Chapter 1
Introduction and overview of key enabling technologies for smart cities and homes
T. Guelzim*
M.S. Obaidat†
B. Sadoun**
* Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ, United States
† Department of Computer and Information, Fordham University, Bronx, NY, United States
** Department of Surveying & Geomatics Engineering, Al-Balqa’ Applied University, Salt, Jordan
* Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ, United States
† Department of Computer and Information, Fordham University, Bronx, NY, United States
** Department of Surveying & Geomatics Engineering, Al-Balqa’ Applied University, Salt, Jordan
Abstract
In the past three decades, the Internet has undergone major evolutions. It started as a content sharing platform with early websites, portals, and search engines. Information on the Internet became richer and more diverse, especially with the increase of users worldwide; the Internet is no longer connecting information but also connecting people. Social networks emerged in addition to other services such as voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video chat that empowered the social web. This shift transformed the end user from a consumer of information to a major contributor and producer of data. This trend has taken on an exponential slope with the advent of smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT) systems. In addition to data, smartphone accelerated a shift in communications as well. A new communication mode has enabled information access anytime and anywhere where end users need to interact with their environment for basic daily tasks. For instance, in major metropolitan cities, calling a taxi service is now done at the push of a button using the mobile device through application services such as Uber. Having connected information with users at early stages and then users with other users through social web, the Internet is evolving to connect objects, homes, cities, and just about everything that is connectable and can benefit from being connected. This leads to an intelligent and context-aware platform that enables all kinds of smart services. In this chapter, we discuss this new trend of connected objects in the context of smart homes and cities, and their challenges, as well as perform a survey of related key enabling technologies.
Keywords
smart homes
smart cities
ICT
smart governance
smart economy
smart mobility
IoT
1. Introduction
Recent statistics show that 50% of the world’s population is now living in or around cities. These cities are responsible for three-fourths of the world’s energy consumption and green house emission. By 2050 the world’s population will grow by another 30% and the number of citizens living around cities will jump to 70% [1–25]. With this evolution in mind, it is no doubt that the current city services and their governance will fail to deliver adequate added value to citizens. City planners and urban architects have been looking into tackling this issue by setting a vision for the city of the future under the concept of smart city. The adoption of these new concepts requires the provisioning of a wide range of services in a dynamic and effective manner. The solution is to benefit from the current boom in networked information technologies [3]. For smart cities many of the current technology trends contribute to its expansion such as Internet of Things (IoT), public Wi-Fi, ubiquitous cellular coverage, 4G and 5G networks, and smartphones. IoT and smartphone are thought to reduce the digital divide for citizens and smart cities. Being ubiquitous and democratized, these two enabling technologies will allow services accessed by all. In the next 10 years, smart cities will hold many investments. It is estimated that roughly $100 billion will be required in order to develop supporting technologies for advancing smart cities. By 2020, most of these technologies will be deployed across the globe. In parallel to smart cities, a complementary trend is also evolving, which is smart home concept. Smart homes rely on information and communications technology (ICT) as well in order to take the home and living experience to the next level. Homes are becoming connected to the Internet and digital services through smart devices that offer services ranging from simple utility information such as weather forecast to intelligent algorithms to adapt and optimize energy consumption by the home.
As the worldwide life expectancy, especially in developed countries and newly industrialized counties, is increasing, the percentage of elderly citizens is increasing at an alarming rate and most projections suggest that this increase worldwide will reach about 10 million in the coming decade or so. Senior citizens usually live in care centers, hospitals, or their own homes with some relative supervision/care. Smart homes and cities can be used efficiently and economically in order to accommodate the needs of this population in a cost-effective manner [1].
Interest in Smart Homes and Cities has increased in recent years due to the following [1]:
1. impressive economic development in populous countries such as China, India, and Brazil (China and India make for 40% of the World Population);
2. increased use of ICT devices and technology by individuals and organizations worldwide;
3. greater interest in environment protection and in reducing CO2 emission; Green Economy;
4. noticeable rise in the number of elderly/senior citizens over 65 years old in many countries, especially in Japan, Europe, and even China, who need smart homes and smart cities to make their life comfortable, and healthy at affordable cost;
5. rapid increase of the population of big cities.
