Towards smart city democracy

In this article we discuss the current state of smart cities from a technological perspective. We argue that smart city developments are in a state of transition going from being technology focused to now putting emphasis on humans living in the cities. The transition is still latent in the smart city deployments, and we argue that quite a few existing, and new smart city deployments are still relying on the old technology-focused approach to smart cities. We elaborate our own experiences in this particular field, and provide two concrete cases on how we are approaching citizen empowered smart city technologies. Finally, we discuss how smart city technologies should respond to citizen needs

SmartSantander: Internet of Things research and innovation through citizen participation

The Smart City concept relates to improving efficiency of city services and facilitating a more sustainable development of cities. However, it is important to highlight that, in order to effectively progress towards such smart urban environments, the people living in these cities must be tightly engaged in this endeavour. This paper presents two novel services that have been implemented in order to bring the Smart City closer to the citizen. The Participatory Sensing service we are proposing exploits the advanced features of smartphones to make the user part of the ubiquitous sensing infrastructure over which the Smart City concept is built. The Augmented Reality service is connected to the smart city platform in order to create an advanced visualization tool where the plethora of available information is presented to citizens embedded in their natural surroundings. A brief description of the smart city platform on top of which these services are built is also presented.Although only a few names appear in this paper’s list of authors, this work would not have been possible without the contribution and encouragement of the enthusiastic team of the SmartSantander project which has been partially funded by the European Commission under the contract number FP7-ICT-257992

Smart cities at the forefront of the future internet

Smart cities have been recently pointed out by M2M experts as an emerging market with enormous potential, which is expected to drive the digital economy forward in the coming years. However, most of the current city and urban developments are based on vertical ICT solutions leading to an unsustainable sea of systems and market islands. In this work we discuss how the recent vision of the Future Internet (FI), and its particular components, Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Services (IoS), can become building blocks to progress towards a unified urban-scale ICT platform transforming a Smart City into an open innovation platform. Moreover, we present some results of generic implementations based on the ITU-T’s Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) model. The referenced platform model fulfills basic principles of open, federated and trusted platforms (FOTs) at two different levels: the infrastructure level (IoT to support the complexity of heterogeneous sensors deployed in urban spaces), and at the service level (IoS as a suit of open and standardized enablers to facilitate the composition of interoperable smart city services). We also discuss the need of infrastructures at the European level for a realistic large-scale experimentally-driven research, and present main principles of the unique-in-the-world experimental test facility under development within the SmartSantander EU project.Although only a few names appear on this paper, this work would not have been possible without the contribution and encouragement of many people, particularly all the enthusiastic team of the SmartSantander project, partially funded by the EC under contract number FP7-ICT-257992

Sense and Sensability: Semantic Data Modelling for Sensor Networks

Abstract: Sensor networks are used in various applications in several domains for measuring and determining physical phenomena and natural events. Sensors enable machines to capture and observe characteristics of physical objects and features of natural incidents. Sensor networks generate immense amount of data which requires advanced analytical processing and interpretation by machines. Most of the current efforts on sensor networks are focused on networking and service development for various applications, but less on processing the emerging data. Sensor data in a real world application will be an integration of various data obtained from different sensors such as temperature, pressure, and humidity. Processing and interpretation of huge amounts of heterogeneous sensor data and utilising a coherent structure for this data is an important aspect of a scalable and interoperable sensor network architecture. This paper describes a semantic model for heterogeneous sensor data representation. We use common standards and logical description frameworks proposed by the semantic Web community to create a sensor data description model. The work describes a sensor data ontology which is created according to the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) and SensorML data component models. We describe how the semantic relationship and operational constraints are deployed in a uniform structure to describe the heterogeneous sensor data

The Next Generation Internet of Things – Hyperconnectivity and Embedded Intelligence at the Edge

The Internet of Things (IoT) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are evolving towards the next generation of Tactile IoT/IIoT, which will bring together hyperconnectivity, edge computing, Distributed Ledger Technologies(DLTs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Future IoT applications will apply AI methods, such as machine learning (ML) and neural networks(NNs), to optimize the processing of information, as well as to integrate robotic devices, drones, autonomous vehicles, augmented and virtual reality(AR/VR), and digital assistants. These applications will engender new products, services and experiences that will offer many benefits to businesses, consumers and industries. A more human-centred perspective will allow us to maximise the effects of the next generation of IoT/IIoT technologies and applications as we move towards the integration of intelligent objects With social capabilities that need to address the interactions between autonomous systems and humans in a seamless way.publishedVersio

IoTCrawler: Browsing the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) offers an incredible innovation potential for developing smarter applications and services. However, today we see solutions in the development of vertical applications and services reflecting what used to be the early days of the Web, leading to fragmentation and intra-nets of Things. To achieve an open IoT ecosystem of systems and platforms, several key enablers are needed for effective, adaptive and scalable mechanisms for exploring and discovering IoT resources and their data/capabilities. This paper discusses our work in the EU H2020 IoTCrawler project. Its focus is on the integration and interoperability across different platforms, through dynamic and reconfigurable solutions for discovery and integration of data and services from legacy and new systems. This is complemented with adaptive, privacy-aware and secure solutions for crawling, indexing and searching in distributed IoT systems. IoTCrawler targets IoT development and demonstrations with a focus on Industry 4.0, Social IoT, Smart City and Smart Energy use cases

IoTCrawler: Challenges and Solutions for Searching the Internet of Things

Due to the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and consequently, the availability of more and more IoT data sources, mechanisms for searching and integrating IoT data sources become essential to leverage all relevant data for improving processes and services. This paper presents the IoT search framework IoTCrawler. The IoTCrawler framework is not only another IoT framework, it is a system of systems which connects existing solutions to offer interoperability and to overcome data fragmentation. In addition to its domain-independent design, IoTCrawler features a layered approach, offering solutions for crawling, indexing and searching IoT data sources, while ensuring privacy and security, adaptivity and reliability. The concept is proven by addressing a list of requirements defined for searching the IoT and an extensive evaluation. In addition, real world use cases showcase the applicability of the framework and provide examples of how it can be instantiated for new scenarios

IoT European Security and Privacy Projects: Integration, Architectures and Interoperability

| openaire: EC/H2020/779984/EU//SOFIEThe chapter presents an overview of the eight that are part of the European IoT Security and Privacy Projects initiative (IoT-ESP) addressing advanced concepts for end-to-end security in highly distributed, heterogeneous and dynamic IoT environments. The approaches presented are holistic and include identification and authentication, data protection and prevention against cyber-attacks at the device and system levels. The projects present architectures, concepts, methods and tools for open IoT platforms integrating evolving sensing, actuating, energy harvesting, networking and Interface technologies. Platforms should provide connectivity and intelligence, actuation and control features, linkage to modular and ad-hoc cloud services, The IoT platforms used are compatible with existing international Developments addressing object identity management, discovery services, virtualisation of objects, devices and infrastructures and trusted IoT approaches.Peer reviewe