Int. J. Innovation and Sustainable Development, Vol. 10, No.

4, 2016 419

Internet of things in industries: a survey for

sustainable development

Mohammad Zarei
Department of Business and Entrepreneurship,
Iran Telecommunication Research Center (ITRC),
End of North Karegar St.,
Tehran, 14155-3961, Iran
Email: mohammad.zarei@ut.ac.ir

Ayoub Mohammadian
Faculty of Management,
Department of IT Management,
University of Tehran,
Jalal ale-Ahmad Highway, 14155-6311, Tehran
Email: mohamadian@ut.ac.ir

Rohollah Ghasemi*
Department of Business and Entrepreneurship,
Iran Telecommunication Research Center (ITRC),
End of North Karegar St.,
Tehran, 14155-3961, Iran
Email: ghasemir@ut.ac.ir
*Corresponding author

Abstract: Nations have developed their plans for sustainable development,

including social, environmental, and economic aspects. Internet of things (IoT)
has been introduced as the next wave of innovation. However, there is still little
evidence of progressing IoT in developing countries. Therefore, making
policies for investors and tech-entrepreneurs are much needed. Iran, as a
transition economy, follows its 1404 economic outlook and should prioritise
industries for using IoT. Thus, the aim of this study is to prioritise these
industries. In the Iran Telecommunication Research Center and by using the
multiple attribute decision making (MADM), criteria weight and prioritising
the industries were obtained and each aspect of ‘sustainable IoT’, obtained
and for this aim and to prioritise the industries the analytic hierarchy
process (AHP), technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal
solution (TOPSIS) and ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité e
(ELECTRE) methods applied. The result is, respectively, healthcare, energy,
smart home, transportation and retailing. The research sheds light on how
policy makers can implement policies to use the IoT for achieving sustainable
development.

Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

420 M. Zarei et al.

Keywords: sustainable IoT; sustainable development; internet of things; IoT;

policy making; developing countries; grey analytic hierarchy process; GAHP;
technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution; TOPSIS;
ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité e; ELECTRE.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Zarei, M.,

Mohammadian, A. and Ghasemi, R. (2016) ‘Internet of things in industries:
a survey for sustainable development’, Int. J. Innovation and Sustainable
Development, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp.419–442.

Biographical notes: Mohammad Zarei as a MSc in Corporate

Entrepreneurship from the only Entrepreneurship Faculty in the Middle-East
has learnt to manipulate his knowledge to solve the real world’s problems.
These days, he has been working in a National Research Center – ITRC – on
several national projects as a Researcher to explore and develop thoughts
in regard to Gartner’s hype cycle start-ups. Also, he has more than five years
of experience with Iranian organisations in regard to process, strategy and
intrapreneurship.

Ayoub Mohammadian is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology

(IT) Management. He earned his BS in Business Administration and his MA
and PhD in IT Management from the University of Tehran. In addition
to teaching, he is the Director of the ICT Entrepreneurship and Business
Development Study Group at Iran Telecommunication Research Centre
(ITRC). He was honoured with the award for his contributions to national
e-government project in Iran’s ministry of commerce. He is author of
more than 40 scholarly papers. His primary fields of research are
e-business modelling, IT strategic management, entrepreneurship and business
development in new technologies.

Rohollah Ghasemi is a PhD student in Production and Operations Management

from the University of Tehran, Iran. He has published more than 20 papers
among the top journals. Also he has been invited to be a Reviewer in the
several international journals like Total Quality Management and Business
Excellence. His current research interests include supply chain management,
competitiveness, quality management, sustainable development, strategy, and
technology.

1 Introduction

Industrialisation is considered as the engine of development and technological growth in

lower-developed countries (Lall, 2000), and the Information Industries as a valuable
resource for developing countries that can lead to effectiveness, efficiency and overall
competitiveness (Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1998). Markets play a fundamental role in the
economy, and we have witnessed the key role of information and communication
technology (ICT) in the markets, and just in the recent decades, the internet revolution
proved us that the markets are affected by internet technology in myriad ways (Bakos,
1998). Besides, the internet proves us that a new sort of technologies can affect the
different facets of business (Premkumar and Roberts, 1999). Internet of things (IoT) has
recently been introduced as the next ICT revolution (Chui et al., 2010; Gubbi et al., 2013;
 Internet of things in industries 421

