Infrastructure plays a pivotal role in the development of a country. A strong, affordable, and efficient infrastructure is critical for a country’s economic sustenance and prosperity. In Pakistan, lack of proper planning, inefficient resource utilization, unavailability of technical expertise, increase in population, and uncontrolled urbanization have overtaxed significantly the existing infrastructure, such as roads, railways, water resources, sewerage systems, electricity, gas, and fuel. The country is passing through severe energy crises which has marked negative effect on economy, hence larger population below the poverty line. According to a World Bank report highlighting key issues that hampered economic activities in Pakistan, there are huge deficiencies in public sector capacity to build and operate infrastructure[1].

The goal of this proposal is to improve Pakistan’s infrastructure using modern technologies by establishing a low cost testbed facility for design and testing of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Abbottabad. A Cyber Physical System (CPS) is an integrated platform that is typically composed of computational, communicational, and   sensory elements functioning in concert to control and monitor various physical processes/systems[2]. A CPS is typically deployed as a network of interacting elements with physical input/output (I/O). In many advanced countries, CPS has been realized as a promising and inexpensive technology for qualitative improvement in design, manufacturing, and control of various industrial and domestic infrastructures[3]. The diverse applications of CPS include (but not limited to): (a) agriculture management, such as monitoring of soil moisture, salinity, plant diseases, and crop water requirements, (b) automotive transportations, such as road surface condition monitoring and landslide prediction, (c)industrial monitoring, (d) economization of energy through automation, (e) environmental monitoring, such as air pollution and water quality, (f) buildings’ structural health monitoring,(g) disaster prevention through early predictions, (h) pervasive health monitoring using small size Body Area Networks, and (i) controlling safety critical processes, such as nuclear plants, industrial boilers, and aerospace.

Countries like United States, China, and Japan are heavily investing in CPS³. Similar efforts are underway in developing countries, such as India and Bangladesh, where the CPS technology is utilized for agriculture and water quality management. Unlike other developing nations, Pakistan is lagging behind in CPS due to the lack of general public awareness, dearth of technical experts, and non-existence of proper design and testing facilities for such systems. To play an active role in global economy, Pakistan needs to have a modern industrial infrastructure for which CPS is pivotal. One of the major challenges faced by Pakistan is shortage of energy. Smart homes featured with intelligent power distribution systems to control the energy consumption are evolving as another useful application of CPS. Such applications will substantially reduce domestic electricity consumption to allow sufficient power for industrial machinery. The losses in terms of economy and human lives caused by natural calamities and man-made disasters in Pakistan are multiplied due to deficiencies in infrastructure and negligence in observance of standard operating procedures. Therefore, it is also necessary to utilize the research outcomes in CPS to improve the functions of disaster management bodies, such as integrated warning, evacuation, and rescue systems. Because there does not exist any such testbed in CIIT, the proposed system will be the first step in the direction.

The novel features of the proposed CPS testbed are:

•      To improve the quality of research in Pakistan, particularly in CIIT to provide more realistic environment for conducting experiments.

•      To serve as a design and testing facility that will allow students to learn how to make good use of CPS technology in infrastructure improvement of Pakistan.

•      To allow researchers from diverse disciplines to perform their experiments on the physical testbed, consequently, obtaining more realistic results compared to software-based simulators. Such experiments will leverage the development of smarter solutions for energy, agriculture, health, and environmental pollution control.

The system will aim at capacity building, human resource development, and strengthening of local industries by creating awareness of CPS technology. The seminars, training workshops, and system demonstrations will be conducted by the PI and his research group to encourage local expertise and manufacturers to build smart equipment for homes and industry, specifically targeting the energy conservation applications, thus improving the quality of life of the general public.