An Architectural Framework and Enabling Wireless ... · An Architectural Framework and Enabling Wireless Technologies 447 by many individual researchers (e.g., [13–15]) and organizations

Wireless Pers Commun (2009) 49:445–463DOI 10.1007/s11277-009-9693-4

An Architectural Framework and Enabling WirelessTechnologies for Digital Cities & Intelligent UrbanEnvironments

Gregory S. Yovanof · George N. Hazapis

Published online: 19 March 2009© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2009

Abstract The digital revolution that has been taking place for the past two decades pro-pelled by major breakthroughs in the ICT field has changed the way we communicate, work,travel, live—and even the way we use public space. Our cities are increasingly moving froma collection of static buildings and infrastructures to dynamic and evolving smart ecosystemsknown as, Intelligent Cities. In this article we analyze an intelligent city from the electronicinformation and communication perspective and offer examples of variants of its implemen-tation. An intelligent city lays its foundation on a digital-city infrastructure which connects alocal community and drives growth, efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness. The highlevel architecture of an intelligent city ecosystem, key enabling technologies, and the nec-essary policy framework for the establishment of digital cities worldwide are introduced.Business models for this new ecosystem bridging the physical and virtual worlds are brieflydiscussed.

Keywords Digital city · Intelligent city · Smart city · ICT convergence · All-IP networks ·Ubiquitous computing · SOA · Mobile location-based services

1 Introduction—The Digital City Concept

In today’s evolving digital communities, citizens, businesses and governments are relyingmore and more on information networks to transact their daily business. The digital cityconcept involves a series of information and communications technology applications thatsimplify public transactions, reduce telecommunication costs, and offer a wide range ofend-user services that meet the everyday needs of residents of urban environments. Specifi-cally, the term Digital City (a.k.a., digital community, information city and e-city) refers to:

G. S. Yovanof (B) · G. N. HazapisAthens Information Technology, Athens, Greecee-mail: [email protected]

G. N. Hazapise-mail: [email protected]

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a connected community that combines broadband communications infrastructure; a flexible,service-oriented computing infrastructure based on open industry standards; and, innovativeservices to meet the needs of governments and their employees, citizens and businesses. Thegeographical dimension (space) of digital communities vary, they can be extended from acity district up to a multi-million metropolis [1,2]. The people involved in the digital/virtualcommunity formed over a digital city platform can interact and share knowledge, experienceand mutual interests [3]. The goal of a Digital City is to create an environment for infor-mation sharing, collaboration, interoperability & seamless experience for all its inhabitantsanywhere in the city.

Not aiming at the replacement of a real city life by virtual life activities, a digital cityframework provides for an improvement of selected processes in a city life by integratingeffective and efficient digital information and services. A key driver for the developmentof digital cities worldwide is the need for improving the quality of services governmentalagencies offer to their constituents [4]. The evolution of the digital city concept has brought afundamental shift in the “channel” of communication and service delivery between the gov-ernment and the citizens by facilitating the adoption of e-Government processes in all kindsof government-to-business (G2B), government-to-government (G2G), and government-to-citizen (G2C) transactions. This has resulted in a significant improvement to the overall effi-cacy and efficiency of the governmental operations. Where historically constituents were atthe counter & in-line, for the portion of services being delivered through physical interaction,or at home & being on-line, with the next generation of digital city platforms, e-Governmentservices & transactions can be done anywhere & anytime. Many governments are acceleratingthese channels of delivery, fundamentally changing the regulatory environment [5].

Information and communication spaces using the city metaphor are being developedworldwide: Seattle, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Shanghai, and Kyoto, to name only some well-known examples. Digital Cities can be connected to each other via the Internet, just as physicalcities are connected by surface and air transportation systems. However, despite the commonterminology digital cities have different goals, offer different services, use different systemarchitectures, and have developed different organizational forms and business models. Thisvariety is related to the different social contexts in which digital cities have developed [6].One of the earliest developments took place in Kyoto, the old capital and cultural centerof Japan. Digital City Kyoto was established in 1998 [7] as a project sponsored by NTTwith the aim to create next-generation systems for digital communities that could serve as asocial and information infrastructure for urban everyday life including shopping, business,transportation, education, and social welfare. On the other hand, Digital City Amsterdamwas established as a virtual space reflecting a city metaphor and with the aim to provide apublic communication space to people living in the city [8], while Digital Helsinki focused ondeveloping a next-generation metropolitan network [9]. Urban planning in which communitymembers can directly participate in the design process is another motivation behind digitalcities [10].

The Global Digital City Network (GDCN) is an international organization between“knowledge based” digital industrial cities [11]. It is designed to encourage the sharing andexchange of information and technologies in the multimedia (and other knowledge based)sectors to promote the competitiveness of its member cities. Current members of GDCN,in addition to the founding Digital Dundee City (UK), are the Digital Cities of: Chun-chon (S. Korea), Kakamigahara (Japan), Gold Coast (Australia), Nizhny Novgorod (Russia),Jilin (China), Shenyang (China), Yanji (China), and Taipei (Taiwan). A similar internationalnetwork of digital communities has formed the International Network of e-Communitiesgroup (INEC) [12]. Research on digital cities, both physical and virtual ones, is conducted

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by many individual researchers (e.g., [13–15]) and organizations including: United NationsPublic Administration Network (UNPAN, www.unpan.org), World Foundation for SmartCommunities [16], URENIO Urban & Regional Innovation Research Unit [17], MIT SmartCities Lab [18], e-Governance Institute at Rutgers University, Lab for Global InformationNetworks, Unicamp (the State University of Campinas, Brazil), etc.