ITU, 2005; WEF, 2015). Therewith, there is a growing interest in using the IoT
technology in various industries, as well as the number of cases in which the IoT is
applied (Li et al., 2012).
In the realm of research, the number of published papers in web of knowledge has
been increased from less than 20 papers in 2009, to more than 80 papers in 2010 and to
100 papers in 2013 (Da Xu et al., 2014). On the other hand, the governments in various
countries such as USA (The Smart America Challenge, 2015), China (China Internet of
Things, 2015), Japan (Koshizuka, 2009), European Union (IERC, 2015) and India (Deity,
2015) have practically supported IoT technology development with various motivations.
Countries have found the high potential of IoT, for example Miorandi et al. (2012)
mentioned that a number of large-scale initiatives on IoT are being performed in
the USA, Europe, Japan, China and Korea. And Da Xu et al. (2014) discuss the UK
government has started a 5-million-pound project for developing IoT.
In fact, IoT will be grown out of its infancy, and the evolution towards the ubiquitous
data and communication networks has been already happened and the technologies
like cloud computing (CC) (Gubbi et al., 2013), content delivery networks (CDN), data
science, autonomous vehicles, wearable user interfaces, complex-event processing, and
content analytics play the chief role in this evolution. This revolution affords to enable
the interconnection between the things, and IoT has opened up a new exciting way for
both the scholars and the businesses (Miorandi et al., 2012). The active companies in an
economy can improve their competitive advantage by making strategies on the emerging
threats and opportunities from the IoT (Li et al., 2012).
On the basis of the European Research Cluster on the IoT (IERC) report, the three
drivers for development of IoT are: increasing the economic prosperity, quality of life
and environmental protection (Smith, 2012, p.232) which are also discussed in the
literature of the sustainable development (Carter and Easton, 2011; Lehtonen, 2004;
Pearce and Atkinson, 1993). Along the same line, there has been Economic Prosperity
index in the field of economics (Bansal, 2005), Quality of Life in social field (Baud et al.,
2001) and Environmental Protection index in the environmental field (Zhang and Wen,
2008). Moreover, the United Nations (1987) defined sustainability as the concept of
following the current needs of human, without endangering the next generations’
capability for satisfying their needs.
On the other hand, Porter and Kramer (2011) have expressed that in the recent years,
businesses are considered as the main cause of social, environmental and economic
problems. Because of the reduced trust on the businesses, the political leaders should set
policies which undermine the competitiveness and sap economic growth; such decisions
in the recent decades have created the belief that there is a trade-off between the
economic efficiency and the social progress. Governments must learn how to legalise
the ways that enable socially and economically shared values, rather than work against it.
Simultaneously, the shared value idea focuses on the social progress and economy, and
this will drive the next wave of innovation and productive growth in global economy.
Furthermore, the authors express that, the concept of shared value is used similarly in
both developed economies and developing economies. By searching for the best practices
in various countries, they have found that, there are plenty of ways which can lead to the
economic growth by tackling the social concerns. The three ways that the companies
422 M. Zarei et al.

can create shared value opportunities are: by reconceiving products and markets,
by redefining productivity in the value chain and finally by enabling local cluster
development.
Iran as a transition economy from factor-driven to efficiency-driven economy
(Schwab, 2014), and based on its 1404 outlook, plans to be one of the most developed
countries comparing with the other nations in the region – the Middle-East (Iran Outlook
1404, 2015). To achieve this goal, leaders should make decisive decisions and encourage,
sustain and increase economic growth to enhance their countries’ competitiveness and
next economic outlook (Schwab, 2014).
Many of the researchers such as Miorandi et al. (2012) have discussed huge market
opportunities exist for the IoT, but they do not suggest identification and/or prioritisation
of the industries for entrée to IoT. Besides, these authors have merely stated that
some sectors/industries – six areas – can provide the competitive advantages and play a
productive role in the adoption of the IoT technology. However, for making the IoT more
real, more significant researches need to be conducted (Zheng et al., 2011). Investment
on IoT and choosing the appropriate industries to develop IoT have been challenging, and
each country must make policies in the particular parts of IoT based on its state of affairs
and their economic driver, and here is the gap which this paper is going to bridge. In this
way, the first step is to identify and prioritise industries for developing Sustainable IoT.
On the basis of what was discussed and according to the government’s restricted
resources, the main aim of this study is to identify the industry that plays the chief role
for achieving sustainable development of Iran’s government by using IoT. Therefore,
Iranian policy makers are required to answer the following questions so that they could
employ IoT:
• What is the value of Economic Prosperity, Quality of Life and Environmental
Protection indicators for Sustainable IoT development in Iran?
• Which industry is the most important for developing Sustainable IoT?
Hence, this research project was defined for developing IoT in Iran Telecommunication
Research Center (ITRC), the subgroup of Ministry of ICT by title of The “Internet of
Things (IoT) Research, Market and Industries”, and the tasks which are addressed and
the methods that are used for achieving the research aims are as follows: understanding
the concept of sustainable development and IoT, a related literature in the form has been
studied in Section 2. Emphasising the importance of IoT in various industries a table –
Table 1 – has been conducted for presenting the examples of studies that are pointed out
the IoT applications in various industries. In Section 3, the selected – five – industries
should be prioritised for using IoT in sustainable development of Iran and for this aim the
multiple attribute decision making (MADM) methodology was chosen and explained.
In Section 4, the weights of each criterion (economic prosperity, quality of life and
environmental protection) of sustainable development based on our national experts’
opinions were discussed. Section 5 has been dedicated to discuss the results, conclusions,
implication, limitations and recommendations for future researches, besides, in this
section it will be demonstrated that how IoT will help Iranian sustainable development in
the context of country’s real challenges.
 Internet of things in industries 423

