Abstract
This article gives a brief overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) for cities, offering examples of IoT-powered 21st century smart cities, including the experience of the Spanish city of Barcelona in implementing its own IoT-driven services to improve the quality of life of its people through measures that promote an eco-friendly, sustainable environment. The potential benefits as well as the challenges associated with IoT for cities are discussed. Much of the 'big data' that are continuously generated by IoT sensors, devices, systems and services are geo-tagged or geo-located. The importance of having robust, intelligent geospatial analytics systems in place to process and make sense of such data in real time cannot therefore be overestimated. The authors argue that IoT-powered smart cities stand better chances of becoming healthier cities. The World Health Organization (WHO) Healthy Cities Network and associated national networks have hundreds of member cities around the world that could benefit from, and harness the power of, IoT to improve the health and well-being of their local populations.
Highlights
This article gives a brief overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) for cities, offering examples of IoT-powered 21st century smart cities, including the experience of the Spanish city of Barcelona in implementing its own IoT-driven services to improve the quality of life of its people through measures that promote an eco-friendly, sustainable environment
Background: the 'Internet of Things' In a major review article published in December 2011, Kamel Boulos et al [1] describe and discuss in great detail an 'Internet-connected web of citizens and electronic sensors/devices' that can serve many functions related to public and environmental health surveillance and crisis management applications
Subsequent articles and conference slides by Kamel Boulos [2,3,4] provide additional human health-related examples of applications harnessing the power of Internet-connected people and things, e.g., community-led air quality monitoring around the globe using the 'Air Quality Egg' sensor system [5] and crowdsourced noise pollution monitoring by citizens using a special app running on their smartphones [6,7]
Summary
The risks exist at the interfaces: the role of standards IoT-powered smart cities rely on a growing number of sub-technologies and subsystems (devices, appliances, buildings, vehicles, component services, etc.) that need to be seamlessly interconnected and interfaced with one another in real time. ICT projects prone to failure are commonly complex systems made up of a large number of different subsystems that are all supposed to tie well and work together While this seems to offer the opportunity for the most (integration) benefits, it seems to create the most (interfacing) problems. The importance of having robust, intelligent geospatial analytics systems in place to process and make sense of such data in real time cannot be overestimated [53,54] This applies to all aspects of city life, including the health of its citizens.
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