Does Internet of Things Affect on Sustainable Development? Investigation through Intermediate Applications

Abstract

Since, the technology of Internet of Things (IoT) is utilized to facilitate new and improve existing applications in a large variety of domains, such as manufacturing, healthcare and energy, the main aim of this research work is to evaluate the role of IoT applications on Sustainable Development (SD). To conduct this research work, a conceptual model has been proposed by considering intermediate applications to connect internet of things attributes to the main aspects of sustainable development. Sustainability is divided into three main components of environment, economy and society as well as IoT has been also divided into information dissemination, communication and information technology and information transmission. The proposed conceptual model has been validated using a purpose designed questionnaire to gather experts’ opinions in Likert scale where each application connects IoT attributes to SD components. Analysing filled out questionnaires using the well-known statistical method of T-Test revealed that there are significant relations between IoT attributes and sustainable development component. It can be also concluded that the applications of IoT would improve sustainablity over development process. Therefore, IoT applications would be improved and renewed over the next years because sustainability is getting to be a serious concern all over the world.