Table 1 IoT sectors/industries which recognised by the literature review

The IoT sectors/

Industries Sources for reviewing the literature
Energy industry Ad Hoc Networks (Miorandi et al., 2012)
Future Generation Computer Systems (Gubbi et al., 2013)
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials (Perera et al., 2014;
Tsai et al., 2014)
McKinsey Quarterly (Chui et al., 2010)
River Publishers (Vermesan et al., 2011, 2013)
Transportation Computer Communications (Al-Turjman et al., 2013)
industry Computer Networks (Atzori et al., 2010)
Future Generation Computer Systems (Gubbi et al., 2013)
IEEE Communications Magazine (Atzori et al., 2014; Xu, 2002;
Zheng et al., 2011)
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials (Tsai et al., 2014)
IEEE Internet Computing (Broll et al., 2009; Kortuem et al., 2010)
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (Da Xu et al., 2014;
He et al., 2014)
McKinsey Quarterly (Chui et al., 2010)
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (Konomi and Roussos, 2007)
River Publishers (Vermesan et al., 2011, 2013)
Healthcare Ad Hoc Networks (Miorandi et al., 2012)
industry Computer networks (Atzori et al., 2010)
Computer Communications (Al-Turjman et al., 2013)
Future Generation Computer Systems (Gubbi et al., 2013)
IEEE Communications Magazine (Akyildiz et al., 2002; Atzori et al., 2014;
Gluhak et al., 2014; Li et al., 2011; Xu, 2002; Zheng et al., 2011)
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials (Perera et al., 2014;
Tsai et al., 2014)
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (Lin et al., 2009)
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (Da Xu et al., 2014;
He et al., 2014)
IEEE Wireless Communications (Luo et al., 2010)
McKinsey Quarterly (Chui et al., 2010)
New England Journal of Medicine (Barbash and Glied, 2010)
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (Jara et al., 2011)
River Publishers (Vermesan et al., 2011, 2013)
Retailing Ad Hoc Networks (Miorandi et al., 2012)
industry Electronic Markets (Thiesse and Köhler, 2008)
Future Generation Computer Systems (Gubbi et al., 2013)
IEEE Communications Magazine (Zheng et al., 2011)
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (Da Xu et al., 2014)
McKinsey Quarterly (Chui et al., 2010)
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (Konomi and Roussos, 2007)
River Publishers (Vermesan et al., 2013)
424 M. Zarei et al.

Table 1 IoT sectors/industries which recognised by the literature review (continued)

The IoT sectors/

Industries Sources for reviewing the literature
Smart home Ad Hoc Networks (Miorandi et al., 2012)
industry Computer networks (Atzori et al., 2010)
Future Generation Computer Systems (Akyildiz et al., 2002;
Gubbi et al., 2013)
IEEE Communications Magazine (Atzori et al., 2014; Li et al., 2011; Xu, 2002)
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials (Perera et al., 2014;
Tsai et al., 2014)
IEEE Internet Computing (Kortuem et al., 2010)
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (Da Xu et al., 2014)
River Publishers (Vermesan et al., 2011, 2013)

2 Literature review

2.1 Sustainable development

Before 1960s, the efforts that focused on increasing the economic outputs and national
wealth in countries were developed. In the next decades, the topic of development has
considered universally and the non-economic considerations were initiated. In this way,
sustainable development topics were formed by focusing on Economic, Social
and Environmental (UNCED, 1992). Social sustainability, in turn, is defined as the
institutions, policies and factors which enable all members of society to experience the
best feasible health, taking part and security; and maximise their potential to put up and
benefit from the economic success/prosperity of the country in which they live. The
World Economic Forum (WEF) defines environmental sustainability as the institutions,
policies and the issues that should be considered to achieve an efficient management of
the resources to enable success prosperity for present and next generations. Even though,
the gain of a certain level of economic prosperity is crucial for obtaining high standards
of living, within this exercise, countries are also assessed by their ability to generate this
long-lasting prosperity for their citizens in a sustainable way. The notion of sustainable
competitiveness places more emphasis on the importance of productivity as a driver of
prosperity and long-duration growth. Nevertheless, the sustainable competitiveness is
defined as the set of institutions, policies and factors which make a nation productive
over the longer duration while ensuring the social and environmental sustainability
(Schwab, 2014, pp.55–64).

