Smart City and Internet of Things Solutions

Report

By

St. Mohamed Elsayed Hassan Aly

September, 2016

Abstract

With the rapid growth of information and communication technologies, there is a growing
interest in developing smart cities with a focus on the knowledge economy, use of sensors and
mobile technologies to plan and manage cities [7]. The proponents argue that these emerging
technologies have potential application in efficiently managing the environment and infrastructure,
promoting economic development and actively engaging the public, thus contributing to building
safe, healthy, sustainable and resilient cities.

The goal of building a smart city is to improve quality of life by using urban informatics and
technology to improve the efficiency of services and meet residents’ needs. ICT allows city officials
to interact directly with the community and the city infrastructure and to monitor what is
happening in the city, how the city is evolving, and how to enable a better quality of life. Through
the use of sensors integrated with real-time monitoring systems, data are collected from citizens
and devices - then processed and analyzed.

Using the The Internet of Things (IoT) shall be able to incorporate transparently and seamlessly
a large number of different and heterogeneous end systems, while providing open access to selected
subsets of data for the development of a plethora of digital services.

1
Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..….……....1

Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………………………………2

List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………………….………..…..…..3

List of Table…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..3

List of Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………………………….……3

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………..…………….…...........4

MOTIVATION……………………………………………………………………………………………...……….….…...4

1 Internet of Things and smart city: …………………………………………………….…………..….….5

1.1 Internet of Things …………………………………………………………………...…………....…....5

1.2 Internet of Things (IoT) Background ……………………….…………………………..….…..6

1.3 Definitions of Internet of Things……….………………………………………………………….5

1.4 applications of IoT…………………………………………………………….……………..…………5

2 Smart City …………………………………….…….………………………………………………………….…..…7

2.1 Definitions of Smart City ……………………………………….…....…………………………...….7

2.2 Smart City Dimensions ………….…...….........................................................................................9

2.3 Characteristics of Smart Cities:…………………….…………………………………….……......9

2.4 Smart City needs ……………………………………………………………………………...….….....10

2.5 Smart City Benefits:………………………………………………….…..……………………….…....11

2.6 Smart City Systems:…………………………………………………………………………………....11

2.7 Challenges:………………………………………………………………………………………………....12

2.8 Smart city case study ……………………………………………….………………………………...13

3 Literature review…………………………………………………………………………………………..…… 15

3.1 Introduction:…………………………………………………… ………………………………...…...15

3.2 Related Research:…………………………………………………… …………………………….......15

4. Reference ………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..…...17

2
List of Figures:

Fig. 1: Fields of applications of IoT …………………………………………………………………..……….……7

Fig. 2: Smart City Dimensions ………………………………………………….……………………………..….…..9
Fig. 3: Smart City Systems…………………….…………………………………………………………………….…11
Fig 4. The IoT architecture for noise mapping…………………………………………...…..14

List of Table:

Table 1. Definitions of the Internet of Things……………………………………………….……….……...….5

Table 2. Definitions of the Smart City concept.……………………… …………………….…….….….……..7
Table 3. Six Characteristics of the Smart City Model.……………………… …………………….….….…..9

List of Abbreviations:

IoT Internet of Things

WSN Wireless sensor networks
ICT information and communications technologies
RFID Radio-frequency Identification

3
Introduction:

The world is facing increasing urbanization while, simultaneously, major cities have become a
magnet for talent and a driver of economic growth. At the same time, cities are experiencing
persistent societal challenges unemployment and crime demand solution, the need for energy
efficiency is becoming urgent, increasing population puts higher pressure on the urban
infrastructure and public authorities need to do more with less permanently.

Smart city is the one that uses information and communications technologies to make the city
services and monitoring more aware, interactive and efficient, Smartness of a city is driven and
enabled technologically by the emergent Internet of Things [4].

A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple information and

communication technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in a secure fashion to
manage a city’s assets – the city’s assets include, local departments' information systems, schools,
libraries, transportation systems, hospitals, power plants, water supply networks, waste
management, law enforcement, and other community services .

