Existing Smart City Research Articles

Exploring bus tracking data to characterize urban traffic congestion

Quantification of traffic dynamics is a valuable tool for city planning and management. Metrics such as the vehicle average speed, travel time, delays, and count of stops, can be used to characterize mobility and traffic congestion in an area. However, effective study of mobility data is often hindered by the difficulty of gathering mobility data in a practical, inexpensive, and prompt way.In this work, we explore the use of city buses as mobility probes, using the existing smart city infrastructure deployed in Aveiro, Portugal. We propose a method for traffic congestion detection considering the low vehicle speed, low traffic flow and road occupancy close to its capacity. Three degrees of congestion are identified using the k-means approach; DBSCAN is used to characterize the typical level of congestion in a road. Using four-weeks of mobility data, it was possible to assess the congestion along the day and for the different days of the week; some road segments proved to be consistently prone to congestion. We also studied parameters of driving safety, considering speed and acceleration.In this work, we show that knowledge discovery can be applied to mobility data being collected by tracking buses, exploring data that is often collected for other purposes also to characterize traffic congestion. These methods can inform decision makers and are easily ported to other cities.

Understanding Security in Smart City Domains From the ANT-Centric Perspective

A city is a large human settlement that serves the people who live there, and a smart city is a concept of how cities might better serve their residents through new forms of technology. In this paper, we focus on four major smart city domains according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: smart utility, smart transportation, smart homes, and smart healthcare. Numerous IoT applications have been developed to achieve the intelligence that we desire in our smart domains, ranging from personal gadgets such as health trackers and smart watches to large-scale industrial IoT systems such as nuclear and energy management systems. However, many of the existing smart city IoT solutions can be made better by considering the suitability of their security strategies. Inappropriate system security designs generally occur in two scenarios: first, system designers recognize the importance of security but are unsure of where, when, or how to implement it; and second, system designers try to fit traditional security designs to meet the smart city security context. Thus, the objective of this paper is to provide application designers with the missing security link they may need in order to improve their security designs. By evaluating the specific context of each smart city domain and the context-specific security requirements, we aim to provide directions on when, where, and how they should implement security strategies and the possible security challenges they need to consider. In addition, we present a new perspective on security issues in smart cities from a data-centric viewpoint by referring to the reference architecture, the Activity-Network-Things (ANT)-centric architecture. This architecture is built upon the concept of “security in a zero-trust environment", to achieve end-to-end data security. By doing so, we reduce the security risks posed by new system interactions or unanticipated user behaviors while avoiding the hassle of regularly upgrading security models.

Urban quantum leap: A comprehensive review and analysis of quantum technologies for smart cities

Contemporary smart city solutions rely on standardized von Neumann architecture, in which single data units are coded as “0” or “1.” Conversely, urban quantum technologies rely on the fundamental principles of quantum physics, transcending the conventions of the current computational paradigm. On the one hand, urban quantum technologies hold managerial relevance for future smart cities. On the other hand, they are often overlooked by smart city researchers. Accordingly, their value as a breakthrough technological paradigm is still largely unexplored. In this article, we look at how quantum technologies may contribute to existing smart city solutions, including the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, ICT, smart transportation, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. First, through a semi-systematic review of eighty articles on quantum computing within the social science domain, we identify two relevant classes of urban quantum technologies: quantum communication and quantum computing. Second, we establish a comprehensive taxonomy of conventional smart city solutions based on the automated content analysis of 567 abstracts of articles on the technological aspects of smart cities. Third, we investigate potential associations between two classes of technologies (conventional smart city solutions and urban quantum technologies) by analyzing the semantic relationships between eighty articles on quantum technologies according to the frequency of keywords denoting different types of conventional smart city solutions. Finally, we triangulate our findings through a thematic analysis of potential uses of quantum technologies within identified categories of smart city solutions.