2.2 Examining the concept of internet of things (IoT)

IoT may represent the next big leap ahead into the ICT zone (Miorandi et al., 2012;
Zarei et al., 2015). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) states that
IoT is not a second internet, but rather, it is a network of things – items – which are
embedded with sensors and are connected to the ‘internet’ and IoT’s true value lies
within the data of interconnected items (IEEE, 2015). It has been reported that,
 Internet of things in industries 425

at the present time, there are ‘9’ billion interconnected devices and it is expected to reach
the ‘24’ billion devices by 2020 (Gubbi et al., 2013).
IoT is a multidisciplinary field that covers a large variety of areas (Gluhak et al.,
2014). As identified by Atzori et al. (2010) the three significant paradigms of IoT are:
• internet oriented
• things oriented
• semantic oriented, which Gubbi et al. (2013) discuss them under the names of:
middleware, sensors and knowledge, respectively.
From another point of view, the ITU (2005) states that a new dimension has been added
to the world of ICTs: From anytime, anyplace connectivity for anyone, now we will have
connectivity for everything and the IoT will enable the forms of cooperation and
communication between people and things, and between things themselves. On the other
hand, IERC states: anything, anytime, anyone, anyplace, any service and any network
(IERC, 2015).
In other words, IoT has been primarily about thing-to-thing interaction (Atzori et al.,
2010; Caceres and Friday, 2011; Gubbi et al., 2013) and IoT attempts to grow and
increase intelligence (Atzori et al., 2010).

2.3 The internet of things in industries

The project is defined by ITRC to develop IoT in Iran. Therefore, after holding the
meetings with the national experts, as well as reviewing the Iran Outlook 1404 and
the literature and international reports, the following sectors/industries were extracted:
energy, transportation, healthcare, retailing and smart home. The results of these
evidences are briefly shown in Table 1.
The evidences of the high potential of using IoT in the selected industries have been
observed, as shown in Table 1.

3 The methodology of the research

3.1 Research methodology

To obtain the prioritising of various industries to apply the IoT in Iran to achieve
sustainable development, the MADM method was used. At first, the weights of each
economic prosperity, quality of life and environmental protection were identified by
analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. Then, separately, the comparison of each
industry based on indices was considered in form of three pair-wise comparison
questionnaires, and finally the decision matrix was obtained. Then after, by using three
methods: grey analytic hierarchy process (GAHP), technique for order of preference by
similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité
(ELECTRE), the prioritisation of industries to achieve sustainable development of IoT
was obtained. Hence, this research is an applied research and its methodology is kind of a
descriptive survey. The research steps are shown in Figure 1 briefly.
426 M. Zarei et al.

Figure 1 Research steps

Tzeng and Huang (2011) discussed AHP is proposed by Saaty between years of 1977 and
1980 to model the subjective decision-making procedures on the basis of multiple
features on a hierarchical system. From that time on, it has been extensively used to
corporate scheming, choosing the portfolio and even for the cost/benefit analysing by the
government agents to optimally allocate resource (Tzeng and Huang, 2011, p.15). The
four main steps of the AHP can be summarised as follows:
 Internet of things in industries 427

Step 1: To fix the hierarchical system by dispersing and decomposing the problem into a
hierarchy of interconnected elements; in the current research the hierarchical structure of
the AHP as it follows (Figure 2).
Step 2: To compare the comparative weight between the features/attributes of the
decision elements to form the reciprocal matrix.
Step 3: To synthesise the individual subjective judgement and assessment/estimate the
relative weight.
Step 4: To aggregate the relative weights of the elements to specify the best alternatives
(Tzeng and Huang, 2011, pp.16, 17). Dyer and Forman (1992) describe the benefits of
AHP in a group collection as follows:
• the discussion emphasised on both tangibles and intangibles, individual and shared
values
• the discussion can be emphasised on objectives instead of alternatives
• the discussion can be structured then each attribute can be considered in turn
• the discussion continues until all the related data has been reviewed and a consensus
choice of the decision alternative is obtained.
In the current research for weighting criteria and provide the decision matrix, GAHP
method, TOPSIS and ELECTRE methods were used.

Figure 2 Hierarchical structure of AHP

To form the decision matrix, three days of meetings were held in ITRC with the presence
of the 10 Iranian IoT national experts. Our experts’ population was all holding Master of
Science (MSc) or PhD and at least have been participating for three years in IoT and ICT
projects in the Iranian ICT industries. They are members of ITRC and they have brilliant
insights in the new technologies so they are known as our national experts. For the
sampling, the Snowball sampling method was used and based on the method,
10 of the national experts were identified. This method in sociology and statistics
428 M. Zarei et al.

researches is so common (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981). The pair-wise comparison

questionnaire was distributed between the experts and finally the four filled
questionnaires were compiled and used to conform experts’ comments by using
geometric mean. The responses were processed by the Expert Choice (2000) and those
with inconsistency ratios greater than 0.10 were asked to reconsider their judgements as
suggested by Saaty (Tavana and Hatami-Marbini, 2011).

