Applications of big data to smart cities

Abstract

Many governments are considering adopting the smart city concept in their cities and implementing big data applications that support smart city components to reach the required level of sustainability and improve the living standards. Smart cities utilize multiple technologies to improve the performance of health, transportation, energy, education, and water services leading to higher levels of comfort of their citizens. This involves reducing costs and resource consumption in addition to more effectively and actively engaging with their citizens. One of the recent technologies that has a huge potential to enhance smart city services is big data analytics. As digitization has become an integral part of everyday life, data collection has resulted in the accumulation of huge amounts of data that can be used in various beneficial application domains. Effective analysis and utilization of big data is a key factor for success in many business and service domains, including the smart city domain. This paper reviews the applications of big data to support smart cities. It discusses and compares different definitions of the smart city and big data and explores the opportunities, challenges and benefits of incorporating big data applications for smart cities. In addition it attempts to identify the requirements that support the implementation of big data applications for smart city services. The review reveals that several opportunities are available for utilizing big data in smart cities; however, there are still many issues and challenges to be addressed to achieve better utilization of this technology.

The role of big data in smart city

“…The second factor is the smart applications that offer a seamless connection between different objects involved in smart city realization. Possibly, the most relevant related work appears in (Al Nuaimi et al, 2015;Kitchin, 2014). However, our study differs from the previous papers by providing a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of state-ofthe-art technologies and by presenting a structure of big data in smart cities.…”

“…The ability of the WSN to connect devices with low cost and sizes has improved the possibility of using a sensor network with numerous intelligent sensors. This network enables the seamless connection and sharing of valuable information from different environments, which can be processed and analyzed efficiently (Al Nuaimi et al, 2015). This characteristic of WSN enables it to be useful in many areas, such as industrial process monitoring and control, machine health monitoring, natural disaster prevention, as well as water quality monitoring.…”

“…However, applying big data analytics in the smart environment remains in its infancy stage. One of the emerging technologies with the huge potential to enhance smart city services is big data analytics (Al Nuaimi et al, 2015). At present, a large amount of data is being generated from different data sources, such as smartphones, computers, sensors, cameras, global positioning systems, social networking sites, commercial transactions, and games.…”

“…Such transformation enables cities to actualize the learning principles and requirements of the applications of the smart city by realizing the main smart environment characteristics. These characteristics include, among other things, sustainability, resilience, governance, improved quality of life, and intelligent management of natural resources and city facilities (Al Nuaimi et al, 2015). The smart city takes advantage of emerging technologies, such as wireless sensor networks (WSN), to reduce cost and resource consumption.…”

Comprehensive Study on Various Applications Using Internet of Things (Iot) for Smart City.

“…Smart Cities:-Smart Cities is essentially a concept that helps all the citizens lead a better life that is easier to navigate due to the facilities and services that are advanced and environment friendly (Nuaimi et al, 2015). The features of smart city can be: i.…”