A Survey on Smart Cities’ IoT

Ahmed Samy Nassar(B) , Ahmed Hossam Montasser(B) ,

and Nashwa Abdelbaki(B)

School of CIT, Nile University, Giza, Egypt

{a.samy,ah.hossam,nabdelbaki}@nu.edu.eg

Abstract. The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to a numer-
ous and diverse amount of products and real life implementations for
smart cities in the last few years. With the many opportunities and
challenges, the academic and industrial field has come up with many
hardware and middleware platforms. We categorise these different IoT
applications and solutions into different domains and present an appli-
cation for each. This survey aims at defining the state-of-the-art major
and common technologies, frameworks, and applications used to open
doors to drive future research and to spark new ideas for other industrial
ventures. Also, we discuss the significant challenges, and opportunities
facing this field.

Keywords: Internet of Things · IOT · Smart cities · Intelligent sensors

1 Introduction

The need for better public services, and infrastructure has become a necessity
for many governments and huge business complexes. This is to cope with the
growing population in many cities along with the shift of populations to urban
areas rather than rural areas around the world. This has triggered the initiative of
IoT to serve this necessity since all devices can communicate with each other, the
users, and their administrators. The Internet of Things term was first introduced
by Kevin Ashton in 1998 when he wrote “The Internet of Things has the potential
to change the world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so.” [4]. Later
it was formally made known by the International Telecommunication Union in
2005 by defining that “from anytime, anyplace connectivity for anyone, we will
now have connectivity for anything” [22]. IoT objects are numerous scattered
devices or sensors that communicate together through many networks. They
feature low storage, and low processing power with the least human interaction
possible in order to be able to monitor, secure, and ensure the reliability of the
infrastructure.
A smart city is devised of a diverse and great number of devices that serve
many different applications that range all the way from transportation sensors,
energy efficiency, street surveillance, air quality sensors and many more as shown


c Springer International Publishing AG 2018
A.E. Hassanien et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the International
Conference on Advanced Intelligent Systems and Informatics 2017,
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 639, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-64861-3 80
856 A.S. Nassar et al.

in Fig. 1. The coupling of many of them provides insights. For example, trans-
portation sensors and air quality sensors are related to one another.
All these different applications conjoined, provide real indicators, and effec-
tive monitoring that help city administrators and decision makers to create deci-
sions or plans that serve the population at hand by using the geographic location
of these devices which feeds dashboards or analysis platforms.
The objective of this paper is to touch upon all the different aspects that
create a smart cities’ IoT. We look upon its key technologies and different
frameworks that constitute the majority of IoT devices. Afterwards we show-
case promising IoT applications that have been published recently. We then
review different smart city initiatives such as Dubai (United Arab Emirates).
Lastly, we discuss the open challenges facing smart cities.
This paper is organized as following. In Sect. 2 we investigate the different
frameworks and architectures that make up most of the recent and popular IoT
devices existing. The various recent applications and IoT types that are being
deployed in smart cities are discussed in Sect. 3 with available real life cases.
Several real life cases and studies of existing smart cities are reviewed in Sect. 4.
Finally, we conclude this paper with Sect. 5. Where we discuss the current open
challenges.

Fig. 1. Smart Cities major domains.

2 IoT Frameworks and Architectures

A lot of data is being generated from the vast number of small sensors and other
data generating devices. The integration of Cloud Computing and Big Data
technologies with lots of devices play a huge part in handling and managing
different types of data according to its requirements, creating more valuable
services. Cloud Computing focuses more on the infrastructure that stores the
data, while Big Data concentrates more on the information that can be extracted
from the data stored.
Below we give a brief introduction of each technology used in the Smart City.
 A Survey on Smart Cities’ IoT 857

2.1 Internet of Things

IoT relies on the integration of a huge number of resource-constrained devices
into the Internet through a communication interface. Internet-based protocols
(HTTP, IPv6, UDP/TCP) enable to access, manage and communicate hard-
ware devices which we use in our daily life such as, heater, washing machine and
fridge. [18]. For resource-constrained devices (low power in the presence of noisy
communication link devices), it is recommended to use communication protocols
like Wifi, IEEE 802.15.4, Z-Wave, RFID(Radio Frequency Identification), Near
Field Communication (NFC), 6LowPAN, RPL, CoAP and Ultra-Wide Band-
width (UWB) [3].

2.2 Cloud Computing

The essential characteristics of cloud computing are on-demand self-service,
broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service.
For Smart City applications, Cloud Computing technology brings the ability
of storing and maintaining the data generated from IoT devices and sensors in
a highly scalable, and manageable solution according to user's requirements [1].

Fig. 2. Iot architecture for Smart City

2.3 Big Data

Mainly, Hardware devices and software applications are considered the two essen-
tial components in IoT architecture. However for smart cities applications, Big
Data is considered the third and the most important component to be able to
improve the smart city functioning as shown in Fig. 2. Big Data brings the abil-
ity of managing the complexity and variety of data received from sensors and
devices, classifying, clustering useful data in real time [20].
858 A.S. Nassar et al.