3.2 The technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution

(TOPSIS)
TOPSIS was proposed by Hwang and Yoon in 1981 (Chen and Tsao, 2008) to
determine the best alternative, based on the compromise solution ideas, and therefore the
compromised result can be regarded as choosing the solution with the shortest Euclidean
distance from the ideal solution and the farthest Euclidean distance from the negative
ideal solution (NIS) and in this way ‘M’ choice by ‘N’ index is examined (Tzeng and
Huang, 2011, p.69). The principle of agreement – of TOPSIS – for the multiple criteria
decision making is that the chosen solutions must have the shortest distance from the
positive ideal solution (PIS) as perfect as the longest distance from the NIS (Lai et al.,
1994).
In this survey, after the decision matrix evaluation, prioritising the industries will be
done to use the TOPSIS method. The TOPSIS method steps are as follows:
1 To calculate normalised matrix.
2 To calculate weights of the normalised matrix, the multiplying criteria weights in the
decision matrix.
3 The positive ideal solution; a possible solution composed of all best accessible
criterion values.
4 The negative ideal solution; a potential solution composed of all the worst accessible
criterion values.
5 To determine the separation of each ‘i’ option from the PIS option ( Di* ) : Euclidean
distance for each option to PIS option is calculated.
6 To determine the distance of each ‘i’ option from the NIS option ( Di− ) : Euclidean
distance for each option to NIS option is calculated.
7 To calculate the degree of proximity to the positive ideal option (Ci* ).
Eventually, the preferred orders can be obtained through the similarities to the PIS (Ci* )
in order to narrow down the choice of the best alternatives (Tzeng and Huang, 2011,
pp.69, 70).

3.3 The ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité (ELECTRE)

The ELECTRE model was first presented by Roy (1968) to find the kernel solution under
a circumstance which the true criteria and restricted outranking relations are available.
In ELECTRE, two indices named the concordance index and the discordance index are
used to measure the relations between objects. As to the concordance index, C(a, b)
 Internet of things in industries 429

calculates how much (a) is at least as well as (b). On the other side, the discordance
index, D(a, b) measures the degree to which ‘b’ is strictly preferred to ‘a’ and the
concordance index and the discordance index in ELECTRE can be defined by:

∑
i∈Q ( a , b )
wi
C ( a, b) = m
(1)
∑w
i =1
i

and
max [ wi ( g i (b) − gi (a ))]
i∈R ( a , b )
D ( a, b) = (2)
max[ wi ( gi (c) − gi (d ))]
c , d ∈A

C(a, b) and D(a, b) ∈ [0, 1], gj(k) indicate the ideal scores of the jth attribute for the kth
alternative; Q(a, b) indicate the set of criteria for which ‘a’ is equal or preferred to ‘b’,
R(a, b) is the set of criteria for which ‘b’ is strictly preferred to ‘a’; ‘a’ denotes the set of
all alternatives. For comparing the alternatives ‘a’ and ‘b’, we can determine the relation
between ‘a’ and ‘b’ using the following procedures:
If C(a, b) > C* and D(a, b) < D* then ‘a’ outranks ‘b’, otherwise ‘a’ does not outrank ‘b’.
If C(b, a) > C* and D(b, a) > D* then ‘b’ outranks ‘a’, otherwise ‘b’ does not outrank ‘a’.
Then, the outrank relation among ‘a’ and ‘b’ can be derived by referring to Table 2.
Outrank relation between ‘a’ and ‘b’ (Tzeng and Huang, 2011, pp.81, 82).

Table 2 Outrank relation between ‘a’ and ‘b’

Outrank relation a does not outrank b a outranks b

b does not outrank a Incomparable a outranks b (a > b)
b outranks a b outranks a (b > a) Indifference (a – b)

4 Data analysis

4.1 Weighting criteria by GAHP method

On the basis of the result of pair-wise comparison questionnaires for criteria, the experts’
comments in form of a synthesised matrix according to Table 3 were obtained. The
elements of the matrix were calculated based on the geometric mean of the individuals’
comments.

Table 3 Pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix for criteria

Synthesised matrix for the

criteria Economic prosperity Quality of life Environmental protection
Economic prosperity 1 2.3403 6.9640
Quality of life 0.4273 1 5.3836
Environmental protection 0.1436 0.1858 1
430 M. Zarei et al.

Also, for examining the reliability of questionnaire and for pair-wise comparison
synthesised matrix, consistency ratio (CR) was estimated equal to 0.0226, which is less
than 0.1 and is less than the accepted upper limitation for CR, so it shows a good
compatibility in comparisons (Wang and Yang, 2007). Sustainable IoT criteria weighting
was done with GAHP method by Expert Choice 11 software and its results are shown
in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Sustainable IoT criteria weighting in Iran (see online version for colours)

4.2 Providing the decision matrix with pair-wise comparison method

Then, based on the result of pair-wise comparison questionnaire for each industry in each
criterion, the pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix was calculated and in this matrix
the score of each industry in each criteria, has been determined. Pair-wise comparison
synthesised matrix was obtained as to the economic prosperity criteria in accordance
with Table 4.