Multi-Contextual Smart City Model for Service Interconnections

The key issue of smart city development usually lies in the understanding of the complexity of the services’ structure. Thus, smart city models are developed to improve current outlooks on Smart City Services’ structure by using service-dominant logic and service science. However, the contextual changes are usually not fully considered in the existing smart city models. It is in turn difficult to catch the changes among the layers in the smart city model. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a complex and innovative structure of smart city services. The main contribution of the proposed approach is to consolidate the interconnection of services that is affected by the changing context. It will also lead to a better understanding of the complexity in a smart city. The presented conceptual model has a direct influence on the practical development of a smart city. Since every country and city approaches the services’ structure differently, the smart city model is derived with the lack of a common understanding of various smart cities. In the case of accepting our model as a common solution, the sharing of knowledge and information among cities and countries would be easier and more valuable. The paper also shows how the current knowledge in service-dominant logic and service science helps to develop a new practical approach to understanding the smart city structure.

Measuring progress of smart cities: Indexing the smart city indices

The ‘smart city’ represents a core feature of modern urban development. The appearance of numerous smart city indices, which claim to successfully evaluate and compare smart city performances, is the manifestation of the concept's growing popularity. The central objective of this paper is to address the integrity and quality of the existing smart city indices, and identify those ones which are fit for international comparison. We propose a method for evaluating the integrity and quality of the existing smart city indices in terms of five criteria – Credibility, Reliability, Methodology, Versatility, Precision. The article critically evaluates six smart city indices and concludes that the Cities in Motion Index from the IESE Business School has the best overall performance. To improve the versatility of the existing smart city indices, this paper proposes a new approach based on respecting three main criteria: refining the types of indicator, defining the smart city domains and adopting context-sensitive measurements. These elements are deemed to be essential for any smart city index.

Evaluation of Smart City Sustainable Development Prospects Based on Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation Method.

In this study, the method of a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is used to analyze the research situation of smart city development, and 20 evaluation indicator systems are selected as the original indicator database; the relevant sustainable development indicator data of prefecture-level cities in the first batch of smart city pilots are collected and normalized after processing. It is used as a sample library for correlation, reliability, validity test, weight calculation, and a benchmark value for evaluation model training. By processing the original indicator database data, the membership function of the indicator is constructed, and the fuzzy set theory is used for indicators. Classify and analyze the indicators according to the model to complete the collection of the indicator database; use the neural network model to determine the weight of each indicator in the indicator system. An indicator system and evaluation model for the sustainable development of smart city construction have been constructed. To ensure the actual effectiveness of the application of the indicator system, this study has conducted in-depth research on the influencing factors and principles of the system construction, and based on this, the design of the indicator system has been carried out. At the same time, for the determination of the sustainable development weight of the sustainable development system, the analytic hierarchy process was adopted through multiple considerations, and finally, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model for the sustainable development of smart city construction was constructed. The model in this study is innovative in research methods and research objects. It can provide a reference value for the development of smart cities and also help the change and innovation of the existing smart city evaluation index system.

Electronic services or smart cities – Current experiences and perspectives in the Slovak Republic

Smart City solutions are these days applied not only in big, but also in small and medium sized cities in a wide variety of countries worldwide. Also municiplaties in the Slovak Republic are using to a different extent smart city solutions to improve the life of their people. The goal of this paper, based on the premises, that also small and medium sized cities can become Smart City, is to present and analyse good examples of Smart City solutions in the Slovak Republic. The focus will be on the city Kezmarok, which can be considered as a medium sized city and which by implementing existing Smart City solutions from third parties, but mainly by developing innovative solutions directly in the city, can be seen as good example and good practise in the respective field.

A bibliometric evaluation and critical review of the smart city concept – making a case for social equity

