Smart Cities

A smart city is a new vision for urban development to integrate the various sectors of society through the use of ICT and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The aim is to integrate and manage a city's resources such as transportation, health care, commerce, education, water and power, and law enforcement, as well as the city's various departmental information systems. The ultimate aim is to improve the quality of life of citizens, and the efficiency of the city's services and processes, ensuring that citizens' needs are met and that they are appropriately empowered to affect the city's functioning. Relevant technologies and processes are well established e.g.: 1) ICT, social media and mobile technologies to empower the citizens to provision and utilize the e-services provided by the city; 2) ICT, social media and mobile technologies to allow city officials to interact directly with the community and to monitor digital environments; 3) device connectivity across the smart and distributed environments to further advance the integration of urban services, and; 4) sensors integrated with real-time processing and monitoring devices to help provide data for monitoring and further improvement of e-services. Within this context, this book investigates the development, management and monitoring approaches to building smart cities and distributed environments. Emphasis is also placed on the current and future use of distributed technologies and IoT frameworks. This text fills a gap with respect to smart living in smart environments, and extends the existing body of knowledge in this field.