Table 4 Industries pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix (in terms of) to economic
prosperity criteria

Pair-wise comparison Healthcare Transportati Smart Energy Retailing

synthesised matrix industry on industry home industry industry
Healthcare industry 1 3.4641 5.5951 1.4142 7.4156
Transportation industry 0.2887 1 0.8944 0.2445 1.0000
Smart home 0.1787 1.1180 1 0.1996 3.0274
Energy industry 0.7071 4.0906 5.0100 1 2.6458
Retailing industry 0.1349 1.0000 0.3303 0.3780 1

CR for this pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix was estimated equal to 0.0509 and
since the number 0.1 is accepted as the upper limitation for CR, it shows a good
 Internet of things in industries 431

compatibility in comparisons (Wang and Yang, 2007). Therefore, the score of each
industry in the economic prosperity criteria was obtained, respectively, in Figure 4.
Pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix was obtained in terms of quality of life
criteria in accordance with Table 5.

Figure 4 The score of each industry in economic prosperity criteria (see online version
for colours)

Table 5 Industries pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix (in terms of) to quality of life
criteria

Pair-wise comparison Healthcare Transportati Smart Energy Retailing

synthesised matrix industry on industry home industry industry
Healthcare industry 1 5.4772 3.6628 6.7354 7.4833
Transportation industry 0.1826 1 0.2515 3.3098 5.0915
Smart home 0.2730 3.9764 1 5.1800 6.9010
Energy industry 0.1485 0.3021 0.1930 1 2.2134
Retailing industry 0.1336 0.1964 0.1449 0.4518 1

Figure 5 The score of each industry in quality of life (see online version for colours)
432 M. Zarei et al.

CR for this pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix was estimated equal to 0.0687
and since the number 0.1 is accepted as the upper limitation for CR. It shows a good
compatibility in comparisons (Wang and Yang, 2007). Therefore, the score of each
industry in quality of life criteria was, respectively, obtained in Figure 5.
Pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix was obtained in accordance with
environmental protection criteria and is shown in Table 6.

Table 6 Industries pair wise comparison synthesised matrix accordance with environmental
protection

Pair-wise comparison Healthcare Transportati Smart Energy Retailing

synthesised matrix industry on industry home industry industry
Healthcare Industry 1 0.1492 0.2427 0.1292 1.2729
Transportation Industry 6.7007 1 4.5270 0.2427 6.4474
Smart Home 4.1195 0.2209 1 0.1543 3.3504
Energy Industry 7.7373 4.1195 6.4807 1 7.6673
Retailing Industry 0.7856 0.1551 0.2985 0.1304 1

CR for this pair-wise comparison synthesised matrix was estimated equal to 0.0682 and
since the number is less than 0.1, it is accepted as the upper limitation for CR.
It shows a good compatibility in comparisons (Wang and Yang, 2007). Therefore, the
benefit of each industry in the environmental protection was obtained in Figure 6.

Figure 6 The score of each industry in environmental protection criteria (see online version
for colours)

Each criterion’s weight and the decision matrix were conducted to rank the
industries for obtaining the Iran sustainable development. By aggregating the results of
Tables 4–6 and 7, as the decision matrix, will be obtained. In fact, decision matrix is the
m × n matrix, and that its rij element determines (Ai) i rated choices, according to (xj) j
matrix.
Each industry position in each sustainable IoT index was displayed as three-
dimensional in Figure 7.
 Internet of things in industries 433

Table 7 Decision matrix for various industries based on sustainable indices

Decision matrix Economic prosperity Quality of life Environmental protection

Healthcare industry 0.4244 0.5013 0.0475
Transportation industry 0.0860 0.1334 0.2681
Smart home 0.1045 0.2651 0.1168
Energy industry 0.3129 0.0615 0.5237
Retailing industry 0.0722 0.0387 0.0439

Figure 7 Each industries graphical status points (score) in each sustainable IoT indices
(see online version for colours)

4.3 Rating industries based on sustainable IoT indices

After obtaining the weights of each index – according to Figure 3 and decision matrix
(Table 7) – the prioritisation of industries to achieve sustainable IoT was obtained by
ELECTRE, TOPSIS and GAHP methods. Rating the industries is obtained by GAHP
method based on the scores. The ranking results are shown in Figure 8.
Because the prioritisation options in GAHP will be conducted based on the higher
scores, healthcare industry with the highest score of 0.421 points is the most proper
industry for achieving sustainable IoT, and after that there are: energy, smart home,
transportation and finally retailing industries, respectively.
434 M. Zarei et al.

The ranking of industries was done based on the options proximity to the PIS ( Di* ),
using TOPSIS method, and after calculating each option distance from the PIS ( Di* ) and
each option distance from the NIS ( Di− ). The results of TOPSIS method are summarised
in Table 8.