Big data is the term that describes any voluminous amount of structured,
semi-structured and unstructured data that has the potential to be mined for
information and the characteristics of big data summarized as “5Vs” [28] which
are volume, variety, velocity, value and Veracity.
The technologies mentioned are vital currently to IoT devices and subse-
quently to a Smart City that is trying to adopt the current state of the art
trend. These technologies build the foundation for the different applications.

3 Applications
Below we introduce recent promising research in the most prominent domains
that exist in smart cities.

3.1 Air Quality

Reducing the carbon footprint is of a major interest for smart cities to provide its
citizens a healthy environment. “The New Climate Economy” an international
initiative that is concerned about countries growth meanwhile achieving a better
climate, released a report [10] claiming that smart cities can spare the world
up to $22tn by conserving and reducing the energy. Reference [24] utilizes a new
emerging Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications technique by the name
of low power wide area (LPWA) [25]. This technique enables the dispersion of
many sensors in an area that can run on batteries for over 10 years, which reduces
the maintenance and deployment cost. The system proposed is composed of:
– Monitoring Node: Senses and monitors the air quality, using a Particulate
Matter (PM) sensor, and transmits this data through an LPWA based net-
work to the Access Point by a radio transceiver designed to operate in low
power.
– Access Point: The access point receives the data transmitted to it, by a uni-
versal software radio peripheral (USRP).
– Application Layer: contains the IoT cloud and applications were the aggre-
gated data is collected and analyzed to provide useful information to feed to
the client applications.

3.2 Energy Efficiency

Conserving energy is a major characteristic of a smart city since they rely on
renewable energy as one of its energy sources. The work presented by Brundu
et al. [6] is an IoT platform for a city’s district data management and energy
flow simulations, which offers:
– The integration heterogeneous IoT devices and monitoring them.
– Sharing different building energy network resources, visualising and simulat-
ing energy policies.
– The appraisal of the quality of the model of buildings.
 A Survey on Smart Cities’ IoT 859

This platform or framework is developed to be able to scale up quickly by

using the web standards which makes it easy to be integrated into nearly all exist-
ing systems which are required to be able to support these standards. Another
feature is that this platform can receive actuation commands to the devices
deployed in the district, as an example, it’s able to create schedules for on-off
heating to control the heat exchanges and therefore create energy efficiency.
As shown by the real world case study presented, this platform claims to
be the state-of-the-art regarding energy management systems for a city district.
It is able to run energy distribution policies simulation all the way from the
building level to a room level in order to be able to focus on saving energy for
both district and the end user, which is all made possible by the addition of the
monitoring service they proposed.

3.3 Natural Disaster Monitoring

Another threat to a smart city’s citizen safety, and its infrastructure are natural
disasters. Early Warning System (EWS) help at warning before a disaster to help
take precautionary measures that will cut down the losses. According to the work
presented by Poslad et al. [19] major challenges to an EWS is that they are not
scalable, have to process different sources of data, and be able to communicate
while ICT resources change. The framework presented offers a solution that is
integrable, that supports semantics to be able to adapt to a crisis or event and
interoperability. This is advantageous over other systems where the transmitted
data is binary and is difficult to process and integrate at crises.

3.4 Security and Surveillance

The installation of video surveillance cameras is no longer the optimum way to

secure and ensure the safety of the citizens. There are many other responsibil-
ities other than monitoring, such as tracking, crime, and disaster prevention.
Suspicious baggage, vandalism, loitering and criminal identification can be com-
bated by using computer vision techniques on the video footage captured by
these surveillance cameras. As proposed by this work [9] human identification is
a solution to some of these problems.
Biometrics play a fundamental role in securing applications as seen recently
with a smartphone. They definitely show a significant use in health care,
retail, entertainment, utility, public and infrastructure. Using electrocardiogram
(ECG), photoplethysmograph (PPG), face and fingerprints are utilised as dis-
cussed in reference [11], for access control or authentication of IoT devices.

3.5 Smart Home

Smart home IoT devices are probably the most popular and mature devices on
the market. This is due to that this category caters directly to a huge sector
of consumers who aren’t technical and require reliability, and ease of use, which
860 A.S. Nassar et al.

leads to heavy investments in them. A nationwide survey [13] reveals that nearly
26% of U.S broadband households are owners of a smart home device.
Smart meters are an important component in smart homes since they mea-
sure electricity and gas accurately, provide you with a better understanding of
your usage, and in some cases report back to the service provider. SensIPro [5]
provides an analytical automation tool that could be helpful in notifying when
there is a healthcare and privacy analytics.
Another component that creates a smart home is smart appliances which are
consumer electronics commonly found in households. Logging data generated
from these smart appliances and sending them back to the manufacturers in
a format that can be a great insight as Takenaka et al. [23] discuss. This will
enable manufacturers to provide maintenance, mass customization, new services
or products for smart appliances.
Smart power sockets are an additional integral component in smart homes.
Fernndez-Carams [8] presents a tested intelligent power outlet system that aims
at making homes safer and smarter. His solution uses Zigbee with features that
provide remote control, current consumption monitoring, avoidance of overcon-
sumption, detection of vampire currents, and the prevention of electrical fires
and shocks.

