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Building smart cities applications using IoT and cloud-based architectures

Conference Paper · March 2016

DOI: 10.1109/ICCSII.2016.7462433

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 Building Smart Cities Applications using IoT and
Cloud-based Architectures
Maninder Jeet Kaur and Piyush Maheshwari
Department of Engineering
Amity University Dubai
Dubai International Academic City, UAE
{mkaur, pmaheshwari}@amityuniversity.ae
Abstract — The concept of a Smart City highlights the need to
enhance quality, interconnection and performance of various
urban services with the use of information and communication
technologies (ICT). Smart City technologies promote cloud-based
and Internet of Things (IoT) based services in which real-world
user interfaces use smart phones, sensors and RFIDs. Cloud
computing and IoT are presently two most important ICT
models that are shaping the next generation of computing. Both
concepts have major impact on how we build and deploy smart
applications/solutions for smart cities. Cloud computing
represents the delivery of hardware and software resources on
demand over the Internet-as-a-service. On the other hand, IoT
concept envisions a new generation of devices (sensors, both
virtual and physical) that are connected to the Internet and
provide different services for value-added applications. This
paper addresses the convergent domain of cloud computing and
IoT for any smart city application deployment. Dubai as a smart
city is discussed with some application-based scenarios. An IoT-
based healthcare framework is also proposed in the paper.
Index Terms — smart cities, Internet of things, cloud
computing, intelligent community forum.
I. INTRODUCTION
A large number of people moving towards urban cities and
as anticipated in [1-2], by 2030 more than 60% of the
population will live in urban environment. With this
accelerated rise of the urban population, cities throughout the
world are facing many risks and concerns. This situation has
created an urgency for finding smarter ways to manage the
challenges. Smart21 community has been formed by ICF
(Intelligent Community Forum) which annually announces
various cities that score high in five factors decided by the
community (i.e., broadband connectivity, knowledge
workforce, digital inclusion, innovation, and marketing and
advocacy).
A city is an extremely large-scale complex and distributed
system that is extremely dynamic in nature and constantly
changing. Complex systems are composed of many
interconnected individual elements, working together to
produce an overall behavior of the system such as human
nervous system or social structures. These individual behaviors
determine the overall behavior of the system as a whole. The
tendency of making cities smart also makes it susceptible for
new methods of computerization which would be integrated
into services with already laid infrastructure [3].
978-1-4673-8743-9/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
The definition of smart cities ranges from sociological,
technological and urban perspectives [4-6]. This paper utilizes
the definition given in [7] which states that smart cities are
those that incorporate computerization of the city to improve
various other aspects which include quality of life and
economic growth.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II briefly
captures the essence of the concept of a smart city. Section III
highlights the importance of IoT-based model to capture real
time sensory data from various city applications. Section IV
presents a cloud-based model to build the ICT infrastructure
for deploying smart city applications. Section V mentions
Dubai as a case study and discusses various smart applications
launched by the Smart Dubai Initiative. Section VII concludes
the paper.
II. THE CONCEPT OF A SMART CITY
Cities with heavy populations escalate burden on energy,
water, buildings, public places, transportation and many other
things. Therefore, we need to find out solutions that are
“smart” which means they are efficient and feasible for
economic growth of the city and society as well. The smartness
of a city describes its ability to bring together all its resources,
to effectively and seamlessly achieve the goals and fulfill the
purposes it has set for itself. The perfect solution for this is
mobility of all resources and adapting to new technologies as
and when they come.
The smartness of the city is incorporating the technologies
that can be infused into commercial applications implied on
intelligent products and services [8, 9]. Smart homes, smart
buildings, airports, hospitals, universities or communities
equipped with mobile terminals and embedded devices with
sensors or actuators which are interconnected [10, 11]. Smart
ecosystem is an extension of smart space from the personal
context to the larger community or the entire city [12].
Internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing are two
important folds of pervasive connectivity. Public data is
another fold which lies on the top, and is the basis for enabling
real time decisions by the stakeholders. Application for
information is also created that provide access to datasets and
open public data.
 III. “INTERNET OF THINGS” BASED MODEL
Benefits of information and computing technologies in a
smart city and of the Internet of things are huge. Solutions built
on devices like smart energy meters, security devices, smart
appliances for health and domestic life, etc. offer convenience
and improved quality of life for many communities and
common people.
The concept of IoT is integration of elements like sensors,
actuators, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) involving a
communicating interface and a computing capability into the
Internet. Elements which we use in daily life such as (e.g.,
fridge, window, heater, switch, washing-machine, etc.) could
be easily accessible, manageable and communicate through the
Internet via Internet-based protocols (IPv6, UDP/TCP, HTTP).
