Prototyping Smart City applications over large scale M2M testbed

Abstract

Many cities around the globe are adopting the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as part of a strategy to transform into Smart Cities. These will allow cities in the developing world to cope with the ever increasing demand for services such as an effective electricity supply, healthcare and water management. Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication standards play a vital role in enabling the development of Smart Cities by supporting new innovative services. Although Smart City services offer an exciting future, many challenges still have to be addressed in order to allow for mainstream adoption. This work focuses on issues related to prototyping Smart City services that utilize standardised M2M middleware platforms. In addition, the use of an inter-continental testbed for Smart City applications as an enabler for innovative, automated and interactive services is presented. The services developed will use an architecture which is based on the Smart City framework developed as part of the Testbeds for Reliable Smart City Machine-to-Machine Communication (TRESCIMO) project. These services will also serve as means to validate the use of Smart services within an African City's context. In addition, the architecture is validated by taking into account various real world use cases for Smart City applications.