Smart cities have emerged lately as a solution for the growing population and sizes of cities. This means that a better resources' management is needed to be developed in the same time. A combination of cities and technology is today's digital dream. We live in the age of technology and IoT (Internet of Things) plays a key role in developing smart cities. From this point of view, city planners should think seriously about this issue in order to forestall their future. The concept of smart city is related to sustainability, mentioning here many aspects such as reduction of environmental pollution, increase of energy efficiency, smart traffic management system, E-health services, etc. The main stakeholders are city's residents, its government and also private enterprises. In this paper, we identify and analyze the main aspects of the city infrastructure as an integration of IoT technologies, highlighting the main approaches and challenges.
In their median projection, the United
Nations’ have concluded that by 2030, the
world’s population will have grown to 8.5
billion [
The IoT (Internet of Things) system is a growing network of physical objects (aka “things”) embedded with sensors and devices with the purpose of data collection and exchanging between devices and systems. With the increasing attention that the idea of smart cities is getting, IoT technologies have also been in the spotlight as a solution for creating them. The Internet of Things (IoT) is composed by a group of smart devices and sensors connected together to the Internet. Their dates are used for evaluation by many organizations, including here cities, companies, individuals, etc. This has been possible, in part, due to the advent of cheap processors and wireless networks (Cisco).
The development of smart cities are mainly focused on some major components, namely: the citizens (quality of life), the economy, the governance (e-government), the transportation and the environment. Despite the huge interest, there are some challenges we have yet to overcome when it comes to developing smart cities, which will be mentioned in the second part of this paper.
Developing smart city systems is a
largescale endeavor. To make this possible we will
make use of the three “pillars” of smart
solutions [
IoT is defined as “a dynamic global network
infrastructure with self - configuring
capabilities based on standard and interoperable
communication protocols where physical and
virtual “things” have identities, physical
attributes, and virtual personalities and use
intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly
integrated into the information network” [
IoT lets devices communicate with each
other through different technologies such as
sensor networks. It has found a wild application
in automation systems with the use of
IPv6enabled architecture and smart grid systems. On
the other hand, it has also found a wide
application is “smart city applications” such as
IP cameras, smart wheelchairs and Web of
Things [
To summarize, IoT provides reliable communication remotely (no human interaction is necessary), however it needs to process a large amount of information coming from a large amount of connections in the IoT network. Providing these key elements is crucial in designing the architecture of a smart city.
Big Data: Data produced in IoT smart city systems, could (and most likely will) grow exponentially with time. Data is generated by a vast amount of sources such as mobiles, computers, cameras and sensors. This makes it hard for traditional data mining techniques to store them effectively. The use of big data technologies makes sure that the large amounts of data collected are processed efficiently and correctly. The application of big data is often limited by the large computational storage that is required to process these data. Quality of Service (QoS) is very important for real-time big data applications, due to its use in intelligent networks made up of many connections that require effective transfer of data. Such different connections are those with the citizens’ smart phones or cars.
Cloud computing: Cloud computing is tightly bound with big data. It is a good solution for processing large amounts of data. Cloud computing provides a common network-based platform for many cloud users to share resources.
The notion of sustainability is derived from
the need for change, in order to make people’s
live better ones. It means a more attractive,
inclusive and balanced city for its residents and
tourists.
Allen and Hoekstra highlighted the scale
based on which the sustainability can be
measured and assessed [
Referring to APA, there are some outcomes required to guarantee sustainability in urban planning: The equality among all groups should exist; The communities should be “resilient, diverse and self-sufficient.” We should have a healthy environment, in terms of social and economic aspects. From this point of view, the concept of sustainability goes beyond natural resources; it is related to many aspects of society. This paper looks into the use of IoT in urban field, in order to transform a city into a sustainable smart one. The urban planners should connect the concepts of smart cities and sustainability together. IoT plays a key role in the process of smart city’s sustainability. Its application is realized from sensor networks, that collects data from different parts of the city, for example environment, traffic, health, etc. These sensors work with a device called an actuator. This data will be used and evaluated, in order to optimize, manage or predict certain future situations. This collected information is very important in order to improve the performance or resources’ use. When the number of sensors is big, the fog computing is used in order to get the data from sensors in a secure way and closer to the place it will be processed. In this way, it can be used in an efficient way to update different processes.
Despite the huge interest, there are some
challenges we have yet to overcome when it
comes to developing smart cities. First off, lack
of investment and cost. Smart cities are a great
opportunity to save money. Examples include
Barcelona, which is estimated to save billions
of dollars in energy cost using new smart
systems, such as smart city lights, that light up
and dim using motion sensors [
Given the exponential growth of populations, most notably in cities and the implications this has in regards of limitations in resources and services, smart city systems have emerged as a solution and have become very popular concepts all across the world. Taking smart and sustainable action in developing these solutions is crucial, and this includes taking into account.
This, however doesn’t mean there are not still a lot of areas in need of more research, most importantly: cyber-security, data management, sustainable energy use to name a few, etc., which are presented above.