In this article we aim to define an intelligent city and offer examples of variants of itsimplementation. In the following two sections we discuss the intelligent city as one servingpeople where the consumer participates in user-centered service innovation. The intelligentcity lays its foundation on a Digital City infrastructure which connects the community anddrives growth, efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness. The high level architecture ofan intelligent city ecosystem and the necessary policy framework that leads to the estab-lishment of such a smart urban environment are discussed in Sect. 5. In Sect. 6 we brieflyintroduce key ICT technologies that enable the mobilization of services within a smart-city.A closer examination of a recent wide scale deployment project of a network of digital andintelligent cities follows in Sect. 7. And, the article concludes with a brief discussion of therole that intelligent cities can play in the global effort to create an ecologically sustainableurban environment.

2 The Intelligent City Ecosystem

The fast development of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has broughtabout deep changes in our way of working and living, as the widespread diffusion of ICTis accompanied by organizational, commercial, social and legal innovations. Our society isnow defined as the “Information Society”, a society in which low-cost information and ICTare in general use, or as the “Knowledge(-based) Society”, to stress the fact that the mostvaluable asset is investment in intangible, human and social capital and that the key factorsare knowledge and creativity [19].

A city, a community or an area with the ability to deliver interactive multimedia on-lineapplications and a wide variety of useful services to all, independent of location is possible atthe crossing of the knowledge society with the digital city, where we have the emergence ofthe notion of an intelligent city. Komninos [20] defines the intelligent city as a space “with ahigh capacity for learning and innovation, which is built in the creativity of their population,their institutions of knowledge creation, and their digital infrastructure for communicationand knowledge management”. Hence, an intelligent city is a digital city platform developedby a community that has made a conscious effort to use information technology to transformlife and work within its region in significant and fundamental rather than incremental ways.The goal of such an effort is more than the mere deployment of technology. Rather, it is aboutpreparing one’s community to meet the challenges of a global, knowledge economy [16].

An example of a network of such intelligent cities is the Open Living Labs in Europe [21].The concept of Living Labs is to involve local communities in product and service innovation,changing the process from something controlled by the manufacturer to one where the enduser plays a larger role and becomes a key contributor to the whole course of innovation anddevelopment. Living Labs aim to radically improve the process of product innovation thusincreasing the regional competitiveness on the global stage while helping communities takegreater control of their environment [22]. There are currently over 130 Living Labs through-out Europe that use digital technologies to connect citizens with a wide range of developersand policy makers.

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3 The Smart City as a User-Centric Service Provisioning System

By embedding computers to everyday settings and linking them to commonplace taskswe have the emergence of ubiquitous/pervasive computing, ambient intelligence and smartspaces. In general, we define a smart space as one that is able to acquire and apply knowl-edge about an environment and its inhabitants in order to improve their experience in thatenvironment. The type of experience that individuals wish from their environment varieswith the individual and the type of environment. They may wish the environment to ensurethe safety of its inhabitants, they may want to reduce the cost or overhead of maintainingthe environment, or they may want to automate tasks that are typically performed in theenvironment.

While the need for ubiquitous computing has been identified long ago (e.g., [23,24]), it isonly by the latest advancement in such areas as mobile and pervasive computing, wireless andsensor networks, machine learning, middleware and agent based technologies, that the large-scale deployment of such systems has become feasible. The investigation and developmentof algorithms and protocols for agent based smart space design, learning and prediction ofcontexts (location and activities), data mining and episode discovery, and intelligent decisionmaking and automation are topics of intense research activity [25,26].

Recently, the notion of a smart space has been extended to a city-wide region, resultingin a smart city. The Smart Cities Laboratory at MIT has been focusing its research on inves-tigating of how buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needsand desires of their inhabitants [18]. William J. Mitchell, the Director of the Lab [27], andthe members of the Smart Cities research group are creating innovative ways to change howwe live in urban areas through, in part, the application of new technologies that enable urbanenergy efficiency and sustainability, and enhance opportunity, equity, and cultural creativ-ity. Smart-Cities research is particularly concerned with the emerging roles of networkedintelligence in fabrication and construction, urban mobility, building design and intelligentlyresponsive operation, and public space.

In a recent book, Mitchell writes about the emerging technologies that are poised to reshapeour urban environments. Cities are fast transforming into artificial ecosystems of intercon-nected, interdependent intelligent digital organisms that can behave in intelligently coor-dinated ways. The intelligent city framework makes interdependent relationships amongstvarious city functions more concrete and dynamic reshaping cities, institutions and services.This is a fundamentally new technological condition confronting architects and productdesigners in the twenty-first century [28]. As the cities and their components become smarter,Mitchell says, they begin to take new shapes and patterns. They become programmable, andthe design of their software becomes as crucial—socially, economically, and culturally—asthat of their hardware.

