The use of IoT for future smart sustainable cities: Its perspectives and challenges Eng, PhDc. Albina Toçilla a a Polis University, Str. Bylis 12, Autostrada Tiranë-Durrës, Km 5, Tirana, Albania. Abstract 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. Keywords 1 Smart City, Sustainability, IoT 1. Introduction The IoT (Internet of Things) system is a growing network of physical objects (aka “things”) embedded with sensors and devices In their median projection, the United with the purpose of data collection and Nations’ have concluded that by 2030, the exchanging between devices and systems. With world’s population will have grown to 8.5 the increasing attention that the idea of smart billion [1]. This exponential growth is and will cities is getting, IoT technologies have also continue to be more noticeable in cities, due to been in the spotlight as a solution for creating the tendency of the population to move from them. The Internet of Things (IoT) is composed rural areas to cities, increasing the population by a group of smart devices and sensors living in urban areas to 66% by 2030 [2]. This connected together to the Internet. Their dates rapid growth inevitably leads to more limited are used for evaluation by many organizations, resources in cities, waste management, including here cities, companies, individuals, pollution and traffic management to mention a etc. This has been possible, in part, due to the few. There are many definitions to the term, advent of cheap processors and wireless presented by different researchers. However, in networks (Cisco). this paper we refer to smart cities as the The development of smart cities are mainly following. “Smart city” refers to the ability of focused on some major components, namely: a city to grow sustainably by means of mobile the citizens (quality of life), the economy, the computing systems and practical data governance (e-government), the transportation management networks, leading to better and the environment. Despite the huge interest, management of traffic, energy, pollution, there are some challenges we have yet to parking spaces and so on [3]. overcome when it comes to developing smart Proccedings of RTA-CSIT 2021, April 2021, Tirana, Albania EMAIL: albinatocilla12@gmail.com ©️ 2020 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org) cities, which will be mentioned in the second part of this paper. 2. Smart Cities Pillars Developing smart city systems is a large- scale endeavor. To make this possible we will make use of the three “pillars” of smart solutions [4]: ¤ Internet of Things (IoT) Figure 2: Number of connected IoT devices during the ¤ Big Data period from 2015 to 2025 ¤ Cloud Computing. 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 Figure 1: An overview of smart city big data applications, due to its use in intelligent networks made up of many connections that IoT is defined as “a dynamic global network require effective transfer of data. Such different infrastructure with self - configuring connections are those with the citizens’ smart capabilities based on standard and interoperable phones or cars. communication protocols where physical and Cloud computing: Cloud computing is virtual “things” have identities, physical attributes, and virtual personalities and use tightly bound with big data. It is a good solution for processing large amounts of data. Cloud intelligent interfaces, and are seamlessly computing provides a common network-based integrated into the information network” [5]. platform for many cloud users to share IoT lets devices communicate with each resources. other through different technologies such as sensor networks. It has found a wild application in automation systems with the use of IPv6- 3. Overview on the Sustainability enabled architecture and smart grid systems. On of Smart Cities the other hand, it has also found a wide application is “smart city applications” such as The notion of sustainability is derived from IP cameras, smart wheelchairs and Web of the need for change, in order to make people’s Things [6]. Recent interest in research live better ones. It means a more attractive, regarding IoT in smart cities is sustainable inclusive and balanced city for its residents and development. tourists. 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. Figure 3: The concept of smart sustainable city Allen and Hoekstra highlighted the scale reap these benefits, there needs to be an initial based on which the sustainability can be investment either by the public or private sector measured and assessed [7]. It does not exist a and the budget it would require is quite large. global urban scale. Sustainability is an old term Another challenge to take into consideration is for urban planning discipline and it has been privacy. Citizens interact with the smart always discussed in literatures. The same logic systems, however a lot of them are inclined to stands also for smart cities. This concept will be be skeptical of them because of privacy and connected closely to the field of urban planning. confidentiality concerns. Another aspect is the It offers a good balance among supply and security aspect. Smart systems offer the benefit demand on the other hand. of automatization, at the risk of cyber-attacks. Referring to APA, there are some outcomes All of these concerns open the door for more required to guarantee sustainability in urban research and mindfulness when developing planning: smart systems. Furthermore, these network  The equality among all groups should sensors use energy and the total amount of exist; energy used is one of disadvantages. Fault  The communities should be “resilient, tolerance is another challenge to be considered diverse and self-sufficient.” related to IoT use in the field of urban planning.  