The big picture on the internet of things and the smart city: a review of what we know and what we need to know

Abstract

This study examines how the application of the IoT in smart cities is discussed in the current academic literature. Based on bibliometric techniques, 1,802 articles were retrieved from the Scopus database and analyzed to identify the temporal nature of IoT research, the most relevant journals, authors, countries, keywords, and studies. The software tool VOSviewer was used to build the keyword co-occurrence network and to cluster the pertinent literature. Results show the significant growth of IoT research in recent years. The most productive authors, journals, and countries were also identified. The main findings from the keyword co-occurrence clustering and an in-depth qualitative analysis indicate that the IoT is used alongside other technologies including cloud computing, big data analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and wireless telecommunication networks. The major applications of the IoT for smart cities include smart buildings, transportation, healthcare, smart parking, and smart grids. This review is one of the first attempts to map global IoT research in a smart city context and uses a comprehensive set of articles and bibliometric techniques to provide scholars and practitioners with an overview of what has been studied so far and to identify research gaps at the intersection of the IoT and the smart city.