Cybernetics, i.e., the field of study of control and communication processes in electronic,mechanical and biological systems, holds the key to designing and deploying an intelligentcity ecosystem [29]. Cybernetics has the ability to synthesize and simulate intelligent sys-tems and provides the means for improving planning, decision-making and problem solvingprocesses in some cases automating them. The result of applied cybernetics in the contextof an intelligent city will result in system flexibility with a built in capacity for change. Thesystem is dynamic where subsystems adjust as required to maximize the well being of thewhole system. In an intelligent city, systems modify their behavior in light of changes inthe environment, monitoring its various component systems and responding accordingly topotential or actual changes of state in order to achieve a desired goal.

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Fig. 1 The Intelligent City as a smart service provisioning system

Extending the concept of a “smart space” from the personal context to the larger commu-nity and the metro area, we can view an entire city as a “smart ecosystem” that delivers amultiplicity of advanced, user-centric and user co-created services to its citizens. The conceptis depicted in the following schema (Fig. 1). The intelligent city, “Intellicity” or “Smart City”,is comprised of several elements that make it possible to bring this innovative concept to life.These services or components of the ecosystem can be for example accessible from a mobilephone through ubiquitous computing with the support of a distributed IT infrastructure wherethere could be sensors in the pavements, roads, light posts, smart store fronts, informationkiosks, etc. Communication protocols permit a flexible, anywhere, anytime communicationbased on middleware running on heterogeneous sensors, portable devices that allow for smartapplications through software platform sensors on portable devices.

Examples of Services a Smart City can offer include:

• Large scale environmental monitoring in an urban environment (e.g., microclimate moni-toring, such as indoor and outdoor air-quality monitoring; measurement and telemetry ofnoise and pollution; green ICT for energy saving purposes; waste management system;long term urban planning for improved quality of life).

• Improved transportation management and logistics: e.g., administration of public trans-port (intelligent stops, traffic route optimization aiming at energy savings and pollutionreduction); provide support for administration of fines and parking facilities in real time(parking meters, on-line payment); traffic and mobility control (with infrastructure-basedcameras, cameras on moving vehicles, information screens in the street, etc.).

• Increased public safety and security (e.g., alert the public about a chemical spill that couldbe the result of an accident or a terrorist attack. Such an event could have been detected

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Fig. 2 Digital City Foundation (Source: adapted from Lam Thanh Ngyen, Intel Corp. [4])

through the usage of cell phones equipped with special sensors for the detection of certainchemicals, e.g., [30,31]); behaviour and crime monitoring in a city to prevent homicides;an early alert system for natural disasters, such as earthquakes, fires, landslides, flooding;emergency management systems.

• Arts and Entertainment: support for multimedia-rich civilization, history and culturalevents and activities (digital content on local community history, city-wide art exhibits,augmented-reality enhanced points-of-interest, etc).

• Corporate and institutional communications: support for the mobile workforce, tele-commuting, location-based services driving local enterprise growth and employment;community education offered for free by local agencies (e.g., a new-comer to town maybeseeking to learn a new language or skill).

• Services for the individual: flexible, dynamic location-based and context-aware services,e.g., shopping information, navigation, on-demand multimedia content (access to my-datafrom anywhere, anytime).

• Personalized/customizable services for self-identified groups with special needs, forexample, the elderly, the handicapped, the traveller, the tourist.

A possible scenario of service provisioning in this smart citywide ecosystem would involvethe individual consumer who may be a blind pedestrian seeking shoes, so we would needa user profile indicating the who, what, when, where, and how, which is also dynamicallyadjusted. Second, the enterprise, local merchants, telecom operators and municipal networkowners would need to partner up to provide not only the means of communication but alsosmart store fronts indicating the goods and services available that match the particular needsand wants of the individual. Third aspect in this ecosystem would be the public good oftransportation, public safety, tourism and e-government. Thus the buses approaching wouldindicate an arrival time at the stations, where cameras would pick up on vagrants on publictransportation notifying the authorities when needed to limit danger or to provide assistance.Smart signs may indicate proximity of a historical site, a museum, a concert hall and its pro-gram. Finally, government services can be electronically available where people can accessgovernment documents and obtain informational details. To these can be added a ubiquitoushome and/or a smart office where one can check on e-mails, conduct within a home, a facility,

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etc. Thus, if one is blind or deaf they may be accommodated by elevators that provide brail orsigns at each level or by elevator doors or control temperature or sense human movement. Anintelligent city would provide services to those most in need, the handicapped, the visuallyimpaired, the elderly be they pedestrians or business people in need of crossing a stoplight orsensing a business service provider. Therefore, the technology is there in the service of peopleor as a tool of service where a busy blind business person can have on demand multimediacontent such as personalized ads at the store front, public kiosks or billboards, image to voicetext to speech and access to movies, calendar, data enriching one’s quality of life.

Another scenario of an advanced service provision within the framework of a digitalcity involves the case of an orderly evacuation of a city in the case of a major emergencyas executed under the command and control of an emergency management system. In thatcase, traffic patterns will be changed automatically to permit an orderly evacuation and/orrendering of aid. Spatial intelligence combined with information from next generation GPSand GIS systems will drive radio direction and radio location and navigational guidancesystems to pilot vehicles and regulate and disperse traffic flows. Computer aided educationand simulations using virtual reality will be used for training exercises. Emergency warningand notification systems will extend into the home and the workplace, taking advantage ofthe “anytime, anywhere” model of connectivity [29].