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Forces) have proposed
various protocols for resource-constrained devices, some of
which are the following [19]:
• 6LowPAN: This particular protocol is specialized for IPv6
over low power WPAN (Wireless Personal Area Network).
• RPL: This protocol is a Routing Protocol for Low-Power
and Lossy Networks.
• CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol): This protocol is
for use with constrained nodes and constrained networks
over the web.
There would still be devices and objects without IP support
or devices that are not updated to support it. This may be due to
resource constraint or other considerations, integration into the
Internet network is still possible through the use of gateways.
Non-IP stack protocols like Zigbee, Z-wave and HART are
translated to/from IP stack protocols to achieve end-to-end
communication.
The IoT paradigm relies on the integration of a large number
of heterogeneous devices, which are connected to the Internet
via different networking protocols. IoT permits the
communication between different sensors connected to the
Internet and the use of their services towards relevant
applications. The concept was originally developed and
introduced by MIT, Auto-ID center and closely linked to RFID
and electronics product code (EPC). Similarly, the EC has
financed a number of FP7 projects in the area of IoT (IOT-A,
iCore, BUTLER, SENSEI).
IV. CLOUD COMPUTING MODEL
To enable convenient and on-demand network access to a
common/shared pool of configurable digital entities like
servers, printers, storage, services, applications, etc., Cloud
computing is used for provisioning and management of the
resources with minimal effort and high user based applications.
The cloud computing paradigm is an umbrella term for
computing services that are accessible over the Internet and
developed on a common pool of remotely hosted resources.
There are different kinds of cloud computing services
depending on the type of resources delivered via them. Current
state-of-the-art cloud services can be such as Infrastructure-as-
a-Service (Iaas), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-
Service (SaaS), Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), Storage-as-a-
Service (STaaS), Sensor-as-a-Service (SSaaS), etc. These
services permit to the users to obtain high reliability, increased
security, high availability and to deliver Quality of Service
(QoS) at low cost of ownership (TCO). There are projects like
RESERVOIR, VISION-CLOUD, OPTIMIS, CONTRAIL, etc.
that are cofounded by the European Commission, through
which were developed pan-European cloud services and also
created new cloud technologies like resource management,
security or others and also relevant applications.
In this paper, we propose to use SlapOS (Simple Language
for Accounting and Provisioning Operating System), an open
source Cloud Operating System which is inspired by Grid
Computing and BonjourGrid [20]. SlapOS is a meta Desktop
Grid Middleware for the coordination of multiple instances of
Desktop Grid Middleware. As shown in Figure 1, the concept
of SlapOS is based on a master and slaves. Master nodes are
requested by the Slave nodes to install a particular software,
which software they show run and report to Master node how
much resources each running software has been using for a
certain period of time. Master node also acts as a Web portal so
that the users can put requests for software instances and can
run on the slave nodes.
Figure 1: SlapOS architecture [20]
Master nodes generally depend on states. On the other
hand, Slave nodes are stateless. Master node contains all the
information required to rebuild a Slave node. This information
may include the URL of the backup service that keeps the
online copy of the data. This copy of the data is used in case of
the failure of the Slave node. In this case, a replacement node is
rebuilt with the same set of data.
It is very important that the state data present in the Master
node is well protected. This is generally done by hosting the
Master node on a trusted IaaS infrastructure. It can also be
implemented by hosting multiple Master nodes on many Slave
nodes located across the globe.
V. CASE STUDY: DUBAI AS A SMART CITY
Dubai has undergone significant development over past few
years. It has come a long way from a desert trading hub to and
urban metropolis. Under the leadership of Mohammed Bin
Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the
UAE and the Ruler of Dubai, Dubai has grown into a huge
metro city, an important port and commercial and financial hub
of the UAE. The theme of Dubai Expo 2020 is “Connecting
Minds, Creating the Future.” The aim of this theme is to
connect minds from all over the world and inspire members to
participate around the theme which incorporates challenges of
Mobility and Sustainability [21].
UAE Vision 2020 requires leveraging cloud computing for
analysis of large databases for business intelligence and real
time management of integrated government services (Figure
2). Dubai has launched several key strategies to transform it
into a “Smart City.” These strategies attribute six basic key
points and initiatives which revolve around transport,
communications and many other services. Under the strategy,
government services will have smart features in the next couple
of years. This strategy relies on three basic principles:
communication, integration, and cooperation. Dubai also
has plans to implement many Smart City projects, including:
• A proposal for the provision of Smart Transportation
System through the formation of a common control to
improve transportation and traffic systems.
