Smart City Drivers and Challenges in Urban-Mobility, Health-Care, and Interdependent Infrastructure Systems

The IEEE Smart Cities Initiative brings together the IEEE’s broad array of technical societies and organizations to advance the state of the art for smart city technologies for the benefit of society and to set the global standard in this regard by serving as a neutral broker of information amongst industry, academic, and government stakeholders. These smart city technologies draw upon expertise in several functional domains including:
● Sensors and Intelligent Electronic Devices
● Communication Networks & Cyber Security
● Systems Integration
● Intelligence & Data Analytics
● Management & Control Platforms
Together, this functional expertise serves to achieve the mission of the IEEE Smart Cities initiative:
1. To be recognized as the authoritative voice and leading source of credible technical information and educational content within the scope of smart cities identified below.
2. To facilitate and promote both the collaborative and individual work of its Member societies regarding smart city technology.
To that end, the IEEE Smart Cities initiative has identified several application domains in which to apply
its expertise. These are:
● Smart energy systems
● Smart water systems
● Smart mobility systems
● Smart healthcare systems
Each of these systems has generally developed in its own right in response to the needs and context of the domain. Each faces its own set of drivers and challenges. And yet, as each of these systems gains greater “digital intelligence”, recurring themes of technology integration do emerge. This sequence of two articles serves to highlight these domain-specific drivers and challenges within the broader smart city landscape. This first article focuses on smart energy and smart water systems. In the sequel article, smart mobility and healthcare systems are discussed.