Geomatics for smart cities - concept, key techniques, and applications

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 study first discusses the concept of smart 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 (USN) 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.