4 Building A Digital City—Policy & Architectural Issues

The goal of a Digital City, the foundation for an Intelligent/Smart City environment, is tocreate an environment for information sharing, collaboration, interoperability and seamlessexperience for all its inhabitants throughout the city region. A Digital City is built aroundan infrastructure of information and communication technologies that support broadbandconnectivity which are connected through a service oriented infrastructure for the seam-less delivery of a host of interoperable multimedia-rich applications. Woven together thesetechnologies form the Digital City Fabric that connects and integrates the entire community.

There are three core components in the build out of a digital city [4].

• Infrastructure: A communications infrastructure built on industry standards, expandingand extending the tremendous growth of the Internet and IP based networks. A Ubiq-uitous/Pervasive Computing infrastructure built on standards based ambient intelligenceand computing platforms. ICT enabled utility grids and other physical urban infrastruc-tures along with the proliferation of intelligent building blocks in the city space contributeto a flexible and adaptive smart city environment meeting the needs of the “knowledgesociety”.

• Mobilized Services: This converged environment provides the capability for mobilizingdata, applications and users throughout the digital nation offering access to all at anytime,anywhere.

• Policy: An overall legal and regulatory framework that sets the environment to fosterinnovation and to break down barriers to modernization.

The foundation for a digital-city is based on: a broadband infrastructure which is widelyavailable and affordable to all including developed and under-developed areas (aiming, amongother objectives, at minimizing the digital divide); advanced applications and user-centricservices in several areas of e-Government, such as safety, health, education, urban plan-ning, growth and development; communities connected to each other through an integrated

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service-oriented architecture (SOA); a platform for innovation to be in place that facilitatesthe development of new applications and services.

Building the infrastructure, mobilizing services and establishing the policy for innovation& modernization are the critical elements to realizing the vision of a digital city.

4.1 Building the Infrastructure

The Digital City is built upon a core set of key infrastructures that make up the foundationallayer [4]:

• The communication infrastructure is comprised of wire line & wireless broad band con-nectivity & standards based interoperability, supporting multiple network & multiplecommunication protocols in the convergent ICT field.

• The second element that makes up the foundational layer is the computing infrastructure,an eServices delivery environment built upon a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Thislayer encompasses the key technologies that provide for much of the intelligence suchas security for data & access, privacy protection, geospatial information, context-awareand location-based services, intelligent documents & web services management & rout-ing, pervasive computing and ambient intelligence. These two layers combined form theDigital City Fabric.

• The Fabric becomes the extensible, reusable, common infrastructure for integrating eSer-vices applications. When we talk about Digital City, we talk about each category of stake-holders that makes up the community—Government, Business & Citizens. Applicationsthat fit within these areas can take advantage of the Fabric & can be easily integrated,taking advantage of the common infrastructure which facilitates faster implementation,more cost effective deployments—an architecture supporting information sharing & inter-operability, allowing for collaboration, and offering seamless service experience for all,anywhere, anytime.

• Whether you prioritize services for interagency communication, increasing productivitythrough mobilized applications or e-Government services for citizen access, the DigitalCity promotes a consistent service delivery environment. The Digital city architectureis modular allowing for incremental expansion of services, & it is scalable to allow forincreased capacity as the community expands.

4.2 Mobilizing Services

Today citizens connect with their government, businesses, and each other using a multitudeof computing devices, across a number of heterogeneous networks. Not all devices connectto all networks, so users are typically restricted to using certain devices for certain networks.For mobile users, roaming from one network to another often breaks their application, forcingthem to carefully schedule when and where they connect. Access to business, government andemployee services happens largely in isolated vertically integrated networks and applicationsilos. There are independent sites for tourist information, social services, still more for com-mercial or tax/revenue services. These are largely disconnected, forcing citizens, businessesand the Government agencies to manually coordinate their information interactions.

In tomorrow’s integrated Digital City, people are totally connected. People are no longerworried about incompatible networks or applications that break when used “on-the-go”. Citi-zens have convenient access to the fabric through an array of devices, from virtually any cornerof their community. They become part of an intelligent infrastructure supporting seamless

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Fig. 3 Unified Service Provision Framework in a Digital City

access and access to mobilized applications and services, on-demand. This improves theirproductivity whether at work or at play.

People can quickly and easily connect to both commercial and government services andinformation, and with each other. Citizens connect with businesses and the governmentthrough service-oriented, interoperable applications. They are empowered to interact withtheir government through a unified e-Services gateway, which provides a convenient one-stop-shop for all their information and service-needs. Moreover, the establishment of suchan infrastructure empowers the citizens with a single, portable identity that enables themto securely interact with the government, engage in digital commerce and collaborate withpeers. It is built upon strong security technology and allows each individual control overpolicy governing it use, things like privacy and transaction-value.

