Driven by the rapid advancement of technology and the growing need of business
requirements, cyber communications are embedded in many physical systems. The
integration of cyber and physical capabilities leads to the creation of many applica-
tions with enormous societal impact and economic benefit. The emerging systems
that connect the cyber-world of computing and communications with the physical
world are cyber-physical systems (CPS).
One of the predominant topics in the domain of the emerging Smart Grid can be
seen in standardization. With the combination of existing protection and automa-
tion technology with upcoming ICT-based solutions, different interoperability is-
sues arise when technologies have to be combined in the infrastructure. Standards
have proven to be one of the most striking solutions to actually cope with this topic.
Since 2008, this topic has gained much attention in various political and technical
agendas.
The next avatar of the Internet will revolutionize our world. In time, it will
provide us a universal remote control, enabling us to monitor and control
physical objects located anywhere on the planet, using a smart phone. It will
make the universe around us programmable, allowing us to script the behav-
ior of physical objects with electronic commands. This book is about such
an emerging new version of the Internet.
