Future City: A Pilot Project of GATE Center of Excellence

Abstract

Citizens and cities' government meet several challenges due to urbanization. The well-being of the citizens depends on the cities' government, while the citizens apply information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve society's quality of life. The cities' government and citizens need to work together to provide a "smart" living environment. The modern ICTs, including Big Data, IoT and Cloud, enable cities to become smart. They are a successful factor for development of smart solutions that provide information about what is happening in the city, timely response to citizen needs and better control of operations needed to increase the quality of life. In such a context, this paper presents a pilot project in the area of smart and sustainable cities. The pilot project is planned to be implemented as a part of research and development activities of the future BiG DAta for SmarT SociEty (GATE) Center of Excellence that will be established as a joint initiative between Sofia University, Bulgaria and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. The concept of the pilot project is described, including its main objectives and reference architecture. The possible application scenarios, covering different city dimensions, are discussed.