IoT Standards "Nutrition Label" - an Initiative to Normalize Descriptions

IoT information-model definitions are addressing the IoT system requirement for machine-level semantic interoperability, for which no practicable Internet technology exists. At present, this work is fragmented across several standardization efforts with different approaches, scope, objectives, terminology, and assumptions. That makes them difficult to understand and compare.  A draft paper posted on IETF Datatrecker under the auspices of Thing-to-Thing Research Group is an attempt to alleviate this problem by means of more streamlined presentations and descriptions.

In this paper we are advocating for a clear articulation of intent and a statement of explicit and implicit assumptions in SDO specifications using common terminology.  Such clarifications would aid IoT practitioners and potential adopters to make meaningful comparisons and facilitate selection of IoT specifications that are the best fit for their intended purpose.  To that end, we propose that creators of IoT standards address a list of questions that would characterize their work in comparable ways, somewhat akin to what nutrition labels do for food. Our intent is to evolve and refine this list over time by actively soliciting and incorporating feedback and suggestions from IoT community.