PurposeThis study aims to promote the idea that social equity is a significant objective that needs to be achieved to attain a smart city and further reveal the current research focus of smart city in relation to social equity. Also, it will propose determinants of social equity for smart city development.Design/methodology/approachThe first part of this study was conducted by reviewing ten existing smart city models and assessing their elements, in a bid to find a relationship between the existing smart city models and social equity. These models were sorts from scholarly publications such as books, journals and other related articles sourced from google scholar and Scopus database. To give more credence to this study, a second aspect of this study was necessary; this was conducted using a bibliometric approach, and the data was gathered from the Scopus database. Keywords such as “smart-city” OR “Digital-city” OR “Intelligent-city” OR “Computer-city” OR “Technology-city” AND “Social-equity” were used for article extraction. VOSview was used to analyse the bibliographic data obtained.FindingsThis research revealed that studies that relate, link or discuss the idea that social equity is a significant objective that needs to be achieved to attain a smart city are low considering that only 48 articles were extracted, and most of the studies did not specifically focus on social equity in smart city development. Further findings revealed that the ten reviewed smart city models never linked or discussed the idea of social equity in smart city development. Additionally, this study revealed that emerging countries aiming to develop smart cities, particularly in Africa, are not paying much attention to the importance of creating social equity policies to attain smart cities.Practical implicationsThis study revealed a knowledge gap in the study of smart cities in developing countries. Governments of various developing countries can implement the ideas from this study by creating and applying social equity policies to drive sustainable development, which will positively influence smart city attainment.Originality/valueThe contribution of this study is that it promotes the idea that social equity is a significant objective that needs to be achieved to attain smart cities. This study’s further originality and value lie in adopting a bibliometric approach of analysis that has not been used in this form in previous studies.

Investigation of Big Data Analytics for Sustainable Smart City Development: An Emerging Country

In the data-driven world, data is created in huge volume and then analyzed by several organizations to get benefit from them. Smart city is one of the examples to use big data to offer improved services for its resident and tourist. However, some countries face certain obstacles to analyze the big data integration for sustainability in smart city development. Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to identify and analyze the significant barriers related to sustainable smart city development. To accomplish this objective, fourteen barriers of big data analytics are selected through the combined approach of literature review and expert input. After that, these barriers are evaluated using the best worst method for obtaining deeper insights. The result of this study reveals that the most significant barrier is ‘lack of technologies for BDA’, ‘lack of BDA framework’, ‘nature of big data’, and ‘low availability of analytics platforms for big data’. These barriers need to address on priority to develop a sustainable smart city. This study is helpful to the urban planner, government, and consultancy agencies to decide on the adoption of BDA for sustainable smart city development. Further, they can also optimize their resources in the best possible manner to achieve the sustainable development of the existing smart cities.

Smart city as a smart service system: Human-computer interaction and smart city surveillance systems

Smart city services, smart applications and smart devices form an ecosystem of tools and artifacts that challenge, and times even disrupt, conventions, norms, and rites of behavior, thus prompting diverse behavioral changes at the level of the individual, the group, and the society at large. In this view, smart city may be viewed as a – one of its kind – laboratory to query the complex human-computer relationship from a multi-dimensional perspective. By adopting this perspective, this paper queries the existing smart city surveillance systems to identify their key limitations and sources of frequently justified controversies. It is argued that to bypass these – first – the value of mesh-technology should be explored. It is also argued that – second – it is necessary not only to bring citizens back in the discussion on smart city, but also to highlight the mechanisms by means of which they might be involved in the co-design of smart city solutions and in urban decision-making. To bridge these two imperatives, smart city is conceptualized as a smart service system and, consequently, a wireless integrated mesh-technology enhanced (WIMTE) smart city surveillance system is elaborated.

Performance analysis of electricity generation from grid-connected photovoltaic system using All-Sky Index for Smart City projects in Thailand

Promotion of solar energy as a new promising renewable energy source for Smart City projects in Thailand plays an important role in driving the economy, society and the environment. A novel conceptual framework with different solar radiation indexes was developed to investigate and evaluate the efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) energy production by comparing predicted and actual results for energy acquired from the reference project. The trend of potential energy production was predicted from solar radiation data as the basis for further calculations to evaluate PV system efficiency through a techno-economic analysis of project development. A mathematical model was developed to predict the obtained electrical energy by considering the suitable location-specific solar radiation indexes including direct normal radiation, All-Sky insolation incident on a horizontal surface, direct normal irradiation and global horizontal irradiance. The developed model was tested with three existing Smart City projects at various locations in Thailand. The All-Sky index was determined as the most suitable option to evaluate new PV development projects. Highest energy production from the PV projects occurred in March and April. Energy production efficiencies of the PV systems were estimated in the range of 3.97–4.32 kWh/kWp. The techno-economic analysis suggested that the PV project had an internal rate of return of 14.30–15.75% and payback period of 6.18–6.74 years. The proposed conceptual framework was a promising tool for decision-making regarding Smart City PV projects.