2. Trends in smart cities and homes
2.1. Smart cities
There are major characteristics that make a city “smart.” They can be summarized as follows [4]:
• immersive city services through the use of real-time data sensing;
• knowledge engineering that enables the aggregation and parsing of all of the data;
• gaining access to data in a seamless manner that contains information from various interlinked domains.
As we further congregate in the cities, it has become primordial to make them not only green but also efficient [4] as to set the urban development for the next decade. Fig. 1.1 shows the pillars and trend topics around smart cities.
Figure 1.1 Smart City Trends
2.1.1. Smart mobility and smart traffic management
Smart mobility is an essential aspect of a smart city endeavor. Mobility and transportation shall be simplified for city residents and visitors. In addition, traveling out of the city shall be very simple as well. Any flow in or out of the city shall be seamlessly, but carefully, planned so as to provide comfort to all citizens [26]. From current research, this can be accomplished by focusing on the following elements:
• using shared but personalized transportation means
• smart routes and navigation
• contextualized travel information
• improving the travel experience
Smart traffic management is made possible given the advances in computing power to process, analyze, and provide an array of optimal decision in real time. Data is available through Global Positioning System (GPS)-enabled devices, image data from CCTV cameras on main roads and intersections, Geographic Information System (GIS)-enabled cars, weather and road conditions, historical data on road traffic, etc. Data analytics on the cloud is a viable solution as it allows the use of a solid and scalable infrastructure to do the computations. Areas of application in smart management application are as follows:
• reduce traffic congestion
• road and traffic safety
• population safety through smart analytics of road and suspicious car activities
Through smart traffic management, in the United States alone, the elimination of traffic may result in the elimination of over 5 billion extra commuting hours for drivers and the saving of over $121 billion in total delay and fuel.
2.1.2. Smart environment
“The most profound technologies are those that disappear, they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” [5]. Smart environment is a concept that emerged in the early 1990s where city residents are continuously interacting with objects and sensors seamlessly to better their lives.
An excerpt from Wikipedia [6]:
There are many features to smart environment such as autonomy, adaptive behavior to environment, and interaction with humans in simple way. That being said, smart environment is not possible without the rapid evolution of pervasive computing. The latter relies on four areas: device, networking, middleware, and applications [5]. Devices encompass intelligent appliances, cell phones, and setup boxes, among others. These devices collect and send data to cloud-based systems in order to process the data and provide intelligent insights to end users. Communication with these cloud systems passes though middleware, also qualified as pervasive, that interfaces these devices with the networking kernel. The middleware makes the heterogeneous infrastructure seamless to the users. On top of this infrastructure sit the applications that provide the actual added value services that then reach the end user through other IoT devices installed in the homes or via smartphones.
2.1.3. Smart living
A smart city is focused on providing and developing a desirable place to live, work, and spend time in. Quality of life is essential to the prosperity of the smart city. Table 1.1 describes the weighting of determining factors as defined by the European standards [7].
Table 1.1
Factors and Indicators for Smart Living in the Context of Smart City
| Indicator | Weighting (%) | |
| Cultural facilities | 3 | 14 |
| Health conditions | 4 | 14 |
| Individual safety | 3 | 14 |
| Housing quality | 3 | 14 |
| Education facilities | 3 | 14 |
| Touristic attractiveness | 2 | 14 |
| Social cohesion | 2 | 14 |
Health, housing, culture, safety, and education are essential factors to establishing smart city living. Without these basic factors, it is not possible to use ICT alone to enable a smart city project. One of the essential questions is how to ensure that the city remains livable and how to address people needs for longer.
2.1.4. Smart economy
The smart economy is new field that focuses on how a city is attractive as well as competitive with regard to factors such as innovation, art, culture, productivity, and most of all international appeal. This implies focusing on these economy vectors as described in Table 1.2 [8].
