Abstract
The progressive transition from digital to smart cities has become a reality in recent years. Studies on the fundamental concept of smart cities,along with their supporting techniques,have attracted unprecedented attention. This paper first discusses the concept ofsmart cities, where it is pointed out that the real city and the digital city can be integrated into a smart city by using ubiquitous sensor networks or the Internet of Things. More intelligent services for city management and public services can be provided in smart cities through massive and complex calculation,analysis, and data mining on cloud computing platforms.A smart city’s representative characteristics are summarized here to demonstrate that smart cities are superior for offering technical securities and intelligent services. Smart municipal supervision, smart transportation, smart environment monitoring, and smart tourism are used as examples to support the discussion.
Acknowledgment
This work is sponsored by the National Basic Research Program of China (No.2010CB731800), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.61172174 and No.10978003) and National Science & Technology Specific Projects(No.2012YQ16018505 and No.2013BAH42F03).