How smart cities are made: A priori, ad hoc and post hoc drivers of smart city implementation in Sydney, Australia

Recent geographical attention to smart places has underlined the key point that smart places are made: crafted incrementally over time and woven through existing sites and contexts. Work on analysing the crafting of ‘actually existing’ smart cities has turned to describing and characterising the processes through which smart cities are made and, within this, the interplay and relative significance of accidental versus purposeful smart cities has come to the fore. Drawing on the concept of dispositif to capture the simultaneity of piecemeal and opportunistic change with deliberate strategy, this paper furthers these debates using examples of two places within the Sydney Metropolitan Region, Australia: Newcastle and Parramatta. Through their analysis we identify the evolving interplay of a priori drivers, ad hoc initiatives and post hoc strategies evident in the crafting of smart cities. Understanding the emergence of actually existing smart cities, we conclude, is sharpened and strengthened by the concept of dispositif, through its attention to processes characterised by non-linear, overlapping and recursively combined drivers that are not without purposeful, strategic intent.

Algorithm for Target Detection in Smart City Combined with Depth Learning and Feature Extraction

The target detection algorithms have the problems of low detection accuracy and susceptibility to occlusion in existing smart cities. In response to this phenomenon, this paper presents an algorithm for target detection in a smart city combined with depth learning and feature extraction. It proposes an adaptive strategy is introduced to optimize the algorithm search windows based on the traditional SSD algorithm, which according to the target operating conditions change, strengthening the algorithm to enhance the accuracy of the objective function which is combined with the weighted correlation feature fusion method, and this method is a combination of appearance depth features and depth features. Experimental results show that this algorithm has a better antiblocking ability and detection accuracy compared with the conventional SSD algorithms. In addition, it has better stability in a changing environment.

Designing a XSS Defensive Framework for Web Servers Deployed in the Existing Smart City Infrastructure

Cross-site scripting is one of the notable exceptions effecting almost every web application. Hence, this article proposed a framework to negate the impact of the XSS attack on web servers deployed in one of the major applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) i.e. the smart city environment. The proposed framework implements 2 approaches: first, it executes vulnerable flow tracking for filtering injected malicious scripting code in dynamic web pages. Second, it accomplished trusted remark generation and validation for unveiling any suspicious activity in static web pages. Finally, the filtered and modified webpage is interfaced to the user. The prototype of the framework has been evaluated on a suite of real-world web applications to detect XSS attack mitigation capability. The performance analysis of the framework has revealed that this framework recognizes the XSS worms with very low false positives, false negatives and acceptable performance overhead as compared to existent XSS defensive methodologies.

A theatre of machines: Automata circuses and digital bread in the smart city of Toronto

In this paper, the policies, projects, and promises of “smart” initiatives at the City of Toronto are evaluated, as they manifest through a technological convergence between local government services and an increased focus on citizen services through data‐driven mediums. Through direct participant observation and formal interviews, a robust understanding of the internal institutional dynamics, the perspectives citizens in the “smart city,” and the operational disconnects in governance, policy, and practice has been gained. Our case study on the City of Toronto provides an account of how and from where these smart motivations for increasing a data‐driven engagement with the public have arisen over the past several years. In doing so, we identify key characteristics that both enable and hinder the existing smart city in the forms of access to open data, the use of increased computational methods, and the engagement of public services through digital space as requirements for the future of participatory governance. We argue that instituting appropriate policies and engaging citizens to co‐design and participate in the planning processes are essential to ensuring an inclusive, modern, and open smart city.

