Newmacau88: Cyber-Physical Systems Public Working Group

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are smart systems that include co-engineered interacting networks of physical and computational components. These highly interconnected systems provide new functionalities to improve quality of life and enable technological advances in critical areas, such as personalized health care, emergency response, traffic flow management, smart manufacturing, defense and homeland security, and energy supply and use.

The impacts of CPS will be revolutionary and pervasive – this is evident today in emerging smart cars, intelligent buildings, robots, unmanned vehicles, and medical devices. Realizing the future promise of CPS will require interoperability between elements and systems, supported by new reference architectures and common definitions and lexicons. Addressing the problems and opportunities of CPS requires broad collaboration to develop a consensus around these concepts, and a shared understanding of the essential roles of timing and cybersecurity. To this end, NIST has established the CPS Public Working Group (CPS PWG), which is open to all, to foster and capture inputs from those involved in CPS, both nationally and globally.

How Can I Join?

To join a specific subgroup please sign up using the appropriate subgroup email listed below:

Vocabulary and Reference Architecture: [email protected]
Use Cases: [email protected]
Cybersecurity and Privacy: [email protected]
Timing and Synchronization [email protected]
Data Interoperability: [email protected]

General CPS questions can be directed to [email protected]

CPS PWG Face-to-Face Workshop April 2015

The second face-to-face workshop of the full NIST Cyber-Physical Systems Public Working Group (CPS PWG) was held on April 7-8, 2015 at the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland. For more information about the event, please visit the following page. You can also access the event’s presentations here. A video recording of the plenary session will be available soon.

Popular Links

CPS PWG Update Webinar January 2015

On January 15, 2015 the CPS Public Working Group held a webinar which provided an update on the status of the integrated CPS Framework document, as well as details about the upcoming April 7-8 Face-to-Face Meeting. Each of the five subgroups gave a short description of their sections of the CPS Framework. To download the presentation given during the webinar, click here.

Vocabulary and Reference Architecture

Focus on developing a consensus definition of CPS and common taxonomy. The group will identify a classification model based on common features, capabilities, and characteristics to inform reference architecture. The reference architecture will include identification of foundational goals, characteristics, common roles, actors, and interfaces, across CPS domains, while considering cybersecurity and privacy.

Use Cases

Identify CPS use cases, both current and envisioned, in specific sectors, domains, and applications. Use cases will provide an understanding of how actors within CPS systems will interact, as well as generate information on functional requirements for reference architecture. Use cases will also help to identify and evaluate common CPS characteristics, actors, interfaces, and associated applied cybersecurity objectives and considerations.

Timing and Synchronization

Evaluate timing and synchronization needs, and ensure that reference architectures and use cases consider issues of timing and synchronization. The subgroup will identify research needed in this area, and optimal pathways for addressing the challenges of timing and synchronization. This sub-group includes an existing organization, Time Aware Applications, Computers and Communications Systems (TAACCS), led by NIST.

Cybersecurity and Privacy

Develop a cybersecurity and privacy strategy for the common elements of CPS. This includes identification, implementation, and monitoring of specific cybersecurity activities (including the identification, protection, detection, response and recovery of CPS elements) and outcomes for CPS in the context of a risk management program. Where applicable standards, guidelines, and measurement metrics do not exist, this subgroup will identify areas for further CPS cybersecurity research and development.

Data Interoperability

This subgroup will address the simplification and streamlining of cross-domain data interactions by developing a sound underlying framework and standards base for CPS data interoperability, in part by developing an inventory of relevant existing practices and standards. There are many CPS domains in which data is created, maintained, exchanged, and stored. Each datum has a data flow and a life cycle. Each domain naturally defines its own data semantics and exchange protocols, but those data can be difficult to understand and process when moved across domains and ownership boundaries, an increasing requirement of an increasingly connected world. This is as much, if not more so, the case in cyber physical systems as it is in other data management domains. We will address these cross-cutting data interoperability issues and point the way to the development of new efficient and scalable approaches to managing CPS data.