ICT is used to enhance quality, performance and interactivity of urban services, to reduce costs
and resource consumption and to improve contact between citizens and government. Smart city
applications are developed with the goal of improving the management of urban flows and
allowing for real time responses to challenges.

Due to the breadth of technologies that have been implemented under the smart city label, it is
difficult to distil a precise definition of a smart city.

Motivations:

Building a general architecture for the IoT is hence a very complex task, mainly because of the
extremely large variety of devices, link layer technologies, and services that may be involved in
such a system.

Before we say it's smart city should be able to incorporate transparently and seamlessly a large
number of different and heterogeneous end systems, while providing open access to selected
subsets of data for the development of a plethora of digital services is not be achieved only through
the use of IoT

4
 The main reason for development of Smart Cities is the need for improving the quality of
services from municipality or government agencies to city inhabitants. Today, there are several
smart city projects, which are built upon this key driver.

Internet of Things and smart city:

1.1 Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT), also known as Internet of Everything (IoE) and ubiquitous
network, not only allows transportation of data and communication between different people,
characteristics of the first stages of the internet, but also allows interaction with and between
things, at anytime and anywhere, and this will cause another change in the way our society
works and in how we see the world.

1.2 Internet of Things (IoT) Background

Any object or thing can be connected to the internet, some of them just providing
information and some even taking actions without any human interaction, according to the
data collected. In order to have a clearer idea of the meaning of the Internet of Things, in
Table 1, there is a compilation of some of the definitions available in recent years of the
concept of Internet of Things. Recent definitions tend to focus in one of the two key elements
of Internet of Things; the first is the objects or things and their increase in value by being
connected to the internet and the second element is the network which will connect all of
them, allowing the information sharing, creating a systems of systems.

1.3 Definitions of Internet of Things [8]

Source Definition

Chad Jones (2013) The Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Everything and the Industrial
Internet, it promises to revolutionize not only how we discover, interact
and understand our world, but the way we experience our everyday private
and working lives.

IEEE (2014) Internet-of-Things (IoT) is the convergence of Internet with RFID, Sensor
and smart objects. IoT can be defined as “things belonging to the Internet”

5
 to supply and access all of real-world information.

Intel (2014) The Internet of Things (IoT) is an evolution of mobile, home, and
embedded devices that are connected to the internet, integrating
computing capabilities and using data analytics to extract valuable
information.

Cisco (2014) The Internet of Things (IoT) is an evolution of mobile, home, and
embedded devices that are connected to the internet, integrating
computing capabilities and using data analytics to extract valuable
information.

(Chambers & The Internet of Everything is already revolutionizing the way our cities
Elfrink, 2014) operate, creating a more dynamic global economy and also bringing new,
richer experiences to citizens. Soon, we will live in a world where
everything — and everyone — can be connected to everything else.

Oxford The interconnection via the internet of computing devices embedded in

Dictionary (2015) everyday objects enabling them to send and receive data

The Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects,

systems platforms and applications that contain embedded technology to
Accenture (2015) communicate and share intelligence with each other, the external
environment and with people.

Kevin Ashton The internet of things is really adding two components to computers as we
(2015) understand them today. One is sensors, the ability of the computer to
understand the world by itself. The other is networking, the way those
sensors can be distributed all over the place, they can be gathering different
kinds of information in different locations.

Table 1. Definitions of the Internet of Things

6
1.4 applications of IoT

Smart
City Smart
Smart
Environm
Logistics
ent Smart
Metering
Smart
and
Factory
Smart
Fields of Grid
applications
Smart
smart car of IoT Home

Smart
Smart
Agricultur
Smart Building
e
Asset E-Health
Manage
ment

Fig. 1: Fields of applications of IoT [9]

2. Smart City

Smart city is the one that uses information and communications technologies to make the city
services and monitoring more aware, interactive and efficient, Smartness of a city is driven and
enabled technologically by the emergent Internet of Things

a smart city utilizes information and communications technologies (ICT) in a way that addresses
quality of life by tackling urban living challenges encompassed by more efficient utilization of
limited resources (space, mobility, energy, etc.).

