Sensing as a Service (S2aaS)

Project Overview

The Sensing-as-a-Service (S2aaS) model addresses the challenge of fragmented Internet of Things data by enabling data exchange between data owners and consumers. Data owners who operate IoT solutions can be rewarded through money, loyalty points, gifts, vouchers, bitcoin, or actionable advice for sharing their personal data. The initiative aims to unlock hidden knowledge trapped in disconnected data silos, improving lives, reducing resource waste, and optimising business operations. S2aaS investigates how IoT data owners can trade their data for value, enabling analytics across traditionally siloed datasets while considering incentives, privacy, and governance. The model proposes a structured ecosystem in which sensing infrastructure owners register their data streams, consumers discover and negotiate access to relevant datasets, and a marketplace mediates the exchange.

S2aaS seeks to create sustainable data trading relationships that respect individual privacy preferences. By establishing clear value propositions for both data producers and consumers, the model ensures that data sharing is mutually beneficial and governed by transparent rules that protect individual rights.

The research spans service model design, technical infrastructure, and human factors. This includes the design of the service model itself, the technical infrastructure required to support secure and privacy-aware data transactions, and user studies that explore willingness to participate in IoT data economies. This work has been developed through collaboration across multiple institutions over an extended period.

Team

Charith Perera

Arkady Zaslavsky

Peter Christen

Dimitrios Georgakopoulos

Tim Baarslag

Susan Wakenshaw

Hamed Haddadi

Richard Mortier

Andy Crabtree

Irene Ng

Derek McAuley

Jon Crowcroft

Outcomes