Toward IoT enabled smart offices: Achieving Sustainable Development Goals

TL;DR

This paper explores how IoT-enabled smart offices can contribute to achieving specific United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by demonstrating a prototype and analyzing its societal and climate impacts.

Contribution

It presents a novel IoT-based smart office model analyzed through SDGs, filling a research gap on societal and climate benefits of IoT in sustainable development.

Findings

Supports SDG targets 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12

Developed a smart office prototype in Cisco Packet Tracer

Provides a pathway for technological innovation towards sustainability

Abstract

Despite research advocating the Internet of Things (IoT) as an effective in-office monitoring system, little research has presented societal and climate centric discussions. Whereas the United Nations (UN) and other development agencies concerned with climate impact, are advocating transformative actions towards smart cities, very little research in the IoT domain analyzes the advantages of IoT in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) to fill this gap. In this study, a smart office (SO) was developed in a Cisco packet tracer. We then presented the SO through the lens of SDGs. We suggest that SOs support targets mentioned in Goal 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12 of the SDGs. This research is crucial - both for developing and developed economies, as we move toward industrialization, while ignoring the adverse impacts of industrialization. This work is expected to provide a pathway with technological innovation toward a more sustainable world for IT practitioners, governments and development agencies.