Table 1.2
Smart Economy Vectors
| Smart Economy Vector | Description |
| Innovative revenue models | A smart economy is efficient and relies heavily on nonpolluting energy sources. It is efficient and recycles through waste and produces enough energy to sustain its needs. Most importantly, a smart economy allows sustainable growth to its citizens. This is ensured through innovation and entrepreneurship. The 21st-century economy is technology driven [7]. Start-ups can launch new services using little investment but without compromising the overall added value of their product |
| Sharing economy | Sharing economy can take many forms, most notably, using ICT to provide city residents with the information needed to distribute, share, and reuse the excess capacity in goods and services. The collaborative consumption model uses mobile apps and online platforms to support these innovative ideas. We have witnessed multiple examples of such innovative endeavors lately such as Uber that runs the largest taxi fleet without owning any taxi vehicle, social lending and crowd sourcing platforms, peer-to-peer accommodation (airbnb), and car sharing or pooling, among others. Encouraging the private sector and in particular private citizens to take over traditional or once regulated fields such as transportation allows introducing innovation and offering new breed of services that go along with the advances in technologies witnessed by the city residents |
ICT, information and communications technology.
2.1.5. Smart governance
ICT plays a primary role in the governance of smart cities in order to create value for society [9]. Until the late 1990s, governance was viewed by international organization as form of political regime [10]. Nevertheless, this classical view is starting to be challenged and in some instances vanish as information systems are taking a big role in our daily lives and that of the cities infrastructures. It was suggested that governance practices be revisited by focusing on the following five pillars [11]:
• openness
• participation
• accountability
• effectiveness
• coherence
In order to effectively implement these five concepts, it is primordial to rely on modern information systems for communicating with the city residents. The role of ICT in smart city governance is illustrated in Fig. 1.2.
Figure 1.2 Role of ICT in Smart City Governance: Smart City House
Fig. 1.2 shows a framework that relies on ICT to create value for the society. It is codenamed “The smart city house” [9]. This model relies on a foundation that is composed of two parts: data and networking as the basis for the smart city endeavor on top of which sits three pillars whose role is to enable good governance, transform social organization, and inform or guide residents in their day-to-day choices. This foundation then enables smart and efficient services such as sustainable energy, fair employment, and better quality of life overall.
Smart governance further encloses better city planning, emergency management, budgeting, and forecasting based on real time data describing needs as well as changing priorities. In addition, it also relies on strategic orientation and better healthcare that reduces the impact of aging populations. At last, it ensures the aggregation and monitoring of energy production and consumption data in order to provide better management policies [9].
2.1.6. Smart people
As seen in previous sections, ICT is one of the main pillars for smart cities. Nevertheless, it is not the only one. For smart cities to thrive, the human factor has to be accounted for [12]. In this setup, city residents have to possess additional technological skills that allow them to interact and benefit from their smart city as well as to improve it. According to a model by the European Union, Table 1.3 shows the factors and indicators that contribute to the concept of smart people [13].
Table 1.3
Factors and Indicators for Smart People in the Context of a Smart City
| Factor | Indicator | Weighting (%) |
| Level of qualification | 4 | 14 |
| Affinity to life learning | 3 | 14 |
| Social and Ethnic plurality | 2 | 14 |
| Flexibility | 1 | 14 |
| Creativity | 1 | 14 |
| Cosmopolitanism and open mindedness | 1 | 14 |
| Participation in public life | 1 | 14 |
The reader can quickly see that the qualification, learning capacity, and the diversity in the constitution of the society are important components, after which come the qualities such individual flexibility, creativity, and so on. This is due to the reliance on technology that requires people to possess primary skills first in order to use this technology but also to follow on the advances in day-to-day activities.
2.2. Smart homes
Making homes smart is a new trend [14]. A smart home will host a set of services that were once of a futuristic feet. Fig. 1.3 shows some major smart home trends.
Figure 1.3 Smart Home Trends
2.2.1. Programmable and zone-based smart thermostat
In recent years, we have seen few start-ups that propose programmable thermostat such as Nest, recently acquired by Google. Nest offers a thermostat product that is fully automated and it uses smart machine learning algorithms to optimize energy consumption. For example:
• It will not heat or cool a home if there are no sensed occupants.
• It builds a schedule dynamically based on collected data from sensing current occupants.