The intelligent city computing and communications network of the future serves as aplatform for multiple services, allowing vendors to offer a plethora of broad-band servicesto engage enterprise and residential users on a voluminous basis due to the social diversityof the city population (see, Fig. 3). High bandwidth capacity provided by a combinationof both wire (including fiber) and wireless transmission mediums will make connectivity“anytime, anywhere” a reality. Data speeds in the gigabyte and terabyte ranges will carryreal-time, multimedia rich data (such as full motion 3D video and immersive environmentfor tele-presence applications) between both stationary and mobile locations. Telecommu-nications and computers will merge, becoming nearly indistinct, and will link the varioussubsystems of the city, e.g. transportation, energy, waste, etc. through a MAN (metropolitanarea networks) into an overall system imbued with intelligence. A single knowledge base,feeding and being fed by numerous subsystems, will serve as the “brain” of the intelligentcity. Moreover, Geographic Information System (GIS) to manage data and build spatial rela-tionships in addition to fixed and mobile telephony along with video conferencing—all overIP—will ensure cost effective implementation with improved service functionality.

Several research consortia and academic institutions [32,33] worldwide are currentlyworking on developing digital city platforms, while a number of companies collaborateclosely with leaders to help governments deliver the services citizens demand [4,34,35].

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Some representative digital- and intelligent-city projects include the following: CrossroadsCopenhagen, (Denmark), Arabianranta, Helsinki Finland, Digital Media City (Seoul, Korea),One-north (Singapore), MIT Environs, Northern Ireland Science Park, Digital Mile (Zara-goza, Spain), Sapiens (Florianopolis, Brazil), Salzburg (Austria).

4.3 Establishing a Policy for e-Government Innovation & Modernization

The establishment of an intelligent-city space is based on a legal and regulatory frameworkthat sets the environment to foster innovation in service provisioning. This requires strongleadership in establishing the policies to: foster innovation & to break down barriers to mod-ernization; establish policies for broadband proliferation; advocate standards for service andinfrastructure interoperability; foster successful public/private investments to ensure eco-nomic sustainability for infrastructure deployment and evolution. Legislation includes thepossibility of public authorities acting as operators of services and/or public networks inan environment of free competition with private enterprise ([36], p. 8). So, what it takes tocreate a smart city is: clear vision & sound policy on the part of local and state leaders settingthe stage for regional growth and prosperity; the involvement and support of local industrysectors; alignment between public andprivate sectors; and a framework of best practices thataccelerates the adoption of innovations in intelligent city environments worldwide [5].

The emergence of the intelligent city radically transforms city management as we know ittoday [5]. Computing and telecommunications technologies, once separate and well-defined,merge and their distinctiveness blurs. Mobile wireless and Metropolitan Area Networks(MANs) will serve as the telecommunications backbone over which municipal managementinformation systems will synchronize and orchestrate the various functions of municipalgovernment and business. Traditional organization and separation of municipal departments,agencies and businesses will undergo significant change as the intelligent city makes inter-dependent relationships more concrete and dynamic. Resource allocation will become moreefficient as implementation of comprehensive planning becomes more tangible. Instead ofexisting as a separate and distinct function, which is called upon during times of crisis asit is today, emergency management for instance will become integrated into every facet ofmunicipal planning and operations [29]. The intelligent city will incorporate each of theelements of emergency management (preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation) intoits overall planning and operational matrix in the service of the citizen/consumer.

A number of policy frameworks and regulatory initiatives have been established at regionalor global scale aiming at achieving interoperability among various e-government platformsand services for the seamless cross-border provisioning of governmental services [37]. Anexample of such an initiative is IDABC, a European Union program that promotes the correctuse of ICT for cross-border services in Europe [38]. The IDABC, which stands for I nterop-erable Delivery of European e-Government Services to public Administrations, Businessesand C itizens, is a Community program managed by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics. It uses the opportunities offered by information and communicationtechnologies to encourage and support the delivery of cross-border public sector services tocitizens and enterprises in Europe, to improve efficiency and collaboration between Europeanpublic administrations and to contribute to making Europe an attractive place to live, workand invest. By using state-of-the-art information and communication technologies, develop-ing common solutions and services and by finally, providing a platform for the exchange ofgood practice between public administrations, IDABC contributes to the i2010 initiative ofmodernizing the European public sector.

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5 Broadband Wireless Technologies & Mobile Services—Key Enablers for a DigitalCity

Intelligent city services will empower the new city residents by providing 24/7 online accessto public services and information from a variety of convenient locations and devices suchas public kiosks, home, office, mobile computer, cell phone, PDA. Leveraging the benefitsof broadband technology allows a multitude of services to be delivered and offered to allparts of the community in a city environment. Among the intelligent city services offeredwill be Geographic Information System (GIS) and ‘smart maps’, Intelligent TransportationSystem (ITS), e-libraries, e-learning and geospatial query-based address and location findingservices.

A Smart City infrastructure supports various types of information services addressed toits citizens, offered in a way contextually related to the user’s specific needs, interests andlocation. The information may refer to all kind of city level basic services including trans-port services, entertainment events or shopping facilities and may concern public transportschedules, electronic catalogues, location-based mobile services, context-aware personal-ized promotional announcements, etc. The users may access this information either throughinformation kiosks associated with the locations of the specific service offerings, or throughthe screen of a handheld device via wireless communication infrastructure.

