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Impact of COVID-19 on IoT Adoption in Healthcare, Smart Homes, Smart Buildings, Smart Cities, Transportation and Industrial IoT
Muhammad Umair, Muhammad Aamir Cheema, Omer Cheema, Huan Li, Hua Lu
TL;DR
The paper addresses limited cross-sector understanding of how COVID-19 affects IoT adoption, beyond studies focused mainly on healthcare or on using IoT against the pandemic. It reviews research, consulting reports, and expert perspectives to assess sectoral impacts and initiatives, concluding that adoption is accelerated in some areas but constrained by short-term financial stress in others.
Problem
Existing studies largely focus on healthcare and on how IoT can combat COVID-19, leaving limited cross-sector analysis of how the pandemic affects IoT adoption.
Method
The paper synthesizes recent research literature, consulting-firm reports, and expert interactions to examine COVID-19’s effects on IoT adoption across six sectors.
Results
COVID-19 has accelerated IoT adoption in some areas but has not benefited all sectors in the short term, with recession-related financial stress constraining investment in transportation and other industries.
Takeaways & Limitations
The paper identifies sector-specific initiatives, challenges, and research directions relevant to facilitating broader IoT adoption during and after the pandemic.
Takeaways & Limitations
Financial stress has caused organisations to reduce or stop investment in new or planned IoT initiatives and has increased device-installation labour costs.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
COVID-19 has disrupted normal life and has enforced a substantial change in the policies, priorities and activities of individuals, organisations and governments. These changes are proving to be a catalyst for technology and innovation. In this paper, we discuss the pandemic's potential impact on the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) in various broad sectors namely healthcare, smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities, transportation and industrial IoT. Our perspective and forecast of this impact on IoT adoption is based on a thorough research literature review, a careful examination of reports from leading consulting firms and interactions with several industry experts. For each of these sectors, we also provide the details of notable IoT initiatives taken in wake of COVID-19. We also highlight the challenges that need to be addressed and important research directions that will facilitate accelerated IoT adoption.
1. Introduction
COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst for digital transformation, changing policies, priorities, and activities while creating new IoT use cases and accelerating investment. The paper examines these effects across sectors, finding that adoption is not uniformly positive in the short term.
- COVID-19 created or expanded digital-technology applications and forced governments, organisations, and individuals to change their priorities and operations.
- Remote work and study generated IoT use cases with clear return on investment, including remote asset control, workforce tracking, and remote employee collaboration.
- Governments invested substantial resources in IoT and related technologies, while organisations increased IoT investment and accelerated project activity.
- The paper analyses COVID-19’s short-, medium-, and long-term effects on IoT adoption in healthcare, smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities, transportation, and industrial IoT.
- COVID-19 did not necessarily increase IoT adoption in every sector in the short term, because recession-related constraints limited investment in some industries such as automotive.
- The paper distinguishes its contribution by examining how COVID-19 affects IoT adoption across sectors, rather than only how IoT can help combat COVID-19.
2. Related Work
Existing studies examine IoT and digital technologies for combating COVID-19, especially in healthcare. This paper differs by assessing how COVID-19 affects IoT adoption across multiple sectors and by discussing initiatives, challenges, and research directions.
- Earlier studies surveyed IoT-based COVID-19 solutions, digital technologies’ social impacts, and digital health responses in heavily affected countries.
- The paper covers healthcare, smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities, transportation, and industrial IoT rather than focusing only on healthcare.
- Its focus is how COVID-19 affects and is expected to affect IoT adoption, rather than how IoT affects COVID-19 and future pandemics.
- The paper discusses new IoT initiatives, challenges requiring attention, and research directions intended to facilitate IoT adoption.
3. Impact of COVID-19 on IoT and New Initiatives
COVID-19 changed consumer behavior, government policies, and organizational priorities, creating different near- and longer-term effects on IoT adoption across sectors. The paper reviews these effects and related initiatives across six sectors.
- COVID-19’s policy and priority changes are fueling IoT adoption especially in healthcare and smart cities, while recession-related financial stress has harmed short-term adoption in transportation.
