In The News

Modern civil infrastructure is all around us — in power plants, radar systems, traffic lights, dams, weather systems, and so on. Many of these infrastructure projects exist for decades, if not longer, so security and longevity are paramount.

And, many of these systems are powered by Linux, which offers technology providers more control over these issues. However, if every provider is building their own solution, this can lead to fragmentation and duplication of effort. Thus, the primary goal of Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) is to create an open source base layer for industrial use-cases in these systems, such as embedded controllers and gateway devices.

Read more at Linux.com.

The Civil Infrastructure Platform , a Linux Foundation collaboration project , was announcedin 2016 and introduced the first version of its code in October 2017 . CIP is a project that directly deals with the lifelines of every modern society, such as infrastructure such as electricity, oil, gas and water pipelines, health care, communication links and transport routes.

At the Open Source Summit Japan, the project has now announced a collaboration with the Debian LTS initiative . The Debian LTS initiative aims to support each Debian release for at least five years, two years longer than would be the case. Since Debian 6, this has always worked as advertised, but funding for this work has been pretty tight at all times. This is likely to change as CIP will support the initiative financially. In particular, CIP aims to work with Freexian , the service company that coordinates the LTS initiative. The goals are to maximize interoperability, security and long-term support for free software for embedded systems.

Read more at Pro-Linux.

When it comes to critical infrastructure, including development of the smart grid, smart cities, transportation systems, and more, security is no longer an afterthought. Given digital elements now been embedded into the “built world” for all the right reasons – to manage physical assets more efficiently, to predict maintenance associated with those assets, and to make life better for residents and visitors – more and more attention is being paid to the unintended consequences, for example security breaches, ransomware attacks, and cyber-terrorism.

Late last year, Cybertrust and MIRACLE LINUX merged to form a new company under the name of Cybertrust Japan Co., Ltd, bringing together Cybertrust’s digital authentication and Miracle Linux embedded system and the message upon announcing the merger was built around trust.

Read more at IoT Evolution World.

Even as The Linux Foundation’s projects continue to grow and mature, enterprises and government agencies and organizations struggle with the question of the sustainability when adopting open source technologies.

While Red Hat and similar companies have long made it possible for even the largest initiatives to be built and managed, through certification programs, professional services, and ongoing support businesses, city planners and others responsible for multi-million and even multi-billion-dollar projects are cautious if not conservative when it comes to too much open source (vs. locked down vendor provided solutions).

The Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) Project “aims to create an interoperable open source software platform that is secure, reliable and sustainable for more than 10 years” according to a news release issued out of Tokyo on June 20^th.

Read more at Transform Network Infrastructure.

Two global trends are converging and they will transform the way people live their lives.  One of them is the Internet of Things (IoT) – the increasing proliferation of internet connected, ‘smart’ devices.  Gartner estimates there will be 20 billion such devices by 2020 in homes, factories and cities.

Coupled with this is the increasing global need for civil infrastructure.  Countries like the US have large, aging infrastructure that must be modernized or replaced and emerging markets, like China, have a growing need for new infrastructure.

Read more at IoT Evolution World.

Moxa strengthens its commitment to building smart cities by joining Civil Infrastructure Platform Project.

Moxa will now bring Smart City solutions which will be interoperable open source platform based. For the same, Moxa has joined as a Silver Member, the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) project.

The move will help Moxa, that offers a wide range of industrial networking, monitoring and computing products, strengthen its commitment to build smarter factories and cities on an interoperable open source platform that is secure, reliable and sustainable. Hosted by The Linux Foundation, CIP aims to speed implementation of Linux-based civil infrastructure systems, build upon existing open source foundations and expertise, and contribute to and influence upstream projects regarding industrial needs.

Read more at Opensourceforu.com.

The Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) project, which aims to provide a base layer of industrial grade open source software components, tools and methods to enable long-term management of critical systems, has announced that Moxa has joined as a Silver Member. The move helps Moxa, an edge-to-cloud connectivity solution provider that offers a range of industrial networking, monitoring and computing products, strengthen its commitment to building smarter factories and cities on an interoperable open source platform that is secure, reliable and sustainable.

Read more at Industrial Automation Asia.

Civil infrastructure is at the very heart of modern society. Be it for power, water, transport or healthcare; these technical systems are ubiquitously responsible for supervision, control, and management of infrastructure that lays the foundation for almost everything we do. Civil infrastructure provides essential services and shelter, it supports social interactions and drives economic development.

The importance of civil infrastructure makes system reliability paramount. However, as we modernize our aging infrastructure to add features for rapidly evolving technology, within our dynamic urban spaces, it can be challenging to design and build for the longer term. That’s what the establishment of the Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) Initiative, hosted by the Linux Foundation hopes to address through open collaboration.

Read more at Memoori.

While much of the world’s legacy infrastructure is aging, and not capable of supporting the growth of the population alongside a more sustainable environment, members of The Linux Foundation’s Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) are working hand-in-glove to develop the software building blocks that will build smarter and smarter infrastructure powering smart cities (and more).

Read more at IoT Evolution World.

Developers of smart city technology will have no choice but to turn to open source if they want to keep up with the demand.

Go back a hundred years and services like electricity and running water — let alone phones — would have all been considered luxuries. Now, we see these services as critical infrastructure that could cause a serious threat to life and societal order if they were to break down.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming a bigger part of our world, creating a marriage of software and hardware that ranges from the exceedingly useful to the overly creepy, it is also finding its way into many of the utilities that we depend on for modern living.

Read more at Datamation.