2.1 Definitions of Smart City [8]

Source Definition

(Caragliu, We believe a city to be smart when investments in human and social capital and
Del Bo, & traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel
Nijkamp, sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management
2011) of natural resources, through participatory governance.

(Smart Cities A smart city is one that has digital technology embedded across all city functions.
Council, It is one that gathers data from smart devices and sensors embedded in its
2012) roadways, power grids, buildings and other assets.

7
 (Manville & A Smart City is a city seeking to address public issues via ICT-based solutions on
et al., 2014) the basis of a multi-stakeholder, municipally based partnership.

(Radhesh, Smart City uses technology to enhance quality, wellbeing and safety of citizens.
What it takes It provides means to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens and
to be a Smart enterprises. And lastly, it helps city authorities to reduce costs and resource
City? (Part 1), consumption for their cities
2015)

(Institute of A Smart city brings together technology, government and society to enable the
Electrical and following characteristics: a smart economy, smart mobility, a smart
Electronics environment, smart people, smart living and smart governance. We believe
Engineers "Smart Cities" includes such things as: Smart Buildings, Smart Living, Smart
(IEEE), 2015) Transportation, Smart Energy, Smart Communications, Smart Networks, A
Self-Aware Digital Hub and Environmental Awareness (i.e. changing weather
conditions; human defined changes).

(New Energy Smart cities are a new style of city providing sustainable growth and designed to
Promotion encourage healthy economic activities that reduce the burden on the
Council, environment while improving the QoL (Quality of Life) of their residents.
2015)

(Ajuntament It’s a new concept defining a city that works to improve the quality of life of all
de Barcelona, its citizens, meeting their needs, and ensuring a sustainable, social, economic and
2015) urban development. A Smart City is based on the use and modernization of new
information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to provide a more
efficient management of the city's services and resources. It is a city that
facilitates the interaction of its citizens with its administration. A place that
supports and fosters personal and business development and where open
information is available in real time. Finally, a city that wishes to aspire to being
a truly Smart city must develop all of its key areas (transport, energy, education,
health, waste management, security, economy…) simultaneously and
transversally.

Table 2. Definitions of the Smart City concept.

8
2.2 Smart City Dimensions

Smart
Environment

Smart Smart
Living Governance

Smart City
Dimensions

Smart Smart
Mobility Economy

Smart
People

Fig. 2: Smart City Dimensions [10]

2.3 Characteristics of Smart Cities:

The definition of smart cities is based on the Smart City Model, developed .This model is a
classification system under which smart cities can be assessed and developed through six distinct
characteristics [6].The Smart City Model was developed as a ranking tool for evaluating mid-sized
European smart cities in the areas of economy, people, governance, mobility, environment and
living. Through this model, a city can examine its current state, and in turn identify the areas that
require further development in order to meet the necessary conditions of a smart city .Cities can
use this model to individually create goals based on their unique circumstances by following the
vision outlined by the six characteristics

Smart Economy Smart People (Social/Human Smart Governance

(Competitiveness) Capital) (Participation)
• Innovative Spirit • Affinity for life-long learning • Participation in
• Productivity • Participation in public life Decision
• Flexibility of labour market. • Creativity and flexibility Making.
• Transparent
Governance

9
 Smart Mobility Smart Environment (Natural Smart Living
(Transportation and ICT) Resources) (Quality of Life)
• Local Accessibility • Attractiveness of natural • Cultural Facilities
• ICT infrastructure conditions • Health Conditions
• Sustainable, innovative and • Environmental protection • Housing Quality
safe transport systems • Sustainable resource management • Social Cohesion

Table 3.Six Characteristics of the Smart City Model

2.4 Smart City needs [6]:

1. Define exactly what is the community: maybe that definition can condition what you are
doing in the subsequent steps; it relates to geography, links between cities and countryside
and flows of people between them; maybe - even - that in some Countries the definition
of City/community that is stated does not correspond effectively to what - in fact - happens
in the real life