- Remote work, telehealth, and other changes associated with the new normal are expected to persist after the pandemic.
- The section examines COVID-19’s potential impact on IoT adoption in healthcare, smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities, transportation, and industrial IoT.
- The authors conducted an extensive literature review using scholarly searches combining “IoT”, “COVID-19”, and equivalent terms.
- Overlapping sectors are separated by assigning closely related themes to the sector where they are most directly discussed, such as in-cabin air quality analytics to transportation.
3.1. Healthcare
Healthcare was among the sectors with the most immediate IoT effects during COVID-19, driven by increased demand for monitoring, diagnosis, telehealth, and contactless care. The section describes initiatives and regulatory changes supporting this adoption while also showing limits in testing and tracing outcomes.
- $66 billion in 2020, up from $55 billion in 2019, was the expected IoT platform revenue, mainly reflecting accelerated healthcare adoption.
- COVID-19 sharply increased demand for wearables, which can monitor health metrics, alert users to disease-related changes, and broadcast health information.
- WHOOP’s system identified 20% of COVID-19-positive individuals two days before symptom onset and 80% by the third day of symptoms.
- An AI model using forced-cough phone recordings discriminated officially tested COVID-19 subjects 97.1% accurately and detected asymptomatic cases at a 100% rate.
- DETECT reported that wearable data combined with self-reported symptoms identified COVID-19 cases more successfully than symptoms alone.
- Emergency approvals, telehealth expansion, contactless services, and testing and tracing deployments accelerated healthcare IoT adoption, while tracing outcomes varied across implementations.
- A test-and-trace architecture uses data acquisition and data integration layers, combining mobility sources such as immigration records, GSM/GPS tracking, and QR-code tracking.
3.2. Smart Homes
COVID-19 has accelerated smart-home adoption by expanding work-from-home and other home-based use cases, while shifting demand toward energy management, comfort, and remote health monitoring. Smart-home revenue is projected to grow long term despite weaker-than-pre-pandemic short-term forecasts.
- Smart-home revenue is projected to reach $85 billion in 2020, up 4% from 2019 but below the pre-pandemic forecast of 20% growth.Long-term revenue is projected to reach $317 billion by 2026, 5% above pre-pandemic forecasts.
- Work-from-home and study-from-home arrangements are driving adoption of smart speakers, security lighting, and energy and HVAC sensors.Australia reported strong 2020 sales growth in these categories as people created more comfortable home environments.
- COVID-19 prompted smart-home features for remote family check-ins, health profiling, and notifications through devices and mobile applications.Alexa Care Hub shares activity profiles with connected family members, while other systems support monitoring residents’ health profiles.
- Increased time at home has raised domestic energy consumption and encouraged energy-management features that report device use and suggest savings.Amazon introduced Alexa features that track energy consumed by Echo devices and recommend energy-saving functions.
- Home confinement expanded IoT use cases for work, education, shopping, and healthcare from home, including remote patient monitoring.Home offices increasingly use smart lights and thermostats, while researchers propose systems for monitoring patients remotely.
3.3. Smart Buildings
COVID-19 increased the operational importance of smart buildings for distancing, occupancy monitoring, indoor air quality, safety, and cleaning, but financial stress reduced near-term investment. Safety-focused applications and the broader market are expected to follow different trajectories.
- COVID-19 increased demand for smart buildings that support social distancing, occupancy monitoring, smart HVAC, and stricter cleaning requirements.These capabilities can support more efficient facilities management and safer, healthier indoor environments.
- Smart-building investment is expected to decline from $49.23 billion in 2019 to $41.72 billion in 2020, then recover to $54.94 billion in 2023.The short-term decline is attributed mainly to financial stress on organizations, while safety and health applications are expected to attract increased investment.
- 47% of surveyed organizations planned new workplace-safety technology investments, while 24% slowed digitization because of COVID-19.Planned investments included thermal imaging, mobile workplace applications, and space-monitoring analytics.