Heterogeneity in IoT-based Smart Cities Designs

<span class="fontstyle01"><span>Smart city is a strategy of supporting new way of living using data that are collected from different types of electronic devices, analyzed and utilized to enable efficient resource usability and service optimization. Applications of various nature are elaborated in the smart cities, such as traffic planning applications, crowd monitoring, public health care, security, economy and urban planning. Thus, various requirements are needed to incorporate and facilitate efficient development of these applications in the smart city design. Accordingly, smart city can be distinguished via the requirements that support these applications. In this study, the requirements of smart city in relations to the involved applications and its influence on the smart city design are discussed. A list of smart city requirements is concluded and the potentials of various network architecture to facilitate such requirements are discussed. </span></span><span class="fontstyle01"><span>Based on the requirements and the architectures, the existing smart city designs are evaluated and compared. </span></span>

Conceptualizing Small and Medium-Sized Smart Cities in the Mediterranean Region

Despite the remarkable interest in smart cities, noticed during the last decade, a consistent comprehension of the concept is not yet fully realized. Various definitions, ranging from exclusively technology-oriented perceptions to broader views, have been introduced, establishing a definitional polyphony and causing lack of semantic interoperability. Empirical evidence witnesses the prevalence of technology-pushed smart city initiatives as well as their failure to meet expectations in several urban domains. When planning “smart,” the relevance of ICT and their applications should be in alignment with spatial and other urban peculiarities and sub-systems' interactions, implying the need for getting deep insight into the city's ontology. The paper focuses on the extension/enrichment of an existing smart city ontology, with concepts and relationships stemming from Mediterranean small and medium-sized cities, in an attempt to outline their main key drivers and their interrelationships and fully grasp the smart city concept in the particular spatial context.

Exploring knowledge management perspectives in smart city research: A review and future research agenda

There is a growing body of literature calling for work on the emerging role of smart cities as information hubs and knowledge repositories. This article reviews the existing smart city literature and integrates knowledge management perspectives to provide an overview of future research directions. By demonstrating the multi-stakeholder relationships involved in smart city development, it takes a crucial step towards looking into the role of knowledge management in future smart city research. Eighty-two peer-reviewed publications were analyzed covering smart city studies in various research domains. The systematic review identifies five different themes: strategy and vision, frameworks, enablers and inhibitors, citizen participation, and benefits. These themes form the basis for developing a future research agenda focused on knowledge sharing and co-learning among cities via three research directions: socio-technical approaches, knowledge sharing perspectives and organizational learning capabilities. The paper also proposes a series of knowledge-driven policy recommendations to contribute towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Ingenious Techniques for Creation of Smart Cities by Big Data Technology & Urban Modelling Simulation by Matsim

Ingenious Techniques for creation of Smart Cities by Big Data Technology & Urban modeling simulation by MATSimas the smart cities are on nascent stage in India. The extension of huge information and the advancement of Internet of Things (IoT) innovations have assumed a significant job in the practicality of keen city activities. Enormous information offer the potential for urban areas to get significant bits of knowledge from a lot of information gathered through different sources, and the IoT permits the joining of sensors, radiofrequency recognizable proof, and Bluetooth in reality condition utilizing exceedingly organized administrations. Thus the job of urban reenactment models and their perception are utilized to help territorial arranging offices assess elective transportation ventures, land use guidelines, and natural insurance arrangements. Typical urban simulations provide spatially distributed data about number of inhabitants, land prices, traffic, and other variables for ex- MATSim is an activity-based transport simulation framework designed to simulate large scale scenarios. Such technologies which have been developed in the past few years have proven to be very effective in smart cities of various countries. This project is an attempt to study the feasibility of such modified system, by understanding the implementation of such technologies to improve the existing smart cities and those which are about to become one. This is done by proposing an idea that is by implementing a big data server in the proposed smart city, the data will be collected through smart sensors which will then be sent to server and the mined data will be converted to simplified data for planners, engineers etc. in order to make a economic, self-sustainable & fully automated smart city.

Alerts and Notifications for Smart Citizens

Smart cities function on the premises of efficiency and transparency. One of the key requests of smart citizens is to be informed, through modern, digital and personalized means, of issues that might affect them: utility cut-offs, changes in public transportation, exceeding levels of pollutants and so on. In this research, we implement an extension — to an existing smart city notification platform — that consists of a notification and alert module build as a chatbot for Facebook Messenger. We describe the sources of notification data, how we designed the chatbot and current possibilities for users to interact with it and be notified. We also relate on future plans on improving the chatbot.