2. Study The Community: Before deciding to build a smart city, first we need to Study the
community to know the citizens, the business’s needs - know the citizens and the
community’s unique attributes, such as the age of the citizens, their education, hobbies, and
attractions of the city.
3. Develop a Smart City Policy: Develop a policy to drive the initiatives, where roles,
responsibilities, objective, and goals, can be defined. Create plans and strategies on how the
goals will be achieved.
4. Engage The Citizens: This can be done by engaging the citizens through the use of e-
government initiatives, open data, sport events, etc.

In short, People, Processes, and Technology (PPT) are the three principles of the success of a
smart city initiative. Cities must study their citizens and communities, know the processes, business
drivers, create policies, and objectives to meet the citizens’ needs. Then, technology can be
implemented to meet the citizens’ need, in order to improve the quality of life and create real
opportunities. This requires a holistic customized approach that accounts for city cultures, long-
term city planning, and local regulations.

10
2.5 Smart City Benefits:

• Lower congestion and pollution through optimal use of transportation infrastructure

• Analysis of data provided by sensors
• Better diagnostics and personalized treatment through artificial intelligence on massive
volumes of data
• Faster reaction to public safety threats by real-time analysis of sensor and surveillance
camera video data
• People who need care can live in their own home longer through advanced sensoring
and health care robotics improved city planning and forecasting.
• Real-time reporting on infrastructure conditions.
• Increased ability to predict and prevent problems.
• Ability to deploy resources more efficiently.
• Automated maintenance.
• Access to real-time intelligent city data and apps that use the data.
• Interdepartmental integration and sharing of functions and data.

2.6 Smart City Systems:

Energy

Cars and
Water
drivers

Smart
City
SYSTEMS

Parking Waste

Public
transit

Fig.3: Smart City Systems

11
2.7 Challenges:

While IT offers unparalleled opportunities to enhance efficiency, improve public safety, and
support development, there a several important challenges that face Smart Cities.

 Design and analysis together: Cities already have lots of data in their existing
systems—the challenge is often that they lack the skills or the technology to use it. In
order to make the Internet of Things valuable, cities must ensure that the data-gathering
systems are designed together with analytics: the data that is collected should be easily
understood and to put to use by the governments that collect it. In addition to
enhancing the systems for data collection and analysis, governments must also focus on
recruiting tech-savvy leaders who can envision and implement cutting-edge systems.

 Privacy and security: Cities must take seriously their role in ensuring the privacy and
security of citizen data. Unless citizens trust their governments to ensure privacy, it will
become increasingly difficult for cities to get this data at all. Defense from cyber-attacks
is also a growing concern, particularly with regards to critical infrastructure—hacking
smart meters can cost millions, but a more malicious intruder could compromise safety
for residents. In order to successfully implement IoT, cities should make privacy and
security a top priority.

12
 2.8 Smart city case study (e.g.)

NOISE MAPPING – A CASE STUDY

Amongst many issues, noise pollution and its management are a critical concern. Extended
exposure to excessive noise is known to have negative health effects.

The conventional approach to noise monitoring and analysis has relied on acoustic consultants
manually measuring noise levels. Adding further complexity is the sharing of enforcement of noise
limits across different bodies (e.g., council, police, traffic authorities).

The associated cost and labour intensive nature of this process means, it is applied only to
specific areas and on a one-off basis. As a case study of utilizing the IoT technology, in close
coordination with the City of Melbourne, we have developed a new approach for noise
monitoring and mapping, which addresses the above limitations and helps to understand the noise
pollution and city soundscapes together with the impacts on health, wellbeing and quality of life.

NOISE MAPPYING ARCHITECTURE [4]

The proposed noise mapping architecture shown in Figure 5 (based on Smart Santander IoT
architecture) contains both fixed and mobile infrastructure. Fixed infrastructure is a realization of
WSN in urban sensing.