• My Window, which will allow residents and institutions,
easy and shared access to data and information about
schools, roads, hospitals, buildings, transport systems,
energy, etc.
• The design and development of Smart Electrical Grid to
encourage home owners and buildings in Dubai to use
solar energy.
• Smart meters would be introduced with the target of
regulating the use of electricity and water in Dubai.
• Smart Parks and Smart Beaches projects, which would
provide detailed information about weather conditions,
temperatures and safety guidelines.
• Municipality of Dubai has also implemented mandatory
green building regulations for the private sector to become
a Green City.
• 5D Control Room, world’s largest of its kind will monitor
government projects, service indicators and monitoring
roads, weather conditions and emergency situations.
Figure 2: Smart city applications in cloud environment
Smart Dubai focuses on some representative areas as
mentioned below [22].
Telecom — Telecom connectivity lies at the core and forms
the backbone of a smart city. According to a report [23], UAE
was ranked 58th globally in average Internet speed at 4.3 Mbps.
In 2014, Du, a leading UAE telecom provider, announced that
as a part of Dubai’s smart city initiatives, it would create 5000
hotspots to offer free wi-fi at 100 locations in Dubai and Abu
Dhabi. Etisalat and Huawei recently signed an MoU which will
deepen the strategic partnerships in new areas such as Public
Cloud, Software Defined Networking (SDN), and Network
Function Virtualization (NFV). This will assist in further
developing new smart city solutions for Dubai.
Transportation — Transportation and mobility are key
challenges for cities globally. According to Dubai Roads and
Transport Authority (RTA), the number of vehicles in Dubai
nearly doubled from 740,000 at the end of 2006 to 1.4 Million
at the end of 2014. This 8.2% average annual increase is one of
the highest in the world. RTA has been one of the pioneers in
contributing to Dubai Smart City Strategy. It has initiated a
project to create the first multi-modal, multi-agency integrated
command and control center in the Region. Dubai RTA is also
developing Smart Traffic Routing and Smart Parking solutions.
Smart Traffic Routing uses smart sensors placed in and along
roads and at signals can be used to detect traffic flows. Back-
end systems analyze traffic flows and determine optimum
intervals for traffic signals to ease congestion (similar to
TrafiCam x-stream system in Moscow). Smart Parking has
wireless sensors embedded in parking spots and detects
whether or not parking spaces are occupied. The data is
transferred to a central system which assist users with the
parking spots (similar to MobyPark in Netherlands and
Streetline in NewYork).
Dubai RTA also offers 173 services on smart phone
platforms include Smart Drive, Smart Salik, Smart Taxi, RTA
Dubai, Public Transport, etc. In addition, RTA commissioned a
study on using autonomous cars (driverless vehicles) in Dubai,
hoping to pioneer this concept in the region.
HealthCare — There has been increase in chronic lifestyle
diseases due to changing lifestyles and environmental
conditions. There has been escalating costs and tightening
budgets which are stressing healthcare infrastructures around
the world.
In 2013, Smart Healthcare project was launched in Dubai.
It will enable easy electronic access to a patient’s file which
contains all the necessary details and results of any tests, etc.
Data will be accessible to the doctors and other departments
like laboratories, pharmacy. This will simply eliminate paper
work, reduce patient waiting time while cutting the time
needed for procedures. Dubai Healthcare Authority (DHA) is
exploring the possibilities of implementing telemedicine
initiatives.
Buildings — According to the World Business Council for
Sustainable Development, buildings accounted for 32% global
energy of global energy and 19% of all carbon emissions in
2010. Under current trends, energy use could double by 2050.
Developing BIM (Building Information Modelling) and BMS
(Building Management Systems) is revolutionizing how
buildings, infrastructure and utilities are planned, designed,
built and managed. UAE is ranked 9th globally by the Green
Building Council in terms of gross square meters of space
certified to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design), which certify buildings. Dubai’s Integrated Energy
Strategy has targeted to reduce energy and water demand by
30% by 2030. Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA)
and Dubai Municipality is focusing on reducing cooling
requirements within buildings.
Utilities — DEWA plans to install 250,000 smart meters in all
residential, industrial and commercial properties by 2018 as a
part of Dubai Smart City Initiative. It will deploy Smart Grid to
automate grid control decisions and to deliver new services to
consumers, allowing them to automate and control their power
consumption. In addition, DEWA plans to implement solutions
for solar power in houses. In 2014, it had signed an MoU with
IBM to collaborate on Smart Grid technologies, innovation
centers, and research and development programs and share
industry knowledge and leading practices.
