Enabling technologies and sustainable smart cities

The technological interventions in everyday processes has led to the rise of Smart ecosystems where all aspects of everyday life like governance, transportation, agriculture, logistics, maintenance, education and healthcare are automated in some way or the other and can be controlled, managed and accessed remotely with the help of smart devices. This has led to the concept of Smart cities where Information Communication and Technology (ICT) is merged with the existing traditional infrastructure of a city which is then coordinated and managed using digital technology. This idea of smart cities is slowly but surely coming into reality as many countries around the globe are adopting this idea and coming up with their own model of smart cities. At the core of smart city lies the sensors and actuators embedded in the smart devices that sense the environment for facilitating effective decision making. The microcontrollers available in these devices are programmed to take decisions automatically based on the information received from the sensors. This involves integration of several information and communication technologies like artificial intelligence, protocols, Internet of things (IoT), wireless sensor network (WSN) etc. This paper discusses and extensively reviews the role of enabling technologies in smart cities. The paper further highlights the challenges and limitations in the development of smart cities along with the mitigation strategies. Specifically, three categories of challenges are identified namely technical, socio-economic and environmental giving specifics of each category. Finally, some of the best practices for attaining sustainable smart cities are provided.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/

Enabling technologies for urban smart mobility: Recent trends, opportunities and challenges

The increasing population across the globe makes it essential to link smart and sustainable city planning with the logistics of transporting people and goods, which will significantly contribute to how societies will face mobility in the coming years. The concept of smart mobility emerged with the popularity of smart cities and is aligned with the sustainable development goals defined by the United Nations. A reduction in traffic congestion and new route optimizations with reduced ecological footprint are some of the essential factors of smart mobility; however, other aspects must also be taken into account, such as the promotion of active mobility and inclusive mobility, encour-aging the use of other types of environmentally friendly fuels and engagement with citizens. The Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain and Big Data technology will serve as the main entry points and fundamental pillars to promote the rise of new innovative solutions that will change the current paradigm for cities and their citizens. Mobility‐as‐a‐service, traffic flow optimization, the optimization of logistics and autonomous vehicles are some of the services and applications that will encompass several changes in the coming years with the transition of existing cities into smart cities. This paper provides an extensive review of the current trends and solutions presented in the scope of smart mobility and enabling technologies that support it. An overview of how smart mobility fits into smart cities is provided by characterizing its main attributes and the key benefits of using smart mobility in a smart city ecosystem. Further, this paper highlights other various opportunities and challenges related to smart mobility. Lastly, the major services and applications that are expected to arise in the coming years within smart mobility are explored with the prospective future trends and scope

Big data and modern-day technologies in COVID-19 pandemic : opportunities, challenges, and future avenues

The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as one of the most crucial health emergencies in the last decade where almost all entities of a nation?s ecosystem like inhabitants, businesses, governments, economies, and environment are impacted. The large volumes of epidemiological, clinical, personal, and environmental data generated during any pandemic can provide useful insights about the underlying causes, symptoms, relations, and correlations, which if analyzed can assist in mitigating the impact to a great extent. The cheap and easy connectivity and communication provided by the social media platforms (SMP) have established them as one of the most preferred mediums of communications among the masses. The data generated by these platforms can be analyzed in context of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis to provide critical information and insights related to the ground level realities like spread and severity of infection, the state of implementation of control measures, the mental state of individuals, and their needs. The tweets and comments of the users can provide information about the current situation and intensity of the problems in the affected regions. With the help of techniques like sentiment analysis and web mining, we can identify the emergent requirements and needs (like food, shelter, medicine, medical emergencies, security, etc.) of the population in the COVID-19-affected areas. With this chapter we aim to identify several use cases where the big medical data from the patients, epidemiological data, social media data, and environment-related data can be used to identify patterns, causes, and other growing factors of the COVID-19 pandemic with a goal to mitigate the damages and contain further spread of the disease. The chapter also discusses the impact of a preferred mitigation measure of nationwide lockdown on the number of new novel coronavirus-positive patients as well as the impact on the environment by analyzing the available data. Since the tourism industry is now of the worst hit businesses, we also discussed the impact of COVID-19 on tourism industry. Furthermore, we identify the challenges associated with handling the massive amount of data generated during such pandemics. Finally, the future avenues of using big data for effectively devising predictive mechanisms and techniques to contain such pandemics in the initial stages are discussed. The chapter also discusses the importance of edge/fog technologies and IoT to identify possible use cases and where immediate point of contact actions is needed to mitigate the situations. Since edge computing facilitates calculations near the origin of data, it is imperative to understand the potential use cases in times of COVID-19-like pandemics.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/