Figure 8 Industries scores for sustainable IoT by GAHP (see online version for colours)

Table 8 Decision matrix for various industries based on the sustainability indices

Decision matrix D* D– C* The rank

Healthcare industry 0.0576 0.4639 0.8895 1
Transportation industry 0.4256 0.0602 0.1240 4
Smart home 0.3797 0.1286 0.2530 3
Energy industry 0.2694 0.2727 0.5031 2
Retailing industry 0.4675 0.0000 0.0000 5

As it is shown, in this method, the healthcare industry has the minimum distance to the
PIS and also the maximum distance to the NIS; the industry which has the top score in
TOPSIS method – equal to 0.8895 – and is the best option so as to achieve sustainable
IoT in Iran.
Also, the retailing industry, with the maximum distance to the PIS and the minimum
distance to the NIS is deemed as the least priority for achieving sustainable IoT in Iran.
However, energy, smart home and transportation industries are from the second to fourth
rank. The kernels of the outranking graphs (see Figure 9) for ELECTRE, defines the
prioritisation of the industries (Jabeur and Martel, 2007).
On the basis of the results of ELECTRE method, the industries ranking to achieve
sustainable IoT is as follows:
[Retailing < Transportation < Smart home < Energy < Healthcare]
 Internet of things in industries 435

Figure 9 Kernels graph to identify good alternatives

5 Conclusions, implication, limitations and recommendations for future

researches

5.1 Conclusions and implications

IoT is recognised as the next revolution of ICT (Chui et al., 2010; Gubbi et al., 2013;
ITU, 2005; WEF, 2015). Various countries such as USA, England, China and India have
examined IoT for their next economic boom, but on the other hand, IoT has been
progressing in some developing counties and Africa; however, it is too slow (IERC,
2015). Sustainable development has attracted lots of attentions from scholars and
countries as a profound concept (Antonopoulos et al., 2013; Blake, 2007; Brandli et al.,
2015; Patel, 2014) and furthermore, the interaction between sustainability and innovation
has been deeply considered (Brunner and Marxt, 2013; Olla, 2008; Peeters et al., 2006;
Weaver, 2005; Zhou et al., 2012). On the basis of the surveys, it seems that we can define
the sustainable IoT as the goal-oriented utilisation of it in the industries, which enables
countries to move towards the sustainable development – for obtaining the economic,
social and environmental goals – and finally it can leads to sustainable competitive
countries.
Iran has just recently began to support the IoT development research which
is assessed by the technical, infrastructural and policy-making aspects in the Iran
Telecommunication Research Center (ITRC), the subgroup of Ministry of ICT.
Therefore, one of the Iran challenges is the prioritisation of industries for achieving the
sustainable IoT. Recognition of the importance of this subject has been the goal of Iran’s
industries prioritisation research, based on the sustainable IoT indices. Hence, the five
important industries were examined based on the literature review and experts’ opinions
by Iranian policy makers as to the 1404 outlook (Iran Outlook 1404, 2015) and based on
the economic prosperity, quality of life and environmental protection.
436 M. Zarei et al.

On the basis of the results – of Figure 3 – the economic prosperity index in Iran is
estimated more important than quality of life and environmental protection indices
for developing the IoT. In this way, the weight index of economic prosperity was
evaluated 60.73%, the weight index of quality of life 31.96%, and the weight index of
environmental protection 7.3%.
Interestingly, the results of this research seem pertinent to Iran’s economic structure.
Iran as a transition country from the factor-driven economy to an efficiency-driven
economy (Schwab, 2014, p.11) has some problems such as: access to financing, inflation,
exports as a percentage of GDP, women in labour force ratio to men in the country, based
on the Global Competitiveness Report 2014–2015 (Schwab, 2014, p.217); hence, if IoT
creates the economic prosperity in an industry, that industry will have a higher priority
for economic development. Therefore, healthcare and energy industries will create the
most economical welfare than other industries, respectively. Smart home, transportation
and retailing industries have obtained the next priorities.
The Iranian 1404 outlook argues that in order to achieve the first rank in the region –
the Middle-East – Iran requires to improve the quality of life (Iran outlook 1404, 2015),
for instance, Iran has obtained the 76th place between 144 considered countries with 73.8
average in life expectancy index (Schwab, 2014, p.217).
However, Iran has the remarkable distance with Israel to obtain the first place in the
region (with 10th place in the world). Therefore, to measure the IoT social sustainable
development aspects in this research, the quality of life index was considered. On the
basis of Figure 5, IoT development in healthcare and smart home industries will be
followed by the quality of life, respectively, also, transportation, energy and retailing
industries have obtained the next priorities.
The statistics have shown that, the environmental indices are not very favourable in
Iran. In this regard and based on the environmental performance index (EPI) report,
Iran has obtained the 83rd place between 83 countries, and to obtain the first place
in the region there is a remarkable distance to reach UAE, 25th place in the world
(EPI, 2015).
On the basis of the results of Figure 6, IoT development provides the most
environmental protection in energy and transportation industries, respectively; also, smart
home, healthcare and retailing industries have obtained the next priorities.
Because of the fact that sustainable IoT is achieved by the paying simultaneous
attention to the three indices, it would be better to use the MADM method indices,
including: GAHP, TOPSIS and ELECTRE. The results that are obtained in each of
the three methods are in agreement with each other, and it is not required to use the
‘aggregation strategy’ for the final presentation ranking of industries.
On the basis of the results of each method of achieving the sustainable IoT in Iran,
healthcare industry has been in the first priority. Ministry of Health and Medical
Education of Iran is following the plans to achieve sustainable development, for instance
‘Health Industry Evolution’ plan (Ministry of Health and Medical Education, 2015).
In Iran, healthcare system has been emphasised the usage of modern technology,
for instance, the projects such as ‘e-Health’ has been suggested. IoT with its various
applications in the fields of healthcare can help to develop such systems in all parts of the
country. In this way, many applications of the IoT in the field of healthcare to increase
longevity, epidemic diseases reduction, facilitating medical cares for chronic diseases,
taking care of children and infants, prevention of dangerous diseases, improving the
elderly’s quality of life and generally focusing on ‘real time monitoring’ of public
 Internet of things in industries 437

