When Things Matter: A Data-Centric View of the Internet of Things

With the recent advances in radio-frequency identification (RFID), low-cost wireless sensor devices, and Web technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) approach has gained momentum in connecting everyday objects to the Internet and facilitating machine-to-human and machine-to-machine communication with the physical world. While IoT offers the capability to connect and integrate both digital and physical entities, enabling a whole new class of applications and services, several significant challenges need to be addressed before these applications and services can be fully realized. A fundamental challenge centers around managing IoT data, typically produced in dynamic and volatile environments, which is not only extremely large in scale and volume, but also noisy, and continuous. This article surveys the main techniques and state-of-the-art research efforts in IoT from data-centric perspectives, including data stream processing, data storage models, complex event processing, and searching in IoT. Open research issues for IoT data management are also discussed

Investigating the Efficiency of ITS Cooperative Systems for a Better Use of Urban Transport Infrastructures: The iTETRIS Simulation Platform

The use of cooperative ITS communication systems, supporting driving through the dynamic exchange of Vehicle-to- Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) messages, is a potential candidate to improve the economical and societal welfare. The application of such systems for novel cooperative traffic management strategies can introduce a lot of beneficial effects not only for road safety, but also for the economy related to transportation systems and the environmental impact. Despite this apparent set of promising features, City Road Authorities, which hold a key-role in determining the final adoption of such systems, still look at cooperative systems without sharing a clear opinion. This is mainly due to the current lack of definitive and solid evidences of the effectiveness of such systems when applied in the real world. In order to fill this gap and let Road Authorities estimate the usefulness of such technologies in achieving the objectives dictated by cities’ traffic management policies, the EU consortium iTETRIS is developing a simulation platform for large scale testing of traffic management solutions making use of cooperative ITS systems. Thanks to its own distinguishing features, iTETRIS aims at becoming a good supporting tool for Road Authorities to implement preliminary tests on the effectiveness of ITS solutions prior to investing money for the physical deployment of the communication infrastructures allowing their functioning

Software Platforms for Smart Cities: Concepts, Requirements, Challenges, and a Unified Reference Architecture

Making cities smarter help improve city services and increase citizens' quality of life. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are fundamental for progressing towards smarter city environments. Smart City software platforms potentially support the development and integration of Smart City applications. However, the ICT community must overcome current significant technological and scientific challenges before these platforms can be widely used. This paper surveys the state-of-the-art in software platforms for Smart Cities. We analyzed 23 projects with respect to the most used enabling technologies, as well as functional and non-functional requirements, classifying them into four categories: Cyber-Physical Systems, Internet of Things, Big Data, and Cloud Computing. Based on these results, we derived a reference architecture to guide the development of next-generation software platforms for Smart Cities. Finally, we enumerated the most frequently cited open research challenges, and discussed future opportunities. This survey gives important references for helping application developers, city managers, system operators, end-users, and Smart City researchers to make project, investment, and research decisions.Comment: Accepted for publication in ACM Computing Survey