Tourism — Smart Tourism brings together a variety of smart
city concepts and aims to promote tourism through the
innovative use of ICT. It uses IoT to connect physical and real
objects to the Internet. Dubai was the 5th most visited city in
the world in 2014 with 11.95 million visitors. By 2020, the city
aims to welcome 20 million tourists annually. RTA has
launched a tour guide system “Nahaam” which gives tourists
information about the landscapes and routes. Another example
is Dubai Airport’s Smart Gate system which shortens
immigration waiting time for passengers through electronic
identification.
The Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing
(DTCM) has introduced e-Permit and e-Ticketing platforms to
support and develop Emirates Tourism Vision for 2020. New
city components are being developed and integrated with other
smart city components to offer location intelligence and to
ensure memorable experience in Dubai.
Education — A smart education system using technology
helps open the door to richer learning tools and encourages
more engaging teaching techniques. UAE had allocated AED
9.8 billion to the education sector in 2014. Dubai’s Knowledge
and Human Development Authority (KHDA) has introduced a
Smart e-Services Portal for the educational organizations and
an updated system for schools and training institutes which
allow them to directly connect them to KHDA, saving time,
paperwork and improving customer satisfaction. Other services
include inline registration for students and staff, certificate
attestation and permit renewal.
Smart learning initiatives are also introduced that aims to
integrate teachers, students, parents and administrators to a
single e-platform.
A. An IoT-based healthcare framework on cloud
The members involved in the healthcare framework
include: patients, healthcare professionals such as doctors,
nurses, attendants, medical labs, hospitals, pharmacies and
public authorities such as auditing or legal authorities that
would require access to data. This proposed Cloud-IoT based
integrated solution comprises of various applications some of
them are featured in Figure 3.
This framework offers broad range of healthcare
applications to different members of the framework at
different levels. The Cloud-IoT based framework is used by
the healthcare physicians to improve clinical solutions and
improve the healthcare scenario. The devices are used to
monitor and collect patient data related to patients physical
activity and sleep information.
The cloud service provider offers Platform-as-a-Service
(PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to host Cloud-
IoT healthcare applications based on the framework.
Figure 3: Cloud-IoT based healthcare framework
With the help of this Cloud-IoT framework, the users
would have access to more digitized health information like
laboratory records, medical history, x-ray or scan images, etc.
It will also help the healthcare providers to review the patient
information from anywhere in this world and give the valuable
feedback.
This IoT- and cloud-based framework will reduce costs and
optimize the management process of the health care
organization. It will also enable all the hospital networks
(private or government) across the nation or the world to
manage while transferring information to/from the entities.
B. Challenges and recommendations
The overall challenge in interoperability is first to stablize
the foundation of the real world data/services, ensuring
technical interoperability from technologies to deliver mass of
information and then the information to be processed. Further,
beyond the limits of physical devices (e.g., sensors) there is
also a notion of “Virtual Sensor” that refers to virtualization of
an element of the IoT platforms representing new data sources
created from live data.
Due to rising popularity of IoT technologies and
applications, the emergence of a wide range of platforms that
enable users to build and/or use IoT applications is
unavoidable. There is a clear trend towards the convergence of
physical worlds and virtual solutions by using IoT
technologies. In all cases, a middleware framework is the core
element to be used for providing baseline sensor functionalities
associated with registering and looking up internet-connected
objects, exchanging messages as well as resoning data from
multiple objects.
Other challenges in the IoT domain in relation to data are:
how to represent data and standardize the data specifications,
trust and validity of data, if the information can be translated to
a standard format, if different applications can use all the
information, if some types of data also depend on user
interfaces or types of technologies used to generate the data.
The IoT systems require the developement of extensible
context models that enable the efficient representation for
handling and distribution of the information in the information
systems.
The following are some recommendations to enhance the
interoperability among various providers and users in the IoT
domain:
• Providing alignment between different systems and using
ontology matching solutions,
• Using coordinated efforts to design common specifications
and core schema/reference models,
• Providing metrics, tools and interfaces for annotations, test
and validation and integration.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper focuses on the characteristics of a cloud
platform for smart cities deployment with validation of
platform’s ability tailored to IoT functionalities using cloud
middleware. We studied and reviewed the deployment of smart
city cloud interoperability and connectivity. This approach
holds immense promise of reducing capital and infrastructure
costs while improving efficiencies of service provision within
the Smart City Framework. The importance of this research
derives from the fact that we studied the ways through which
the Cloud and Internet of Things concepts can be used in the
context of smart cities. We mentioned the related work and
their shortcomings that our research aims to address and
presented a methodology and implementation framework. A
smart city deployment requires the integration of a distributed
sensor network and a centralized platform based on cloud
computing.
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