The WSN platform facilitates deployment flexibility to incorporate diverse sensing modalities
for continuous monitoring, providing baseline reference data and validation capabilities. The
platform also incorporates a mobile WSN extension, providing the capability from short- to
medium-term deployments in target areas or where higher spatial resolution of data is required.

Where there is greater activity or variation in sound levels in a given area, measuring sound
levels at more closely spaced locations provides a more accurate picture of the soundscape. This
provides greater accuracy in identifying potential noise sources.

The mobile infrastructure includes scope for sensors mounted on vehicles, mobile phones and
other handheld devices. These sensors enrich data collected from fixed infrastructure by filling gaps
in spatial data and help citizens in filing noise complaints where fixed infrastructure facilities are not
available. In this case, although data from participatory sensing is no longer continuous or
completely reliable, the people-centric sensing platform indeed provides a mechanism for engaging

13
citizens, as well as obtaining valuable feedback and an understanding of the public perceptions of
noise and urban sounds. This in turn assists in identifying local soundscapes and the desirability and
usability of urban spaces.
The three-tier IoT architecture consists of the following elements (also illustrated in Figure 5):
 Bottom tier: sensor nodes positioned sufficiently above ground on public properties
such as street lights, traffic lights or building facades.
 Middle tier: relay nodes to collect and buffer measurements from sensor nodes, and
forward the data across multiple hops to a gateway.
 Top tier: gateways to collect measurements from the relay nodes and send them via the
Internet to the Cloud.

Figure 4. The IoT architecture for noise mapping

14
3 Literature review:

3.1 Introduction:

The major idea in this report illustrate the vision of Internet of Things Solutions in the cities to
transform from traditional cities to smart cities So, as a first step, we need to make some related
researches to see what is new in this field.

3.2 Related Research:

The researches and studies mentioned below are arranged by date from the oldest to the
newest:

Jianli Pan, et al. [1] present " An Internet of Things Framework for Smart Energy in
Buildings: Designs, Prototype, and Experiments”. This paper focused on Smart energy in
buildings, Buildings as important parts of the smart grids, their energy efficiency is vital for the
environment and global sustainability propose a IoT framework with smart location-based
automated and networked energy control, which uses smartphone platform and cloud
computing technologies to enable multi-scale energy proportionality including building-,
user-, and organizational-level energy proportionality

In this paper, added new contributions besides summarizing our previous work regarding
the IoT framework for smart energy in buildings. The work includes:
(1) Energy consumption data analysis of the green building test bed.
(2) New smart location-based automated energy control framework designs.
(3) experimental prototype that applies IoT networking and computing technologies to
improve the energy efficiency in buildings, By building this IoT framework in smart homes or
offices, we aim to enable not only multi-scale energy proportionality, but also create an
intelligent home space which is an important part of the future smart world, the idea will
provide not only significant economic benefits but also huge social benefits in terms of global
sustainability

15
 Bhishna Bajracharya, et al. [2] present " Challenges and Opportunities to Develop a
Smart City: A Case Study of Gold Coast, Australia”, This paper focused on answer these
questions by developing a conceptual framework for smart cities. With cities becoming
increasingly globalised and competitive and moving towards knowledge and information
economy, the concept of smart cities is attracting interest from city officials, the private sector,
local communities and academics.
This paper has examined the nature of smart cities through a literature review of the idea.
The use of ICTs alone does not make cities smart – other dimensions including cultural and
natural amenities, people and skills, knowledge precincts and governance are equally
important. These factors were collectively integrated into a smart city framework, which was
then applied to the case study of Gold Coast to identify challenges and opportunities in
developing the city as a smart city.
Five key lessons for developing smart cities have emerged from the case study analysis in this
paper.
 First, to attract and retain knowledge workers, public safety, housing affordability and
employment opportunities are important considerations.
 Second, privacy and security concerns of the community associated with collected data
need to be addressed when implementing ICTs for monitoring the built environment.
 Third, given universities create knowledge workers for the city they situate in, there is
a need to establish collaborative links between these universities and other stakeholders,
including local council and businesses. Such links can create opportunities for R&D
activities and provide practical training to university students, thus providing them with
effective transition from the academic environment to the industry.
 Fourth, data collected by ICTs should be publically available in real time to facilitate
the creation of information products and services for local communities.
 Lastly, while programs and collaboration between the private sector and the public
sector are important, smart city development should be embedded as a key objective in
strategic and statutory plans for a city and local community needs to be actively engaged
in the planning process. By doing so, not only will the transition of the city into a smart
city become a planning priority, but the city’s future development, driven by the
private and community sector, will also be supportive of the smart city objectives.

