# Research Challenges for the Internet of Things: What Role Can OR Play?
## 3 How can OR Support the Future IoT?
### IoT Technology Transfer--An Application of SSM  
Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) emerged in the 1970s as a response to the inability of traditional OR to deal with complex, ill-structured problem situations in which objectives are not clear or not agreed by all stakeholders. It is a form of action research that uses conceptual models of notional systems (\"human activity systems\") to learn about, and bring about improvements to, problem situations of all kinds. Although it has been mainly used for management problems within human organizations, it can be used for making sense of complex socio-technical systems such as the IoT. Many books, journal articles and unpublished consultancy reports have been written on SSM. The most up to date account is that of [PERSON] and [PERSON] [115]. SSM studies have been reported at Australian Society for Operations Research (ASOR) conferences since 1985, the first being that of [PERSON] and [PERSON] [82]. Its place in the Systems Thinking sub-discipline of OR is now well established.  
Adoption, transfer and appropriate use of the IoT infrastructure, and the education of developers, businesses and users is a major \"soft\" research challenge which needs to be addressed by SDOs. It has been reported on in a European Commission report [137]. Some work on technology transfer in Australia (in the context of remote sensing technology) using SSM has been done by [PERSON] [138]. A root definition adapted (and made IoT specific) from his work is as follows:  
_\"An industry driven system operating within SDOs with the objective of transferring IoT technology by: knowing about IoT technology and operations, knowing the technical, business and social barriers to acceptance, knowing about targeted industries, selecting IoT technology to be transferred, selecting means of transferring IoT technology, applying those means to targeted industries, stimulating the ongoing transfer, and monitoring the success of such transfers; in order to benefit all involved parties, in an environment of standards, industrial competitiveness, and national and international economic development.\"_  
The CATWOE elements (Customers, Actors, Transformation, World view, Owners, Environment [115]) for this root definition are:* Industry that can benefit from IoT technology transfer
* SDO researchers who wish to promote IoT technology
* Untransferred IoT technology becomes transferred technology
* Transfer of IoT technology is desirable
* Industry (that has the power to accept or reject transferred IoT technology)
* International SDOs/Industrial Competitiveness/National and International Economies  
An SSM conceptual model of this root definition of an \"IoT Technology Transfer System\" (Figure 7) shows the minimum necessary set of activities to define what the system does at a particular resolution level. The logical expansion of the root definition results in a conceptual model of three subsystems, \"knowledge\", \"criteria\" and \"application\". The activity \"monitor and control\" remains at the first level of resolution. Criteria for efficacy (is the transformation working?), efficiency (is the transformation being achieved with a minimum use of resources?) and effectiveness (is the transformation achieving the goals of the owner, in this case industry?) are needed for monitoring and controlling this human activity system. This can be compared with perceptions of \"what we are doing\", by interviewing appropriate people, searching written material with the model in mind, or by some other means.  
Figure 7: SSM Conceptual Model of an \"IoT Technology Transfer System\" (adapted from Finegan [138]).