We should have a healthy environment, The resilience of the network based on sensors, in terms of social and economic aspects. to the failures of the system should be From this point of view, the concept of considered. In smart cities everything is sustainability goes beyond natural resources; it interconnected [9]. Each of its “nodes” presents is related to many aspects of society. This paper its own vulnerabilities. A single vulnerability looks into the use of IoT in urban field, in order can affect the whole system and affect the to transform a city into a sustainable smart one. citizens’ security [10]. For example, an attacker The urban planners should connect the concepts may be able to connect to the electric power of smart cities and sustainability together. IoT system and alter public transportation with plays a key role in the process of smart city’s thousands of passengers aboard. Or they might sustainability. Its application is realized from launch false alarms, modify traffic lights and so sensor networks, that collects data from on, all of which have serious security different parts of the city, for example implications. This is why it is very important to environment, traffic, health, etc. These sensors develop reliable solutions. Data management: work with a device called an actuator. This data Treating the huge amount of data collected in will be used and evaluated, in order to optimize, smart cities is a challenge. One viable solution manage or predict certain future situations. This is that smart phone data can be used to develop collected information is very important in order a variety of urban applications [11]. For to improve the performance or resources’ use. example: mobile phone data can be used to When the number of sensors is big, the fog estimate road traffic volume. computing is used in order to get the data from sensors in a secure way and closer to the place 5. Conclusions it will be processed. In this way, it can be used in an efficient way to update different Given the exponential growth of processes. populations, most notably in cities and the implications this has in regards of limitations in 4. IoT challenges resources and services, smart city systems have emerged as a solution and have become very Despite the huge interest, there are some popular concepts all across the world. Taking challenges we have yet to overcome when it smart and sustainable action in developing comes to developing smart cities. First off, lack these solutions is crucial, and this includes of investment and cost. Smart cities are a great taking into account. opportunity to save money. Examples include This, however doesn’t mean there are not Barcelona, which is estimated to save billions still a lot of areas in need of more research, most of dollars in energy cost using new smart importantly: cyber-security, data management, systems, such as smart city lights, that light up sustainable energy use to name a few, etc., and dim using motion sensors [8]. However, to which are presented above. 6. References [8] S. E, Bibri and J, Krogstie,“The emerging data–driven smart city and its innovative applied solutions for sustainability: the [1] United Nations, “Population 2030, cases of London and Barcelona,” Energy Demographic Challenges and opportunities Informatics, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–42, 2020. for sustainable development planning”, United Nations, New York, 29, July, 2015. [9] V. Okrepilov, S, Kuzmina, S, Kuznetsov. https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/ Tools of quality economics: Sustainable population/publications/pdf/trends/Populat development of a ‘smart city’ under ion2030.pdf conditions of digital transformation of the economy. IOP Conf.Ser. Mater. Sci. Eng. [2] American Planning Association. APA 2019, 497, 012134.v. Policy Guide for Planning for Sustainability, New York, April 17, 2000, [10] S. E., Bibri “The IoT for smart sustainable NY. www.planning.org/policy/guides/ cities of the future: An analytical adopted/sustainability.htm framework for sensor-based big data applications for environmental [3] D. Gavalas, P. Nicopolitidis, A. Kameas, C. sustainability. (2018) Sustainable Cities Goumopoulos, Bellavista P., Lambrinos L., and Society, 38, 230–253, Guo B. , Smart Cities: Recent Trends, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2017.12.034 Methodologies, and Applications, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, [11] S. Zhang, "The Application of the Internet Vol. 2017, No. 7090963, pp. 2, 2017, of Things to Enhance Urban Hindawi, Sustainability,” 2017, Agora, 102-111. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/7090963 [4] Kirimtat, A.; Koyunbaba, B.K.; Chatzikonstantinou, I.; Sariyildiz, S. Review of simulation modeling for shading devices in buildings. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 2016, 53, 23–49. [5] H. Sundmaeker et al., “Vision and Challenges for Realizing the Internet of Things,” Cluster of European Research Projects on the Internet of Things, 2010, www.internet-of-things- research.eu/pdf/IoT_Clusterbook_March_ 2010.pdf. [6] A. Gyrard and M. Serrano, “Connected smart cities: interoperability with SEG 3.0 for the internet of things,” in Proceedings of the 30th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (WAINA '16), pp. 796–802, March 2016. [7] Allen, T., and Hoekstra, T. W. (1993). Toward a Definition of Sustainability. Sustainable Ecological Systems: Implementing an Ecological Approach to Land Management. Fort Collins, CO: Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, 98–107. [2] L. Belli et al. IoT-Enabled Smart Sustainable Cities: Challenges and Approaches. Smart Cities. 2020; 3(3):1039-1071.