Emerging Paradigm of Urban Computing

Abstract

The trend for urbanization has increased manifold in recent years. More people are shifting towards urban areas that bring significant challenges like congestion of traffic, environmental pollution, more energy consumption, etc. Therefore, a smart city requires a smart solution. All the components of the city must work in combination to act as a system of systems. Thus, urban computing as a new multidisciplinary technology overcomes these challenges and provides adequate smart solutions to problems within a short span of time. Real-time data from the urban spaces are gathered from various devices and sensors deployed across the city at different locations. Due to the abundance of sensors and devices in the urban space, these data are generated in huge amounts, making it more complex to handle. This chapter discusses the various sources of heterogeneous data generated from the surroundings. The application of the Web of Things (WoT) allows the sensors to be easily implemented in the urban area to monitor the environmental parameters efficiently. This chapter presents an ecosystem based on WoT integrated with urban computing towards a smart city vision. Further, this chapter also discusses the various challenges of urban computing and application areas of urban computing that offer smart city solutions to citizens.