From Earthquake Detection to Traffic Surveillance - About Information and Communication Infrastructures for Smart Cities

Abstract

Smart cities use networks of sensors, actuators, and centralized computing clusters to observe physical reality, derive information, and thereby influence citizens and authorities. Smart city applications therefore require three components to work: wireless sensor networks, geo-information systems, and frameworks for distributed analysis of sensor and geo-data. In this paper, we provide an overview on a set of concrete technologies for such information and communication infrastructures for smart cities. These technologies include a combination of WiFi- and PAN-based sensor networks, City GML data, a model-driven approach to collect and manage data, as well as distributed data analysis based on domain specic languages. We show how we use these technologies to research two typical smart city applications: earthquake early warning and traffic surveillance.