• It is controllable via smartphone or via the web app for more advanced reporting.
• It is aesthetically pleasing and blends well with wall colors.
2.2.2. Wireless power
The smart home concept relies on a myriad of devices and objects (IoT). This adds an extra complexity of powering all of them by either wall plugs or Lithium batteries. Wireless power transfer (WPT) is used to transfer power over short distances by magnetic fields [15]. There are two techniques in WPT: nonradiative and radiative. Near-field nonradiative variant is already in use in consumer-oriented products such as electric toothbrush, smart cards, radio-frequency identification (RFID), and pacemakers. This variant is more suitable to enable smart homes because it tackles small devices in restrained areas. Radiative technique on the other hand is used in long-distance peer-to-peer (P2P) power transfer. It relies on either Laser beams or microwave technologies. These are, however, not suited for home use.
2.2.3. Automatic door locks
Automatic door locks are a logical extension to smart homes. Doors can be locked and unlocked using sensor technology to detect and authenticate a homeowner without the need for keys. This technology is already in use in modern cars to unlock cars on approach.
2.2.4. Advanced security system
Security is very important in today’s technological home. Monitoring the home activity remotely using a smartphone, receiving alerts that the home was accessed when it should not, and sending a live feed to local enforcement authorities when a breach is detected and confirmed, all of these scenarios can become easier to implement using advanced security systems that rely on new technologies such as image and video processing and face detection.
3. Challenges in smart cities and homes
3.1. Security
A common question that is commonly asked in conferences about smart cities is as follows:
This question often goes unanswered because it is fundamentally linked to system security in overall that is complex to master. The attack surface is big especially if we take into account that most of these IoT objects in their initial version will require security patches that need firmware updates. Such a maintenance operation at a wide scale is vulnerable to classical configuration management difficulties. Provided that these devices are interconnected, we should see some major security breach consequence issues.
3.2. IoT challenges
IoT devices are the centerpiece of any future smart home and smart city project [24]. Although there are many benefits to IoT, there are many challenges to be solved [25]:
• With regards to data, there are many questions that are still challenging such as: Who owns the data? Who and how can we monetize the data? What standards/formats are to be used? With the absence of fully agreed-on protocols and standards today, it is unclear how all the companies that contribute to the provided service will share the responsibility over the data.
• Provided that there are many companies that contribute to the provided service, it is very important to define the boundaries of these companies in terms of customer relationship. If we take a thermostat example in a connected home, who will the customer perceive as the main relationship holder? The thermostat company or the utility company? There is no actual answer unless specific service-level agreements (SLAs) are drafted between the stakeholders of the service.
3.3. Fragmentation of standards
Moving to a smarter city requires city authorities to develop better governance principles and techniques in order to provide answers to the following questions [16]:
• How will the authorities set objectives for smart cities and measure their progress?
• How will information be shared between infrastructure services?
• What are the risks for moving to smart city services? And how can we mitigate them?
• How can a shared understanding and vision of a smart service between all stakeholders be created and delivered?
Answering these questions requires actions on multiple levels. These actions tackle regulating issues such as data use and common conceptual modeling and interoperability. There are few smart city standards that have emerged. Here is summary of major ones:
• PAS 180 aims at improving communication and understanding between different stakeholders in terms of vision, compatibility, and common organization issues.
• BS ISO 27000 is another standard that embraces the best practices in information security. This helps secure vast quantities of data that are transferred across many network boundaries.
• ISO/IEC 29100 deals with privacy risk management issues.
Having policy makers collaborate more closely on standards is of increased importance in order to have a comprehensive and coherent framework of work.
3.4. Processing big data
As discussed in previous sections, smart homes and cities will rely on IoT devices, sensors, RFID chips, and smart electric meters, among others, in order to provide added value services to citizens and homeowners. These devices however generate large amount of data, big data, data sets, which are so big that traditional data processing techniques are not adequate to manage them.
3.5. Scalability
With the rapid increase in the number of smart objects in either smart homes or cities, their heterogeneous interaction may cause scalability issues in large-scale deployments due to interoperability. This is a strong motive to speed up the convergence of standards that govern these smart objects. In addition, part of the scalability issues is the lack of test beds at scale that allow the validation of many proofs of concepts in real-world scenarios.
