre-integration’ of hardware, substantially
reducing commissioning cost and risk while enabling more comprehensive control;
 Consistent application API provides a mass market for applications, stimulating the ecosystem that
builds them and commoditizing the availability of functionality for UOS-equipped developments.

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PlanIT UOS in Practice
This example illustrates how the UOS can be used to efficiently deploy Internet of Things techniques,
increase the efficiency of the built environment, and leverage a diverse shared set of resources to
support multiple verticals, while focusing purely on a very simple use case. In a representative
environment many functions and applications would be supported by the same infrastructure, driving
down both CAPEX and OPEX for building control, environmental systems, and user experience and
convenience solutions.
Sensor Network
A set of sensors in a given room in a building constantly detect conditions and relay this information
through the converged network to the controls level of the UOS. The controls level knows either through
supported standard protocols or a device-specific driver application how to correctly interpret the data
coming from the sensors. UOS ships with over 160 driver applications to facilitate integration.
Control Application
This information may well be used in the first instance by a number of Control Applications resident in
the PlanIT UOS RTC which manages and supports these applications. For example an HVAC application
will take into account factors such as temperature, humidity, air quality, weather conditions and
occupancy, predicted or advised arrival/departure times of occupants, and energy cost and availability
to determine whether adjustments to the current conditions inside the room are necessary.
Other Information
Some of this information is obtained from local sensors. Other information comes from elsewhere in
the urban environment (or outside) and is relayed via the UOS Supervisory Level’s Urban Service Bus.
The HVAC application when active runs continuously, taking account of changing parameters to
determine – for example – the appropriate position of a motorized flap which increases the amount of
heated/ cooled air ducted into the room – and/ or the velocity of any airflow-boosting fans fitted.
Algorithms
Mathematical algorithms for control underpin these control applications, which are usually built as the
building is designed alongside choices about building physics and materials used. A modelling and
simulation suite integrated with the UOS for comparator buildings can help with this initial optimization
and design. The running algorithms can then be continually fine-tuned via the UOS (see below).
Supervisory Level Feed
In addition to these immediate control functions, information is also continually relayed to the
supervisory layer of the UOS. This achieves two purposes:
 The historical database is continually updated with what is being measured within the room and the
entire development;
 Information required by other subsystems is relayed in near-real-time to those systems.
History = Prediction
The collection of history data allows for very precise forecasting and prediction to be achieved. For
example, predicting when an owner is likely to reach home or what settings they will want for their
climate control given outside weather conditions and previously observed patterns.
Urban Service Bus
The relaying of information to other subsystems is achieved using the Urban Service Bus. This employs
a ‘publish-subscribe’ paradigm to allow other control applications to subscribe to information available
in the system as a whole. For example, it’s likely that the control application which maintains the
temperature and airflow in the main ducts of the HVAC system is physically separate from the one
maintaining our room’s air-flap. But this latter application appreciates knowing when the air-flap is
moved for any rooms connected to that duct, as it maintains a model of demand on the system so it
can continually adjust its output to suit.
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