# Research Challenges for the Internet of Things: What Role Can OR Play?
## 1 Introduction  
The field of Operations Research (OR) is an applied discipline which aims to help solve real world problems. It includes many mathematical tools and techniques, plus the sub-discipline of Systems Thinking, which itself has many varieties, both quantitative and qualitative. Both forms of OR can support the design, management and use of the Internet of Things (IoT) which, as discussed in the next section, is a type of new technology which promises to change the world. Conversely, the \"big data\" obtained from the IoT can support some of the quantitative tools and techniques of OR, e.g., the OR sub-discipline of Data Analytics [1]. OR and the IoT have many application areas, to which they may both be applied jointly or separately, e.g., the \"smart city\", where the OR techniques of routing, scheduling, discrete-event simulation, etc., may enable more efficient traffic management, energy usage, etc. Many OR techniques require much real-world data, and so OR techniques combined with \"big data\" from the IoT can be a powerful combination. The \"things\" making up the IoT include processors which can carry out some of the computational tools and techniques of OR, so this part of OR can be considered part of the IoT. Hundreds of papers have been written on the IoT, mostly dealing with the supporting technologies and technical research challenges, but increasingly also dealing with the IoT business ecosystem,and the social, legal and ethical problems that will arise with its adoption. Few single papers discuss both the technical and non-technical research challenges of the IoT on an equal footing. We believe that the holistic view provided by OR and Systems Thinking presented here [2] is going to be needed to solve the many problems which must be overcome for the IoT to realize its full potential. Studying the IoT as a whole requires knowledge from many technical disciplines, including distributed systems, mobile computing, human-computer interaction, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data semantics, as well as many non-technical disciplines, and the many business, domestic and personal fields to which the IoT is or will be applied. Thus writing about the IoT from a holistic perspective requires a breadth of knowledge and experience rarely found in one individual and is best done by a multidisciplinary team. The authors of this paper have long experience in some branches of OR and Systems Thinking and some fields of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), but are naturally not experts in all the fields which it covers. The aim of this paper is to identify the main research challenges for the future IoT to which OR, including Systems Thinking, may make a significant contribution. The research approach we take is, in part, a survey of existing papers which apply particular OR tools, techniques and systems methodologies to the IoT. Some IoT research challenges may not have been tackled by OR as yet, or we may not have found any accounts thereof, and in such cases the authors use their knowledge of OR, systems methodologies and the IoT to outline how we think these approaches could support the IoT. The paper does not present any detailed \"solutions\" to the problems/research challenges we discuss, but does try to give some idea of what might be involved in applying OR and systems methodologies to them. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the IoT, both present and future, including research challenges to its development and adoption, and the worldwide standardization efforts now underway to facilitate the interoperability of the many networks and systems making up the IoT. Section 3 gives an overview of the contribution that both the mathematical tools and techniques of OR and Systems Thinking can make to the development of the IoT, and how the sensor-derived data and data processing of the IoT can support the computational techniques of OR.