4. Survey of major key enabling technologies for smart cities and homes
4.1. Internet of things
The IoT is one of the major technologies that will shape the future of the digital world including Smart World, and Smart Cities and Homes. It is a mesh network of physical objects that either exchange data in p2p mode or communicate and relay information with the service provider [17]. There are many connected objects today such as electronic appliances (microwaves, cameras, refrigerators, etc.) that rely on RFID technology and state-of-the-art software and sensors [18] in their proper operation. IoT objects can be sensed and controlled across local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) networks. This allows the creation of many products and opportunities to better integrate the physical infrastructure with the digital systems. Many experts expect >10 billion IoT objects by year 2020 [19]. With such number of IoT devices in the world, it becomes primordial to work out a comprehensive IoT and digital business policy. Big industry players such as Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Siemens, and Google already play an important role in helping draft and put in place such policies by offering cloud-based IoT services and devices.
4.2. Smart dust
Smart dust objects are tiny Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). These are tiny robots that can detect anything from small vibrations to chemical composition. Smart dust is an extension to IoT objects [20]. They operate under a wireless network and are deployed in nonintrusive manner in countless areas. Their sizes allow them to establish communication within few millimeters. Many smart dust objects are hence required to cover large areas. Each one is composed of a semiconductor laser diode and MEMS beam reflector for communication and relay. These tiny objects are so light that they can move seamlessly from one area to another through air currents. Once they are deployed, it is very hard to detect their presence, but also it is harder to get rid of them. Here are few key applications of smart dust in the context of smart cities and homes:
• habitat monitoring
• indoor and outdoor environmental monitoring
• security and tracking of people and objects
• traffic monitoring and management
• human health and well-being monitoring
4.3. Smartphones
Smart mobile devices are becoming the epicenter of people’s lives [21]. Smartphones today contain a variety of chips and sensors such as GPS, gyroscope, microphone, camera, and accelerometer, among others, that are generating a lot of raw data [20]. Smartphones are essential building blocks in the smart home and city ICT infrastructure. They are used as a medium for relaying and accessing information as well as digital services [22]. Smartphones play a major role in smart cities and homes as briefly explained in the following:
• They are diminishing the gap between real and virtual world by making the captured data context aware.
• Mobile devices are integrated with services in the cloud, such as Google (Android) and iCloud (Apple) phones. This enables the use of off-load servers to increase the storing capacity of the phones.
• Advances in mobile access technologies such as 4G/Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks allow connectivity everywhere and at very high speeds. This would enable mobility and simplify linking data across multiple domains.
In the context of a smart home, for instance [23], there are already some applications that run on smartphones to control many appliances in the home, such as TV sets, lights, window stores, garage doors, and security cameras. Moreover, users can operate their smartphones in order to interact with their city, receive live information, and connect with local authorities and public transportation systems.
4.4. Cloud computing
Cloud computing has become a de facto platform to enable content delivery to consumers. Provided pervasive computing today, largely enabled by smartphones and IoT devices, massive amounts of data need to be processed in order to transform raw data into insightful information. Current computing paradigms are no longer suitable to such endeavor. Cloud computing has three main offers:
• SaaS: Software as a Service is what most people interact with today. It offers software in a subscription model for both end consumers and enterprises. SaaS simplifies the deployment model of software as it is no longer necessary to download and install the software or to worry about upgrade and maintenance issues. SaaS can be accessible via web or mobile apps, but also in services offered in high-tech cars such as Tesla or BMW.
• PaaS: Platform as a service is a software environment used mainly for development and execution runtime. It is defined as en environment for the development, integration, testing, and deployment of SaaS software. PaaS takes off the burden of managing software application servers and middleware, as well as other low-level technical aspects out of start-ups and entrepreneurs in order to concentrate their efforts in developing their products and services.
• IaaS: Infrastructure as a service is a fundamental layer in cloud computing. In this layer, vendors offer mutualized or dedicated hardware capacity to multiple users. Customers can request additional capacity dynamically through a simple management interface or based on preconfigured triggers (network traffic, CPU load, etc.). This is ideal for companies that require the optimization of their IT cost.
