The Need of Multidisciplinary Approaches and Engineering Tools for the Development and Implementation of the Smart City Paradigm

This paper is motivated by the concept that the successful, effective, and sustainable implementation of the smart city paradigm requires a close cooperation among researchers with different, complementary interests and, in most cases, a multidisciplinary approach. It first briefly discusses how such a multidisciplinary methodology, transversal to various disciplines such as architecture, computer science, civil engineering, electrical, electronic and telecommunication engineering, social science and behavioral science, etc., can be successfully employed for the development of suitable modeling tools and real solutions of such sociotechnical systems. Then, the paper presents some pilot projects accomplished by the authors within the framework of some major European Union (EU) and national research programs, also involving the Bologna municipality and some of the key players of the smart city industry. Each project, characterized by different and complementary approaches/modeling tools, is illustrated along with the relevant contextualization and the advancements with respect to the state of the art

Providing Secure and Reliable Communication for Next Generation Networks in Smart Cities

Finding a framework that provides continuous, reliable, secure and sustainable diversified smart city services proves to be challenging in today’s traditional cloud centralized solutions. This article envisions a Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) solution that enables node collaboration among IoT devices to provide reliable and secure communication between devices and the fog layer on one hand, and the fog layer and the cloud layer on the other hand. The solution assumes that collaboration is determined based on nodes’ resource capabilities and cooperation willingness. Resource capabilities are defined using ontologies, while willingness to cooperate is described using a three-factor node criteria, namely: nature, attitude and awareness. A learning method is adopted to identify candidates for the service composition and delivery process. We show that the system does not require extensive training for services to be delivered correct and accurate. The proposed solution reduces the amount of unnecessary traffic flow to and from the edge, by relying on nodeto-node communication protocols. Communication to the fog andcloud layers is used for more data and computing-extensive applications, hence, ensuring secure communication protocols to the cloud. Preliminary simulations are conducted to showcase the effectiveness of adapting the proposed framework to achieve smart city sustainability through service reliability and security. Results show that the proposed solution outperforms other semicooperative and non-cooperative service composition techniques in terms of efficient service delivery and composition delay, service hit ratio, and suspicious node identification

Introduction to the Special Issue on Sustainable Solutions for the Intelligent Transportation Systems

The intelligent transportation systems improve the transportation system’s operational efficiency and enhance its safety and reliability by high-tech means such as information technology, control technology, and computer technology. In recent years, sustainable development has become an important topic in intelligent transportation’s development, including new infrastructure and energy distribution, new energy vehicles and new transportation systems, and the development of low-carbon and intelligent transportation equipment. New energy vehicles’ development is a significant part of green transportation, and its automation performance improvement is vital for smart transportation. The development of intelligent transportation and green, low-carbon, and intelligent transportation equipment needs to be promoted, a significant feature of transportation development in the future. For intelligent infrastructure and energy distribution facilities, the electricity for popular electric vehicles and renewable energy, such as nuclear power and hydrogen power, should be considered