healthcare. Hence the IoT development in healthcare industry in Iran is meaningful and
also necessary.
On the basis of the yielded ranking, energy industry is the second priority. Iran as one
of the biggest oil and gas producers can use the devices and various IoT applications
in manufacturing, distributing and processing sections of petroleum industry. The
applications such as controlling of oil wells, oil storage tanks, transmission and
distribution lines and the petrochemical products processing, are all completely tangible
using IoT – e.g., see Jasper the IoT cloud (Jasper, 2015).
There are many applications in producing the non-fossil energy section too. Using
IoT technology for increasing the efficiency of the production of solar, wind energies and
power generation at dams and generally smart and green energies is possible.
The third priority has been known as smart home. The construction industry in Iran
has recently used the new technologies in construction and equipping and furnishing
homes. Connecting the various IoT devices together at homes is defined as a form of
smart home and creates a variety of facilities for domestic customers of this technology.
Smart home includes the using of devices which will cause the emergence of smart
home concept at homes by increasing the interconnection between people and things.
The transportation industry is considered as the fourth and the retailing industry is ranked
as the last priority.
In the field of policy making, according to the Porter and Kramer (2011) proposals,
policy making for reviewing products and markets in selected industries by using the IoT
technology is recommended. Also, redefining productivity in the value chain industries is
highly recommended; by taking the advantage of this technology, using IoT and also
enabling the local cluster development in each of the industries with higher priority
for Iran.
From our point of view, the results of the study help the policy makers by attracting
their attention to the sustainability dimensions and enable them to prioritise all industries
to develop the sustainable IoT, not just focusing on the economic aspects of IoT.
Another contribution of this research is selecting the industry. By identifying the
health industry as the selected industry, the Iranian policy makers are given a hand to
develop the sustainable IoT.
Also, the lack of business and economic approaches in the field of IoT are completely
evident. As a result, this paper tries to consider IoT as the trigger of sustainable
development.
Another contribution is related to the components of sustainability’s literature. The
current research tries to extend the knowledge of sustainable development by borrowing
its components (economic prosperity, quality of life and environmental protection) for
offering the new content named ‘Sustainable IoT’.
Also, regarding the practical and empirical contributions, based on our structured
methodology, healthcare industry has been introduced to the Iranian policy makers as the
selected industry that has enough potential in leading to the sustainable development.
In our perspective, all countries that once tried to apply IoT as their next economical–
technological driver, have to determine which industry should be chosen for embarking
this path; in this regard our presented approach is a worthy manner for determining the
selected industry.
438 M. Zarei et al.

5.2 Limitations and recommendations for future research

This research has some limitations. One of our real challenges was the lack of detailed
information about IoT and the economical–technological experts. Another limitation of
this research was examining IoT in just five selected industries of Iran – transition from
factor-driven to efficiency-driven economy – that reduces the generalisation of our
findings. Especially, the indices weights may be affected because of the nature of Iran’s
economy, in this regard, it is suggested that the various industries in countries
with innovation-driven economies, efficiency-driven economies and the countries with
transition from efficiency-driven to innovation-driven economy should be surveyed
separately.
As it was shown, the health industry has been known as the selected industry but up
to the present there is no Roadmap or legislation for developing the sustainable IoT in the
selected industry. In this regard, for the future researches, it is recommended to identify
the policy makers’ challenges for developing the sustainable IoT in the selected industry.
Also, it is proposed that to make IoT more real and less risky for both policy makers
and businesses, a model of IoT development in various countries should be presented,
based on their needs, facilities, scopes, aims and also visions.
One of the main challenges for developing IoT is about ‘knowledge transferring’,
it has been discussed as the knowledge which is embedded in the interactions of people,
tools and tasks provision while they are the basis for competitive advantage in firms
(Argote and Ingram, 2000). Because of the leakage of adequate IoT knowledge in the
developing countries, it seems the consortiums can play a crucial role. In this regard,
the international alliances between well developed and developing economics should be
taken into the consideration more seriously.

Acknowledgement

The current research was supported by the Department of Business and Entrepreneurship
of the Iran Telecommunication Research Center (ITRC), under the grant number
9334113.

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