A combination of the aforementioned service cloud offering gives the emergences of other types commonly known as XaaS (everything as a service) such as storage as a service, communications as a service, network as a service, monitoring as a service, analytics as a service, data as a service, and so on.
4.5. Big data and open data
A tentative estimation of the amount of digital information produced by mankind was 280 EB of data [19]. Fig. 1.4 shows how this data capacity is partitioned.
These are very large, complex, and changing data sets. If we take into consideration the digital rupture made by smartphones and tablets, the data it produces would rank in top 5% of data generators in today’s information age.
In the context of smart homes and cities, often big data and open data are discussed hand in hand. While big data deals with large data sets and size, open data deals with accessible public data that is available to people, companies, and organizations and which can be freely used to develop added-value applications. Definition of Open data includes the following two basic features:
• The data must be publicly available for anyone to use.
• It must be licensed in a way that allows for its reuse.
The best example for a recent smart city is Songdo in South Korea. This smart, wired, and sustainable city was built at a staggering cost of $35 billion and it is entirely wired and connected to a mesh network. The thousands of installed sensors generate large amounts of data continuously. To make sense of such large amounts of data, big data and data analytics are key technologies that transform raw data into insightful information.
4.6. Smart grid
A smart grid is a modern electrical infrastructure that relies on ICT and digital networks in order to gather data about the grid, that is, produced and consumed electricity, and use that information to generate live consumption models to optimize the state of the grid in real time [24]. Following is a list of key smart grid features:
• efficiency of the grid by improving the wattage output and reducing the voltage on the lines whenever it is possible;
• reliability in smart grid attempts to improve fault detection and self-healing of the electricity network thus reducing the intervention of the maintenance technicians;
• load balancing in a situation where the total load of the grid varies during peak and low times (eg, the smart grid can warn smart client appliances to reduce their electricity consumption in peak times in order to use the saved capacity to serve other peak customers);
• sustainability in smart grid to allow the inclusion of renewable energy sources in the grid in a plug and play manner.
The field of smart grid is gaining a lot of attention and active research these days. There are major programs such as the IntelliGrid, which provides tools, methodology, and standards to provisioning for meters, and distribution of electricity. Other research includes Modern Grid Initiative, GridWise, GridWorks, Solar cities, and many others by various instances throughout the world.
5. Examples
5.1. Smart home devices
This section describes some smart home devices that are already in the market today.
5.1.1. Nest thermostat
Nest is a start-up that specializes in the smart thermostat; they have been acquired by Google recently. Nest is a self-learning thermostat that will control the home heating system. What makes Nest smart is that it can learn your habits by sensing the presence in the house, and then adjust the temperature, the water heater cycles, etc. This results in an optimized energy bill for the homeowner.
5.1.2. Honeywell Lyric thermostat
The Honeywell Lyric thermostat is similar to the Nest thermostat, but instead of relying on motion detection, it relies on geofencing to detect if a person is available in the preset area. Lyric relies also on external weather and humidity levels to adjust the perfect temperature for the home.
5.1.3. Canary
Canary is a simple and intuitive out-of-the-box security system that allows monitoring of the home remotely as well as alerting for any intrusion. It is smart and capable of learning your habits, times when you are at home or not before alerting about an intrusion. Alert notifications are sent to the phone.
5.1.4. Goji
Goji is smart digital lock for the home. It is connected via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and can be used to secure access to your home using face recognition technology. For instance, you may set picture of people that are authorized to access the home so they can authenticate on arrival. It can be used to record all access activities.
5.1.5. Aggregate smart home device controllers
Provided the multitude of smart devices that are installed in the home, it becomes a bit difficult to control them all separately from different interfaces. Some gadgets attempt to solve this issue and connect to all installed gadgets to provide a centric interface to controlling them. Some of these gadgets are Homey, Revolv, and smart things.
5.2. Smart city projects
This section describes some smart cities around the globe.