16
 Andrea Zanella, et al. [3] present " Internet of Things for Smart Cities" This paper focused
on specifically to an urban IoT system, in fact, are designed to support the Smart City vision,
which aims at exploiting the most advanced communication technologies to support added-value
services for the administration of the city and for the citizens, and hence provides a comprehensive
survey of the enabling technologies, protocols, and architecture for an urban IoT, and analyze the
solutions currently available for the implementation of urban IoTs.

The discussed technologies are close to being standardized, and industry players are already
active in the production of devices that take advantage of these technologies to enable the
applications of interest. and discuss the technical solutions and best-practice guidelines adopted in
the Padova Smart City project,has also been described as a relevant example of application of the
IoT paradigm to smart cities.

Jiong Jina, et al. [4] present "An Information Framework of Creating a Smart City
through Internet of Things" This paper presents a framework for the realization of smart cities
through the Internet of Thing. The framework encompasses the complete urban information
system, from the sensory level and networking support structure through to data management and
Cloud based integration of respective systems and services, and forms a transformational part of the
existing cyber-physical system and presented a comprehensive blueprint of developing a smart city
using IoT, which is actually motivated and strongly demanded from city councils as they seek to
ensure the provision of essential services and quality of life for city inhabitants. In this context, we
identify the key IoT building blocks of smart cities, as well as provide the approaches and
resolutions to meet their respective communications, computing and computation requirements.

This IoT vision for a smart city is applied to a noise mapping case study to illustrate a new
method for existing operations that can be adapted for the enhancement and delivery of important
city services is presented as a case study to highlight the practical usage and merit of our proposed
framework.

17
REFERENCES:

[1] Jianli Pan, et al. " An Internet of Things Framework for Smart Energy in Buildings: Designs,

Prototype, and Experiments”, University of Missouri – St. Louis, 2015, IEEE Internet of Things

Journal.

[2] Bhishna Bajracharya, et al. " Challenges and Opportunities to Develop a Smart City: A Case

Study of Gold Coast, Australia”, Bond University, Gold Coast, 2014, Vienna Australia.

[3] Andrea Zanella, et al. " Internet of Things for Smart Cities”, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014, IEEE Internet of

Things Journal.

[4] Jiong Jina, et al. "An Information Framework of Creating a Smart City through Internet of

Things",vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 112-121 2014, IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

[5] Chiung-I Chang, Chih-Cheng Lo."Planning and Implementing a Smart City in Taiwan ", National

Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan, IEEE Computer Society 2016

[6] Giffinger , et al. " Smart Cities: Ranking of European Medium-Sized Cities ", Vienna, Austria:

Centre of Regional Science (SRF), Vienna University of Technology, 2013.

[7] Bhishna Bajracharya, et al. "Challenges and Opportunities to Develop a Smart City: A Case

Study of Gold Coast", Bond University, Australia.

[8] Rafael Alberto ,Rina Isabel,"Financing instruments for Smart City projects based on

Internet of Things", Management Engineering, Politecnico di Milano University.

[9] Debasis Bandyopadhyay , Jaydip Sen , "Internet of Things - Applications and Challenges in

Technology and Standardization", INDIA.

[10] Raj Jain ,"Internet of Things and Smart Cities: Challenges and Issues", Washington University

in Saint Louis, 2016

18