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The Internet of Things will generate huge amounts of information. There are several articles that categorize this information, describe how it will be used, and predict the emergence of new business opportunities. In this article, I’ll give you a simple method of categorizing your IoT data, and some guidelines for developing collection and storage policies.
To begin, let’s start by sorting our data into two categories.
Top Level: Actionable and Non-actionable
As the embedded base of IoT sensors grows, your access to information about your operation will grow. Some of the information will be immediately put to good use. This is the information you originally purchased the sensors to collect. This information is actionable.
But what if the sensor is also collecting non-actionable information? For example, let’s say you installed a water cooling system on the factory floor with multiple sensors at critical points. Valves and pumps control the flow of water to provide cooling where it’s needed, but, to keep costs down and use as little water as possible, the valves are closed and divert water away from machines that aren’t hot (like when they’re offline for maintenance). Every sensor in our scenario is transmitting temperature information every five seconds, but the information is only actionable if…