- IoT-enabled HVAC systems use indoor-air-quality sensors to analyze pollutants, CO2, and volatile organic compounds and assess mitigation effectiveness.The renewed focus reflects evidence that indoor air quality and HVAC systems can reduce airborne virus transmission.
- Smart visitor-management systems are being deployed for social distancing, contact tracing, occupancy tracking, and temperature screening.Office buildings are installing temperature sensors and thermal cameras to detect employees with elevated temperatures.
- Organizations are adopting robots and other smart-building capabilities to disinfect frequently used indoor surfaces efficiently.The response targets surfaces such as door handles, elevator buttons, and switches under new cleaning procedures.
3.4. Smart Cities
COVID-19 has accelerated smart-city digital transformation through sensing, surveillance, dashboards, contact tracing, and other technologies aimed at managing urban disruption. These initiatives also support longer-term resilience against pandemics and other disasters.
- Governments are deploying drones, surveillance systems, digital twins, real-time dashboards, and autonomous freight for pandemic-related urban use cases.Singapore increased digitalization investment from $2.7 billion in 2019 to $3.5 billion in 2020, a 30% increase.
- Smart-city initiatives include contact tracing, QR-code entry records, laboratory surveillance, and dashboards reporting confirmed patients’ mobility details.Examples include Singapore’s TraceTogether, Helsinki’s laboratory-registry surveillance, and Seoul’s dynamic COVID-19 dashboard.
- More than 20 million cameras in China’s SkyNet initiative have been used to identify and monitor densely populated urban areas.Thermal cameras for fever detection grew 83% in 2020, while drones supported contactless delivery and social-distancing monitoring.
- Cloud-based systems such as the Honghu Hybrid System integrate case reports, diagnostic laboratories, electronic medical records, and mobile social-media data.The system is designed for collecting, integrating, standardizing, and analyzing COVID-19-related information from multiple sources.
- The pandemic increased interest in economically and environmentally resilient smart cities because urban areas are especially vulnerable to disasters.A proposed resilience framework organizes city capabilities into Sense, Defend, Respond, and Recover stages.
3.5. Transportation
COVID-19 slowed smart transportation growth, disrupting passenger travel, freight, and automotive IoT adoption, while accelerating smart logistics and vehicle-health initiatives.
- Automotive IoT: COVID-19 delayed Autonomous Driving and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems adoption as automotive recession reduced research and development activity.LIDAR and radar startups increasingly pivoted toward industrial automation and mobile-device applications.
- Automotive IoT: Vehicle air-quality sensors and proposed ultraviolet cabin-cleaning systems addressed concerns about pollutants and airborne coronaviruses.These initiatives included measuring CO, CO2, and other pollutants and exploring far-UVC or UV-light cabin disinfection.
- Smart logistics: 8.5% CAGR from 2020 to 2027 is expected for smart logistics, partly because COVID-19 increased demand for IoT-enabled delivery, tracking, and cold-chain resilience.Examples include Cainiao’s IoT-and-AI logistics network and XPO Connect’s enhanced inventory tracking and contactless delivery.
3.6. Industrial IoT
COVID-19 constrained industrial IoT investment in the short term but is expected to accelerate longer-term adoption through resilient, remote, and flexible manufacturing capabilities.
- Adoption outlook: 93% of supply-chain and manufacturing professionals planned to focus on smart and resilient solutions despite short-term industrial IoT budget cuts.The paper links this longer-term shift to IIoT’s importance during pandemics and other disasters.
- Adoption outlook: $263.4 billion by 2027 is the projected IIoT market size, while IIoT sensors are forecast to increase from 17.7 billion in 2020 to 36.8 billion in 2025.These forecasts support accelerated long-run IIoT growth after short-term economic disruption.
- Operational continuity: Industrial IoT can support pandemic-era production by enabling worker-distance compliance, equipment disinfection, and remote monitoring and operation.Remote operation requires sensors, including those used in predictive-maintenance systems.
- Flexible manufacturing: Additive manufacturing expanded as demand increased while operational hours and on-site staffing declined, including production of protective and medical supplies.Flexible manufacturing systems were also used to address pandemic-related manufacturing needs.