It should not be forgotten that users themselves form an integral part of the Smart City.They may both passively receive information of their interest and contribute actively to gen-eration, provision and exchange of various types of information to other users and the citycore infrastructure. They may even be involved in extending the communication networkin places where core infrastructure lacks certain network coverage by bridging and routingtraffic between various networks. On the other hand they may take a role of local informationproviders. A group of citizens or city visitors that deserve special attention is people withspecial needs. Contemporary urban planning and design policies impose and suggest manyadaptations in order to ensure that city facilities are accessible and easy usable by peoplewith special needs. The progress of ICT technology has opened new opportunities for furtherenhancement of these guidelines through the introduction of an appropriate seamless ICTinfrastructure serving the general population but also providing particular services to peoplewith special needs.

The Digital City communication infrastructure is meant to be fully flexible and self-organizing utilizing fixed routers, mobile repeaters, a wide range of sensors at various levelsmonitoring the condition of the city, electronic points of information providing enhancedservices to its citizens and a multi transport telecommunications infrastructure that enablesthe transmission of all the kinds of information. An “Intelligent environment” like that canbe built on top of a number of existing and emerging systems and networks (3G, WiFi, Com-munity networks, mesh networks, Vehicle-to-vehicle, sensor nets, etc). Therefore, the basicinfrastructure of a smart city is associated with a seamlessly interconnected set of hetero-geneous communication and sensor networks. Broadband communication networks includewireless access networks like Wi-Fi, cellular networks (e.g., GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA,3G+, LTE), WMAN networks such as the WiMAX, metropolitan mesh networks [39,40],and their hybrids [41,42]. Sensor networks may be composed of Zigbee nodes, Motes andRFID tags to list just a few, which in addition to collecting information from the environmentare capable of providing various services ranging from simple identification of each facilitytype and location to the activation of a special behavior in case of interaction with an externaltrigger enabling a city-wide smart space [43]. A number of technical issues that still need tobe addressed in the context of this dynamic heterogeneous communications and distributed

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Fig. 4 NGN Architecture for a Digital-City Communications Fabric

computing environment are: Interoperability, Media Independent Handover, Service Discov-ery, QoS, Transparency (simplicity) to users and added value; Dynamic user/citizen profile;Matching the needs/wants of the user to the available services; Game theoretic approachto satisfy the needs of a larger group of people with possible conflicting needs; Trust, ano-nymity, misbehavior detection, security, etc; Computing Platforms & Middleware supportfor the provisioning of such services on different mobile devices, e.g., cell phones, PDAs,smart-watches, vehicular digital transceivers.

A network architecture that supports the seamless provisioning of multimedia-rich appli-cations over a number of heterogeneous sub-networks is the Next-generation-Network (NGN)adopted by all state-of-the-art and emerging broadband wireless and mobile networks (e.g.,WiMAX, 3G+, LTE, etc). A Next Generation Network (NGN) is a packet-based networkable to provide services including communication services and able to make use of multiplebroadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions areindependent from underlying transport-related technologies. It offers unrestricted access byusers to different service providers. It supports generalized mobility that will allow consistentand ubiquitous provision of services to users [44]. The general architecture of an NGN iscomprised of three layers (Connectivity, Control and Service layer) as shown in Fig. 4.

A key role in the built up of the intelligent city is expected to be played by a specialarchitecture of mesh networks known as, community networks [45]. Community networks(such as, municipal Wi-Fi networks) have emerged as a cost-effective solution that providesfor ubiquitous access, broadband connectivity, and offers a range of important consumer- andbusiness-related applications to citizens, institutions and companies in a given geographicarea. Typically, municipal Wi-Fi networks offer significant savings on fixed municipal costs(up to 60% of mobile communications [46]), and more efficient management of criticalservices for the City (Municipal, Police, Fire Brigade, Traffic, Transport, etc.). Community

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network customers could be the municipal public services, the local business community(offering location-based services to its customers), but also citizens and city-visitors (tour-ists, foreign students, people in transit). The Municipal Community Network allows neutraloperators to carry out services in free competition for the residential market ([36], p. 14).An example of a socio-technical framework for the market analysis of the business ecosys-tem evolving around a municipal network is the CISG model developed by the OPAALSproject ([45], p. 15). Reflecting the overall architecture and the stakeholders involved in adigital-city fabric, the components of this model have been defined to be: the Community(Citizens, Business, and the Government); the Infrastructure (Hardware and Software); theGovernance (Grassroots, Corporate, and Government governance); and, Services (imple-mented within the framework of business models that are affected by the market structureand conditions and by the role played by the Public Authority.

There are a lot of political issues pertaining to community networks, as they have provokeda political fight with regard to the local government’s right to build communication networks( [47], p. 178 and references therein). Opponents of city-wide community networks are typi-cally the incumbent telecom operators who raise many policy issues and their key argumentsare centred on cost, competition, and failure to achieve the expected social fairness fromthe deployment of municipal networks. On the other hand, Wi-Fi proponents, quote severalbenefits for municipalities such as the improvement of inter- and intra-governmental com-munications, the potential for the broadband infrastructure penetration to contribute to localeconomic development, and ability of the municipal networks to provide low-cost access tolow-income households and small businesses, thus bridging the digital divide.

