Urban Computing and Smart Cities Applications for the Knowledge Society

Abstract

During the last years, we faced a tremendous development of mobile sensing applications powered by innovative technologies related to ubiquitous and pervasive computing, volunteered geographic information, crowdsourcing and social networks. Nowadays, we are living in the next digitally enriched generation of social media in which communication and interaction for user-generated content is mainly focused on improving the sustainability of smart cities. Thus, urban computing is defined as the technology for acquisition, integration, and analysis of big and heterogeneous data generated by a diversity of sources in urban spaces, such as sensors, devices, vehicles, buildings, and human, for tackling the major issues that cities face. Moreover, this technology is seeking ways to reduce inefficiencies and to be more agile in responding to citizens' needs in order to create smart cities. In this position paper, we address the content to describe the urban applications and the challenges for open research problems that are presented in the big cities.

Development of Smart Cities and Its Sustainability: A Smart City Framework

“…Urbanization is growing rapidly in so many modern countries, whereas few cities belonging to developed countries are getting involved in the urban reconstruction, renewal and sub-urbanization. Hence, we require inventive and innovative technologies which may sense urban dynamics automatically and give essential information to improve the sustainability of smart cities [21]. In a simple words, a smart city be supposed to comprise (i) well-organized availability of utilities for public like water, sanitation, electricity, sewerage and other services associated with the government (ii) system for demand and supply of the services related to transport for offering roads without congestion and minimum waiting time for public transport (iii) keeping an eye on and vigilant in the city for making the necessary public safety available to residents and (iv) on-demand accessibility of trustworthy emergency services like fire safety, ambulance, etc.…”

“…To make the class more interesting, multimedia resources have been integrated which helps to make learning more interesting and motivating the students for learning. In Australia, various educational institutions have created interactive learning environments for making learning more interesting and more connected [21] [42].…”

“…The concept of smart education systems (SES) does not require the presence of students at the same place and at the same time for attending the lectures of a teacher. In North Carolina, at present students may gain knowledge from the professors, and other various guest lecturers across the world by interacting them one to one in the university's recent "virtual lecture hall," which is supported by a "Cisco Tele Presence system" [21] [42]. e) Use of Tools SES provides various tools for collecting and submitting precise data, such as projects, grade, essays and other participation in various activities.…”

“…Smart-phones and mobile platforms allows proper and exact tracing of information related to the world and other physical activities related to citizens by getting the benefits of those people who are willing to work in partnership towards a constant data harvesting process, known as crowd sensing. From a social perspective specially the knowledge society, it is the necessity to recognize those people, who are willing to participate in urban sensing tasks and to plan good incentives for their participation, rewards not only in monetary terms but also social ones [21] [22].…”

Urban Computing and Smart Cities: Towards Changing City Processes by Applying Enterprise Systems Integration Practices

“…This alignment requires changing existing business processes across city systems. For instance, according to the 'service providing layer' of urban computing general framework [15], innovative processes are required to provide efficient and real-time communication between various agents to deliver information and take an appropriate action regarding anomalies of people's mobility in a city [16]. These integrated processes can also be connected to the navigation systems of emergency vehicles, so that they can automatically redirected.…”