3.6 Transportation

With the different forms of transportation systems, a smart city has to provide
reliable efficient transportation to its citizens. IoT here plays a huge role, and
many technologies are used such as RFID for access, and different wireless pro-
tocols to communicate and exchange information for buses, taxis, trains, and
underground railway.
The work presented by Masek et al. [16] covers the role of IoT in Traffic
Management systems focusing on today’s long-range technologies such as 3G,
4G (LTE), and routing protocols such as VANET which is a system that helps
transfer the data from vehicles.
Vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication is also another transportation com-
ponent in which IoT plays a big role. A routing solution that relies on Vehicle-
to-Infrastructure (V2I) and V2V is explored [17], in which it reduces congestion
by load balancing the congestion in streets.

3.7 Water Quality

As explained in previous sections, with the population in cities growing, water

consumption is going to increase as well. Also, a key integral part of any city
or smart city infrastructure is its water system. These water systems have dif-
ferent roles, whether they are transporting the water, the flow, pressure, and
distributing it efficiently.
The proposed water consumption monitoring system [27] has been deployed
in 30 households, being 10 in Poland, 20 in Greece. The system is made up
 A Survey on Smart Cities’ IoT 861

from a wireless data collector, household WiFi router and a remote server. The
wireless data collector with a flow rate and temperature sensor is installed in
several water supply pipes that are linked to different water outputs (Kitchen
tap, dish washer, washing machine and etc.). The data acquired by the wireless
data collector is sent through the household WiFi network to a remote server
where all household data is aggregated.
These applications working collectively ease the life of a citizen, as well as
the city administrator to provide excellent services. As well as improving the life
of an area that is in need of development, this can be showcased and proved in
real life cases.

4 Real Life Cases

In this section we discuss different real life cases of smart cities that embraced
IoT and role in its infrastructure. We selected recent cases with variety in terms
of location and economical backgrounds.

4.1 Case Study: Dubai as a Smart City

Over past few decades, Dubai has transformed from a desert trading hub to
an urban metropolis, an important port and commercial and financial hub. In
addition, it becomes one of the first cities to announce its plan for transfer-
ring in a “Smart City” [12]. Cooperation, communication and integration are
the three main principles that Dubai’s strategy relies on. Many projects have
been announced which include: The 5D Control Room is the world’s largest of
its kind which will monitor government projects, service indicators, roads and
emergency situations, My Window, which will allow residents to easily access
data and information about schools, roads, hospitals, and etc., The design and
development of a Smart Electrical Grid to encourage home owners and buildings
in Dubai to use solar energy and Smart meters would be introduced with the
target of regulating the use of electricity and water in Dubai.
In summary, transferring into a smart city is not a simple task and it is
not just about adoption of technology, It also needs the involvement of well
informed citizens and organisations in such process. Dubai case study is example
disparate cities that announced its smart city initiatives. As we can see that these
initiatives line up with the major trends, or matters discussed in Sects. 2 and 3.

5 Open Challenges

There are several challenges that arise with the use of IoT in smart cities:
862 A.S. Nassar et al.

5.1 Security and Privacy

A smart city is driven by data and a huge generator of it. With this amount of
data and the different types comes a major burden which is securing this data
and ensuring its users privacy [21]. For the ease of life and quality, the user’s
privacy should not be a sacrifice, and they should be allowed to choose what
to share and what not to with permissions similar to the current social media
privacy settings.
Li et al. [15] present the dangers of Data over-collection in which they define
as “Data over-collection, which means smartphones apps collect users’ data more
than its original function while within the permission scope...”. The authors
prove through different experiments that the solution to overcoming this hazard
is through storing the data on the cloud. For every single app, a permission is
required from the cloud service which also, of course, provides the specific data
while doing encryption/decryption operation.
Another security factor that is of great importance is securing the devices
and network to be prone to cyber attacks and cyber-terrorism. With smart cities
depending on IoT devices for most of its operations the system’s availability and
integrity should not be meddled with to ensure a safe and efficient service without
interruptions. The threats, vulnerabilities, and types of attacks are discussed in
this work [2] thoroughly.

5.2 Big Data

There are difficulties that arise with dealing with Big Data in smart cities. The
main one is trying to cater for all the different types of data that is being dumped,
this variety whether structured, semi-structured or unstructured from different
sources could create a recognition problem [26]. Another challenge which is tech-
nical, is the storage, compatibility and the transformation this data into a for-
mat that could be used later on by end-user applications [14]. In the end, these
amounts of data need to be mined for patterns to create a value, and to be
analyzed on timely basis to provide a quality service [7].

6 Conclusion

In this paper, we reviewed the latest literature for all different state of art types &
domains of IoT devices that exist in smart cities, and the common architectures
and systems used. It is very apparent that there are many initiatives taken as
shown in our real life cases to integrate IoT devices leading to a very promising
effect in terms of making cities more secure, eco-friendly, and sustainable. It is
also clear that combining all the different IoT devices with different intelligent
systems will create a powerful tool for city administrators and decision makers
to make use of. Smart cities will not be able to achieve its purposes without
handling the issues of security and privacy.
 A Survey on Smart Cities’ IoT 863

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