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. 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. In this paper, we focus specifically to an urban IoT system that, while still being quite a broad category, are characterized by their specific application domain. Urban IoTs, 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. This paper hence provides a comprehensive survey of the enabling technologies, protocols, and architecture for an urban IoT. Furthermore, the paper will present and discuss the technical solutions and best-practice guidelines adopted in the Padova Smart City project, a proof-of-concept deployment of an IoT island in the city of Padova, Italy, performed in collaboration with the city municipality.

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Internet of Things for Smart Cities

The role of big data in smart city

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.

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Applications of big data to smart cities

The Internet of Things is a novel cutting edge technology that proffers to connect a plethora of digital devices endowed with several sensing, actuation, and computing capabilities with the Internet, thus offering manifold new services in the context of a smart city. The appealing IoT services and big data analytics are enabling smart city initiatives all over the world. These services are transforming cities by improving infrastructure and transportation systems, reducing traffic congestion, providing waste management, and improving the quality of human life. In this article, we devise a taxonomy to best bring forth a generic overview of the IoT paradigm for smart cities, integrated ICT, network types, possible opportunities and major requirements. Moreover, an overview of the up-to-date efforts from standard bodies is presented. Later, we give an overview of existing open source IoT platforms for realizing smart city applications followed by several exemplary case studies. In addition, we summarize the latest synergies and initiatives worldwide taken to promote IoT in the context of smart cities. Finally, we highlight several challenges in order to give future research directions.

Internet-of-Things-Based Smart Cities: Recent Advances and Challenges

A sensor system is adapted for use with an article of footwear and includes an insert member including a first layer and a second layer, a port connected to the insert and configured for communication with an electronic module, a plurality of force and/or pressure sensors on the insert member, and a plurality of leads connecting the sensors to the port.

Footwear having sensor system

We have a clear idea today about the necessity and usefulness of making cities smarter, the potential market size, and trials and tests. However, it seems that business around Smart Cities is having difficulties taking off and is thus running short of projected potentials. This article looks into why this is the case and proposes a procedure to make smart cities happen based on big data exploitation through the API stores concept. To this end, we first review involved stakeholders and the ecosystem at large. We then propose a viable approach to scale business within that ecosystem. We also describe the available ICT technologies and finally exemplify all findings by means of a sustainable smart city application. Over the course of the article, we draw two major observations, which are seen to facilitate sustainable smart city development. First, independent smart city departments (or the equivalent) need to emerge, much like today's well accepted IT departments, which clearly decouple the political element of the improved city servicing from the underlying technologies. Second, a coherent three-phase smart city rollout is vital, where in phase 1 utility and revenues are generated; in phase 2 only-utility service is also supported; and in phase 3, in addition, a fun/leisure dimension is permitted.

Bootstrapping smart cities through a self-sustainable model based on big data flows

In this paper, we take a hard look at the performance of REMOTE, a sensor network based application that provides a detailed picture of a boat movement, individual rower performance, or his/her performance compared with other crew members. The application analyzes data gathered with a WSN strategically deployed over a boat to obtain information on the boat and oar movements. Functionalities of REMOTE are compared to those of RowX [1] outdoor instrument, a commercial wired sensor instrument designed for similar purposes. This study demonstrates that with smart geometrical configuration of the sensors, rotation and translation of the oars and boat can be obtained. Three different tests are performed: laboratory calibration allows us to become familiar with the accelerometer readings and validate the theory, ergometer tests which help us to set the acquisition parameters, and on boat tests shows the application potential of this technologies in sports.

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REMOTE, a Wireless Sensor Network Based System to Monitor Rowing Performance

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have been applied to gather data from a large number of scenarios. WSN provide the potential to collect data at spatial and temporal scales that are many times not feasible with past instrumentation. Although many applications have been already developed, little has been done using WSN as infrastructure for sports oriented commercial applications.This paper studies the use of WSN to develop motion detectors. Particularly REMOTE, a sensor network based application that provides a detailed picture of a boat movement, rower’s individual performance, or his/her performance compared to other crew members is proposed. The application aims to analyze data gathered with a WSN strategically deployed over a boat to obtain information on the boat and oar movements. The paper presents the architecture, software design and hardware infrastructure used to develop the application.

Design of a Motion Detector to Monitor Rowing Performance Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

As Wireless Sensor Networks are being adopted by industry and agriculture for large-scale and unattended deployments, the need for reliable and energy-conservative protocols become critical. Physical and Link layer efforts for energy conservation are not mostly considered by routing protocols that put their efforts on maintaining reliability and throughput. Gradient-based routing protocols route data through most reliable links aiming to ensure 99% packet delivery. However, they suffer from the so-called ”hot spot” problem. Most reliable routes waste their energy fast, thus partitioning the network and reducing the area monitored. To cope with this ”hot spot” problem we propose ZERO a combined approach at Network and Link layers to increase network lifespan while conserving reliability levels by means of probabilistic load balancing techniques.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/10/10/8920/pdf

ZERO: Probabilistic Routing for Deploy and Forget Wireless Sensor Networks

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Jordi Llosa

Papers

Bootstrapping smart cities through a self-sustainable model based on big data flows

REMOTE, a Wireless Sensor Network Based System to Monitor Rowing Performance

Design of a Motion Detector to Monitor Rowing Performance Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

ZERO: Probabilistic Routing for Deploy and Forget Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensors as a Tool to Explore Avalanche Internal Dynamics: Experiments at the Weissfluhjoch Snow Chute