- Inventory management: Smart inventory systems became more important under fluctuating demand by monitoring items and warehouse space and communicating availability to warehouse teams.Geotags, ultrasound transducers, and NFC support autonomous inventory-management systems.
4. Challenges and Key Research Directions
COVID-19 has intensified financial, installation, accessibility, privacy, and capability challenges across IoT sectors. The section identifies lower-cost, easier-to-deploy, more accessible, and more secure systems as key research directions.
- Financial stress has reduced or halted investment in many new or planned IoT initiatives, while social-contact restrictions increase device-installation labor costs.
- IoT systems need lower development, installation, and usage costs through cloud convergence, open-source tools, analytics software, and testbeds.
- Cheap, low-power, plug-and-play sensors and devices can reduce maintenance, deployment, and hardware costs; one cited SoC provides more than one year of battery life.
- Healthcare IoT must become more ubiquitous and accessible despite limited capabilities of consumer devices and the high cost of specialized medical equipment.
- Wearables require more comfortable, population-sensitive designs and energy harvesting to address usability and battery constraints.
- Healthcare AIoT research must improve medical-grade performance on resource-constrained devices through approaches such as split AI and lightweight, real-time models.
- Smart homes need plug-and-play, context-aware automation because cost and technical-skill requirements currently limit adoption beyond hobbyists and technology enthusiasts.
- Energy systems should adapt to lasting shifts toward home-based activity by optimizing supply and billing around occupancy in smart homes and buildings.
4.4. Smart Buildings
The section links COVID-19-era IoT research directions to safer, more adaptive buildings, cities, retail, transportation, logistics, and industrial operations. Priorities include integrating heterogeneous data, improving context awareness, and supporting contactless and remote activity.
- 4.4. Smart Buildings: Smart buildings require models that capture spatial topology, semantics, and dynamics so robots and devices can support infection control and contactless operations.
- 4.4. Smart Buildings: Context-aware building robots should integrate CCTV, access records, temperature sensors, and mobile-device locations to identify and disinfect relevant areas.
- 4.5. Smart Cities: Smart cities need integrated IoT data systems for social-distance measurement, viral testing, and infection-case reporting across governmental sources.
- 4.5. Smart Cities: Retail and entertainment services can combine AI, IoT, and big-data analysis with personalized models and graph representations to understand customers, places, and products.
- 4.6. Transportation: Transportation IoT must adapt to changed travel patterns, pickup operations, social behavior, and security procedures while logistics research targets lower delays and contact.
- 4.6. Transportation: Sustainable tracking tags, ultra-low-power tracing, and blockchain-based product histories are identified as promising logistics directions.
- 4.7. Industrial IoT: Industrial IoT research should support business continuity and employee safety through digital maintenance, end-to-end automation, remote collaboration, and remote asset control.
5. Conclusions
The paper examines COVID-19’s potential effects on IoT adoption across six sectors using literature, consulting reports, and expert interviews. It also identifies pandemic-era initiatives, challenges, and research directions.
- The study analyzes COVID-19’s potential impact on IoT adoption in healthcare, transportation, industrial IoT, smart homes, smart buildings, and smart cities.
- Its evidence base combines recent research literature, reports from leading consulting firms, and interviews with experts across sectors.
- The paper additionally discusses sector-specific initiatives and highlights challenges requiring attention for future IoT adoption.
Short Biography of Authors
The authors’ biographies describe expertise spanning electrical engineering, IoT business, software systems and cybersecurity, data management, geographic information systems, and mobile computing.
- Muhammad Umair is a lecturer with electrical-engineering training and prior research experience in IoT laboratories and IT research.
- Muhammad Aamir Cheema is an associate professor and research director whose work is situated in software systems and cybersecurity.
- Omer Cheema leads an IoT Wi-Fi business unit and has experience in semiconductor design, IoT strategy, marketing, and technology development.
- Huan Li researches IoT data management, spatio-temporal data analytics, and mobile or pervasive computing.
- Hua Lu’s research covers databases, data management, geographic information systems, and mobile computing.