Smart cities IoT: Enablers and technology road map

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a new paradigm that combines aspects and technologies from ubiquitous and pervasive computing, wireless sensor networks, Internet communication protocols, sensing technologies, communication technologies and embedded devices. Smart cities are advancing towards a pervasive, integrated and intelligent environment, where IoT is used to seamlessly interconnect, interact, control and provide insights about the various silos of fragmented systems within cities. The huge number of interconnected devices as well as the significant amount of data generated by them provides unprecedented opportunities to solve urban challenges. These technologies are merged together with city systems to form an environment where the real and digital worlds meet and are continuously in a synergetic interaction. This intelligent and pervasive environment forms the basis of the interconnected smart cities. In this paper, we elucidate the concept of smart cities, the key features and the driver technologies of IoT and the physical digital integration within city systems. We present smart cities applications enabled by the IoT and research challenges and open issues to be faced for the IoT realisation in smart cities.