Emerging next generation broadband wireless networks have the potential to realize thelongstanding vision of ubiquitous high-speed access to the Internet, offering to the end userpersonalized broadband mobile services anywhere, anytime. The digital city fabric of thefuture will be able to offer to the city inhabitants network and services ubiquity (i.e., ubiq-uity of personalized services based on a large diversity of access technologies; location andcontext awareness; service composition and networking) and global mobility (i.e., servicesmobility across terminals, technologies and administrative domains; Always Best Connected;Any terminal is your terminal—bio identification,…). This fact may revolutionize society inthe 21st century, the way the transistor and the internet did in the 20th century, since the ubiq-uitous availability of information and communication will change the way we communicatewith people and machines. Such a change could help bridge the gap between the physical andvirtual worlds accelerating the transition from a digital city to an intelligent city—a city-widesmart space offering ambient enhanced services to its citizens [48].

One of the key features of smart spaces is their ability to adapt themselves to the prefer-ences, desires and needs of their inhabitants. To achieve this ability, smart spaces must be ableto acquire knowledge about the inhabitants and their surroundings. The information uponwhich this knowledge is built is called context. Context information in smart environments isusually gathered through the use of heterogeneous sensors distributed throughout the entirespace. Furthermore, information must be processed in real time, so that the systems may reactto changes in the environment in a timely fashion. Existing systems cover different domainssuch as tourist guides, indoor information systems, and personal smart spaces. These types ofsystems gather contextual information through sensors placed in the environment, the infor-mation is reasoned, and actions are taken to automate features of the environment. In order toachieve that, smart systems make use of context models and contextual ontologies. Contextmodels provide access to contextual information similar to a database, whereas contextualontologies represent knowledge about context. Several ongoing research activities aim atextending the notion of a smart environment from the personal space to a city-wide region

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[49–51]. Most of these approaches are based on a software platform architecture known asService Oriented Architecture (SOA) [52,53]. SOA is a paradigm for designing, developing,deploying and managing software systems that are able to offer services to other softwaresystems. SOA does not specifically mean J2EE, CORBA, multiagent systems, ebXML or, themost extended, Web Services. Mansukhani [52] defines SOA to have the following attributes:Functionality is organized as a set of modular, reusable shared services; Services have welldefined interfaces and encapsulate key business processes; Customer facing solutions serveas customized views of these services for different segments, and can access these sharedservices as needed; The reusable shared services are built without making any assumptionsof who (portal or another service) will consume these services.

6 Case Study—The Korean u-City Project

One of the most extensive networks of interrelated smart-city environments is currentlydeployed in Korea. It was launched a few years ago in the context of a national strategicdevelopment project, the u-City (ubiquitous computing city) [54]. The vision of the u-Cityhas been: “to improve quality of life in the cities and catalyze economic development throughubiquitous broadband connectivity and compelling ICT services supported by a true collab-oration between the public and private sectors”. The goal of u- City was to build Korea’s“21C ICT mediated” futuristic city integrating advanced ICT-based infrastructures and ubiq-uitous information services into the urban space aiming at providing a high quality of lifefor residents in terms of security, welfare, and convenience; well managed city environment;and, the potential for economic growth through the creation of new business [54].

The u-City infrastructure is based on an all-IP NGN communications infrastructure [55]integrating a number of fixed and wireless networks (BcN, FTTH, WiBro, Ubiquitous SensorNetworks, RFID, etc) for the provision of advanced services in the areas of: Home/Buildingnetworking, Logistics, Facility Management, Asset Management & Business Support, Admin-istration, Healthcare/Welfare, Education, Traffic Management, Environmental Management(see Fig. 5).

In realization of this vision, the ETRI institute has spearheaded development in a num-ber of fields spanning the entire digital city fabric including both the physical infrastructurefacilities of the city and the convergent ICT networking that constitutes the communicationsand computing part of the digital city fabric (Fig. 6).

The latest development in the context of the u-project is a project undertaken by Autodeskin collaboration with the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ) and the Incheon Urban Devel-opment Corporation (IUDC) for the creation of one of Asia’s most-advanced Digital Cityprojects for Incheon, Korea—the “Tomorrow City” in Song-do City [35]. Tomorrow City(T-City) is a collaborative environment created around a detailed 3D city model that allowsusers from the public, city government, construction and business communities to leveragetechnology solutions so they can visualize, analyze, and simulate real-world city scenariosto improve decision making and provide a common environment for sharing informationaiming at developing a state-of-the-art fully-integrated city management system. Specifi-cally, scheduled to be opened in August 2009, “T-City” is a six-story, mini u-city urbandevelopment project that will feature diverse, futuristic u-services, including u-traffic andu-shopping. In this pilot program, the IFEZ will examine every potential benefit of the new3D city management system, which will cover the whole process of the city developmentproject ranging from design, construction, and operation to maintenance of the city after theconstruction.