5.2.1. Amsterdam smart city
Amsterdam smart city is a public–private partnership initiated in 2009 to transform the Amsterdam Metropolitan into a smart city [28]. The Amsterdam smart city platform is composed of many initiatives; here are a few elements:
• Dynamic traffic control: This system relies on an advanced system to manage and monitor traffic; it is data driven and recently has been extended to span parking coordination. In Amsterdam, there are twice as many bikes as people.
• Sharing economy: Sharing is the new ownership! Examples include sharing car trips, taxi rides, and exchanging houses on trips.
• Electric vehicles: Amsterdam is an international frontrunner in this domain. This is partly because it has a solid infrastructure in addition to the construction of version 150 electricity points in the Harbor.
• Energy efficiency: The city developed a heating and cooling technology based on surrounding lake waters.
• Smart grid: “NieuwWest” is one of the most advanced grids in the world that has advanced features such as self-healing.
5.2.2. Smart city Barcelona
Barcelona is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe and is ranked first smart city in the world as of 2015. It has become a leading tourist destination that proves the city’s successful economic, social, and environmental policies. Barcelona has a vision to become self-sufficient, with productive neighborhood and producing zero emission. The city has an efficient bus network system and a bicycle sharing system. It has installed thousands of urban sensors and tourists can pay at most stores using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology (project Contactless). The city is transforming itself to an urban lab [29]. Multiple projects were launched to manage resources such as water with telemanaged irrigation. It has also a smart traffic light system that optimizes traffic in the city.
5.2.3. Smart city Birmingham
Digital Birmingham [30], United Kingdom, was launched in 2014 with a defined 49 actions plan grouped as follows:
• Technology and place: This involves the improvement of connectivity and sharing open data.
• People: This involves focusing on digital inclusion and improving resident technology skills. This is primordial in order to benefit from the smart city services.
• Economy: This involves digitalizing the social care, improving energy efficiency, as well as smart mobility.
5.2.4. Smart city Wien (Vienna)
Motivated by the rapid change in global climate and the shortage of natural resources, the city of Vienna decided to launch a complex endeavor to transform the city into a smart city [31]. This initiative is comprehensive and aims at:
• using ICT to drive innovation
• thriving in an ecofriendly environment for residents
• involving everyone through transparency
ICT and technology are used to expand the online services provided by the city in the aim of raising people’s quality of life. Using data analytics in the field of transportation has allowed to foster the idea of car sharing and to optimize traffic. In this area, the SMILE project, for instance, allows promoting multimodality transportation systems, that is, using multiple transformation media to reach destination. A resident can start by using a Taxi ride, then switch to a bus ride, and finish by a bike ride all seamlessly and in a coherent manner in order to optimize arrival time and/or travel cost. In order to allow third-party start-ups to propose and develop bleeding edge applications, the city has also made available open data for multiple services and scenarios. Thanks to this policy, many services are created in the field of geodata, traffic data, and ecology data.
6. Conclusions
Smart cities and homes concepts have been hot topics for over a decade. Changing lifestyles and the growing demand on useful and consistent services require a new approach that relies and benefits from ICT advances. Two major building block technologies that enable both smart cities and smart homes are cloud computing and IoT. Two major building block technologies that enable both smart cities and smart homes are cloud computing and IoT. The latter allows sensing the surrounding environment and exchanging data in order to provide digital services to end user or to infrastructure in order to help make optimized decisions about traffic flow, energy efficiency, home security, etc. Although there are many advantages to smart homes and cities, there still exist many challenges that make their implementation difficult. Some of these challenges are the security of data that transits across many components and interfaces, and the current fragmentation of standards that make it hard for different devices to be interoperable as well as deployed at scale. In addition, there is the challenge of making sense of the amount of data generated by all of the deployed IoT devices. Although these challenges exist, we have started to see a first batch of smart home devices that solve everyday’s optimization issues such as energy efficiency, home security, and home automation. In the smart city front, major work is being done on smart grids and smart mobility. There are many successful pilots already in cities such as Amsterdam and Barcelona that have exceeded the initial objectives. Nevertheless, we still need to overcome the described challenges through standardized and interoperable protocols.