Industry Specification Group (ISG) cross-cutting Context Information Management (CIM) Activity Report 2023

Chair: Franck Le Gall, EGM

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

From the digitizing of industrial processes to creating smart services for citizens, it is essential to accurately record data together with its context information (space, time, relations) and to transfer these without misinterpretation to other systems.

The mission of ETSI’s Industry Specification Group on cross-cutting Context Information Management (ISG CIM) is to make it easier for end-users, information systems, data spaces, IoT platforms and 3rd-party applications to exchange information – with proper formal definitions, between vertical applications – so that these applications get the original meaning.

The group develops and maintains technical specifications and reports that enable the development of interoperable software implementations of a cross-cutting Context Information Management (CIM) Layer, using a RESTful interface called the NGSI-LD Application Programming Interface (API) that enables close to real-time update/access to information from many different sources. This ongoing work is reflected in regular incremental API updates, drawing on feedback from developers, end users and stakeholders.

Note: ISG CIM has named its API using the text string ‘NGSI-LD’ with the formal agreement of OMA SpecWorks, which initially defined NGSI. This greatly helps in avoiding confusion with the IEC CIM/Common Information Model specifications.

The ISG’s primary responsibilities are to:

  • Develop technical specifications and reports to enable the development of interoperable software implementations of a cross-cutting Context Information Management (CIM) layer using the NGSI-LD API, aiming to bridge the gap between abstract standards and concrete implementations.
  • Define and maintain the NGSI-LD API for cross-cutting Context Information Management enabling close to real-time update/access to information from many different sources (such as IoT, documents, multimedia, open-data, geographical information systems).
  • Enable applications to register context providers, update context, get current 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, and other information management communities to improve interoperability at the semantic and context layers.

In December 2023 ISG CIM published a new Group Report GR CIM 030 V1.1.1 ‘Validation of NGSI-LD test Platform and Examples of uses’ that provides test technique and examples of use for testing NGSI-LD-based interface and data model conformance. The report also describes how the NGSI-LD test platform can be used for data interoperability in smart cities.

During the year the committee also issued revisions to the NGSI-LD API and its supporting set of specifications and other assets: 

Work meanwhile continues on various reports and specifications, including revisions to existing publications:

  • RGS/CIM-006v131 (GS CIM 006 V1.3.1) - NGSI-LD Info Model v131
  • RGR/CIM-007v1.2 (GR CIM 007 V1.2.1) - CIM Security and Privacy (SEC)
  • RGS/CIM-009v181 (GS CIM 009 V1.8.1) - NGSI-LD API
  • 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
  • RGR/CIM-0022v121 (GR CIM 022 V1.2.1) - NGSI-LD/oneM2M interworking proxy proposal
  • 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
  • DGS/CIM-0027 (GS CIM 027) - NGSI-LD Testing Framework: Test Purposes Description Language (TPDL) TTF2 D1
  • DGS/CIM-0028 (GS CIM 028) - NGSI-LD Interoperability tests specification TTF2 D6
  • DGS/CIM-0029 (GS CIM 029) - NGSI-LD Implementation Conformance Statement TTF2 D7
  • DGR/CIM-0038 (GR CIM 038) - YANG and NGSI-LD interoperability
  • DGR/CIM-0047 (GR CIM 047) - OpenAPI specification for NGSI-LD API
  • DGR/CIM-0048 (GR CIM 048) - Handling of data catalogues and data services with NGSI-LD
  • DGR/CIM-0049 (GR CIM 049) - Usage of geo-information
  • DGR/CIM-0050 (GR CIM 050) - Aligning with geo-information
  • DGR/CIM-0052 (GR CIM 052) - VR and AR for Smart Learning: Guidelines for using NGSI-LD to train personnel in Smart Industries
  • DGR/CIM-0053 (GR CIM 053) - NGSI-LD Test purposes descriptions for Distributed Operations TTF3 D3.2
  • DGR/CIM-0054 (GR CIM 054) - NGSI-LD Interoperability tests specification TTF3 D6
  • DGR/CIM-0055 (GR CIM 055) - Handling of services execution in NGSI-LD based systems

See the full list of ISG CIM Work Items currently in development here.

During 2023 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.

In 2024, ISG CIM’s ongoing activities are expected to include:

  • 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/.
  • Consider adaption and integration with important data platforms, especially oneM2M.
  • Promote the work, and also reference related standardization 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 considering service execution.
  • Provide recommendations on the referencing of NGSI-LD datasets using the W3C DCAT specification in the context of developing data spaces.
  • 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 by EC policies, directives and regulations, and including trends due to EU eGovernment interfaces.
  • Deepen the handling of 2D and 3D geographical information with NGSI-LD, analysing its use in emerging domains such as Building Information Management (BIM).
  • 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.

The on-going Testing Task Force is improving and extending the set of conformance tests available for download and execution using the Robot Framework. For the first time a Plugtests event will take place in the second half of 2024, where developers of NGSI-LD brokers and applications will be invited to evaluate interoperability of their implementations.

A growing number of government-supported projects and programmes are demonstrating the use of NGSI-LD concepts and technology to address real-world needs. This is illustrated by The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)’ inclusion of NGSI-LD as a core specification of its ‘Unified Data Exchange standard – IS 18003’.

NGSI-LD has also been adopted by several organizations worldwide:

  • The FIWARE ecosystem is an independent Open Community with the mission of ‘building an open sustainable ecosystem around public, royalty-free and implementation-driven software platform standards that ease the development of new Smart Applications in multiple sectors’. It is using NGSI-LD as an exchange interface for all its components. It has more than 130 member organisations including NEC, Engineering, Telefonica, Amazon AWS, RedHat, Trigyn and Al Madinah as platinum members. It has identified five strategic domains (agrifood, cities, energy, industry and water) and more than 250 cities experimenting or using its NGSI-LD based enablers.
  • The India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX) is a transformative initiative of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India to provide a data exchange platform to Indian cities. Its builds upon NGSI-LD (through IS 18003). The platform has been developed by the Smart Cities Mission and is implemented by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru and is being used by 26 cities.
  • KETI (South Korea) has developed an open-source NGSI-LD broker (being deployed in the national Smart City Data Hub project).
  • There are currently three other open-source implementations of NGSI-LD context brokers involving active ETSI ISG CIM Members: NEC (Scorpio broker), EGM (Stellio broker) and FIWARE (Orion-LD broker).

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.