We have been writing about the significant contributions of several proven and promising technologies in ensuring the desired success of smart cities. However, the selection of technologies for establishing intelligent cites has to be made after a careful consideration of multiple factors. There are several technologies coming and going without contributing anything substantial for the originally visualized and articulated needs, and hence, the choice plays a vital role in shaping up and strengthening our cities for future challenges and changes. Another noteworthy point is that instead of going for a single technology, it is prudent and pertinent to embrace a cluster of technologies to reach the desired state comfortably. Technology clusters are becoming prominent these days. Especially considering the growing complexity of smart cities (being touted as the system of systems), the need for a collection of competent technologies is being felt across not only the technology-cluster choice but also the appropriate usage of it also is pivotal in achieving the target in a risk-free and relaxed manner. Thus, any smart city strategy has to clearly illuminate resilient technologies and methodologies together towards accelerating and attaining the varied goals of smart cities in this vast and vivacious planet. In this chapter, the authors discuss the immense potential and promise of the newly coined paradigm of the internet of things (IoT) in making next-generation cities that sharply elevate the features, facilities, and functionalities of our crumbling and clogging cities.
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The future Internet comprises not only the millions of compute machines, personal/ professional electronic devices and distributed software services but also the billions of diminutive sensors, actuators, robots, etc. and finally the future Internet is to be blessed with trillions of sentient, smart or digitized objects. It is an overwhelmingly accepted statement that the fast-emerging and evolving IoT idea is definitely a strategic and highly impactful vision to be decisively realized and passionately sustained with the smart adaption and adoption of state-of-the-art technologies, composite and cognitive processes, optimal and versatile infrastructures, integrated platforms, enabling tools, pioneering patterns, and futuristic architectures. Industry professionals and academicians are constantly looking out for appropriate use of business and technical cases in order to confidently and cogently proclaim the transformational value and power of the IoT concept to the larger audience of worldwide executives, end-users, entrepreneurs, evangelists, and engineers.
A growing array of open and industry-strength standards are being formulated, framed and polished by domain experts, industry consortiums and standard bodies to make the IoT thought more visible, viable and valuable. National governments across the globe are setting up special groups in order to come out with pragmatic policies and procedures to take forward the solemn ideals of IoT and to realize the strategic significance of the envisioned IoT in conceiving and concretizing a bevy of citizen-centric services to ensure and enhance peoples’ comfort, choice, care, and convenience. Research students, scholars and scientists are working collaboratively towards identifying the implementation challenges and overcoming them via different means and ways especially standard technological solutions.
In this chapter, we would like to give a broader perspective of what exactly is the idea of IoT, as well as trends setting the stimulating stage for the IoT realization and demonstration, why it has to be pursued with all seriousness and sincerity, what are the prickling and prime concerns, changes and challenges associated with it, where it will be applied extensively and expediently, what is the near and long-term future, the key benefits, nightmares, risks, etc. The dominant facet of this chapter is exposing the usefulness of IoT for shaking up the world cities to become smart and sustainable.