CPS Public Working Group

Overview
In 2014, NIST established the CPS Public Working Group (CPS PWG) to bring together a broad range of CPS experts in an open public forum to help define and shape key aspects of CPS to accelerate development and implementation within and across multiple “smart” application domains, including smart manufacturing, transportation, energy and healthcare. The objective of the CPS PWG is to develop a shared understanding of CPS and its foundational concepts and unique dimensions (as described in this “CPS Framework”) to promote progress through exchanging ideas and integrating research across sectors and among disciplines and to support development of CPS with new functionalities. While in principle there are multiple audiences for this work, a key audience is the group of CPS experts, architects and practitioners who will benefit from an organized presentation of CPS conceptual reference architecture facets and aspects, which identifies key concepts and issues informed by the perspective of the five expert subgroups in the CPS PWG: reference architecture, security, timing, data interoperability, and use cases. This foundation then enables further use of these principles to develop a comprehensive standards and metrics base for CPS to support commerce and innovation. As an example, the CPS Framework could support identification of the commonalities and opportunities for interoperability in complex CPS, at scale. A broader audience for this work includes all CPS stakeholders, who may be interested in broadening individual domain perspectives to consider CPS in a holistic, multi-domain context.