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Fig. 5 u-City Conceptual Framework—The Communications Infrastructure for a Network of Digital Citiesin Korea. (Source: ETRI [56])

Fig. 6 u-City IT Infrastructure (Source: u-city master-plan of MIC, ETRI [56])

7 Conclusions

Historically, infrastructures—the automobile/ gasoline/ roadway system, electrical grid,railways, telephony, and most recently the internet—become ubiquitous, accessible, reli-able and transparent as they mature. And, while this is true for mature infrastructures suchas the roadway system and the electrical grid, ubiquitous access and reliability cannot betaken for granted in the case of information and telecommunication networks. Telecom and

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internet operators worldwide operate according to their own profit-driven business modelsthat often times restrict or make prohibitively costly the access to the global internet fora large segment of the population, leading to the “digital divide”. But, this is all about tochange due to the digital revolution that has been sweeping up everything in its path for thepast two decades and changing society irrevocably in the process. An unprecedented rate ofadvancement in the ICT field has brought about deep changes in our way of working andliving, as the widespread diffusion of ICT is accompanied by organizational, commercial,social and legal innovations.

A host of innovations ranging from cutting-edge technologies in smart devices and sensornetworks, to the emergence of mobile and pervasive computing, and the massive convergenceof voice, data and content distribution networks, have changed the way we communicate,travel, live—and even the way that we use, plan, and develop public space. Our cities areincreasingly moving from a collection of inanimate buildings to a technologically sophisti-cated, dynamic & evolving, smart entity. The first step in this transformation has occurred withthe proliferation of digital cities across the globe—integrated service-oriented, computingand communication platforms that simplify public transactions, reduce telecommunicationcosts, and offer a wide range of user-centric services that meet the everyday needs of residentsof urban environments worldwide. A digital city creates an environment for information shar-ing, collaboration, interoperability and seamless experience for all its inhabitants anytime,anywhere in the city. And, as computers become cheaper and more powerful, and open sourcesoftware offers the possibility of the development of affordable applications, the economicbarrier to accessing this digital infrastructure is slowly disappearing. Add to that, cheap cellphones, smart phones, broadband mobile internet and inexpensive international call rates andthe notion of “the world village” comes closer to realization.

Building upon the foundations of a digital city infrastructure, an entire city can be designedand programmed to function as an intelligent/smart- city ecosystem which is able to acquireand apply knowledge about an environment and its inhabitants in order to improve their expe-rience in that environment [57]. Meeting the demands of the “Knowledge Society”, intel-ligent cities are expected to contribute to economic development, resulting in user-driveninnovations leading to new industries and employment opportunities to replace old ones,reversing the decline of populations in inner city areas and encouraging new forms of cityliving with the services to support this. But the most important element that characterizesa smart city is sustainability [58]. As the director of design and urban environment for theCity of Melbourne, Rob Adams states [59]: “The smart cities of the future will be citiesthat not only have technological advances but that work with the environment to create agood living space for the people who use them, one that can be sustained”. But, in orderto achieve that we need to radically reconsider the way we design and develop moderncites. As a number of urban development architects believe, one of the main factors thatmake most modern megalopolis unsustainable is urban sprawling. Rob Adams agrees thaturban sprawl is unsustainable and says the solution is to move people closer together. “Tomake cities work you need higher density of population. And the technology to make high-density living work in a sustainable way already exists. Solar collection, water harvestingand reuse, and sustainable urban transport systems together with energy-efficient housingare all keys to this.” Now it is the time for our society to move forward. “We have to movefrom the industrial revolution to the ecological revolution,” Adams says. The creation ofSmart Cities is a step towards this ecological revolution, a step that the entire world needs tomake.

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Author Biographies

Gregory S. Yovanof is an Associate Professor at Athens InformationTechnology (AIT) and an adjunct professor with the Information Net-working Institute (INI) at Carnegie Mellon University. He currentlyserves as the Head of the “Broadband Wireless and Sensor Networks”B-WiSE research group, and the Graduate Program Director of the “Man-agement of Business, Innovation and Technology”—M.Sc. level pro-gram at AIT. In April 2008, Dr. Yovanof was elected member of the Boardof Directors of Hellas On Line S.A. In addition to academic work, hisprofessional career includes an over twenty-year tenure in the high-techindustry in the greater Asia-Pacific region. With responsibilities in theRTD and business development domains, he has developed an expertisein the design and development of broadband communication systemsand the production of ASIC chips and multimedia devices. Before join-ing AIT in 2002, he worked as a staff scientist at the Eastman KodakResearch Labs and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, engaged over a period

of nine years in multimedia signal processing for computer peripheral devices. He has also led the developmentof several award-winning ICs for the DVD market as a co-founder and an executive manager at two start-upcompanies in Silicon Valley. Dr. Yovanof received a Ph.D degree in Communications from the Universityof Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA in 1988. A holder of four patents on imaging systems, Dr.Yovanof is a senior member of the IEEE. He is listed in the Lexington’s “Who’s Who” and the Marquis “Whois Who in Finance & Industry” and “Who’s Who in the World”.

George N. Hazapis Holds an MBA in Business Administration fromMarymount University with a focus in Finance and Merger and Acquisi-tions and an MA in International Affairs with a concentration in Interna-tional Political Economy from the American University where he studiedwith a School of International Service Graduate Fellowship. Areas ofinterest include strategic management, organizational behavior, leader-ship, e-commerce entrepreneurship, e-marketing, change managementand executive coaching. Mr. Hazapis has taught Economics, Money andBanking, Marketing, Management, Management of Information Sys-tems, Advertising and Promotion, Media & Business Communications,Business Policy & Strategy. He has been affiliated with a number ofinstitutions, conducted corporate training and is active as a businessconsultant.

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