Smart Cities and Urban Networks

The integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) with development projects can change the urban landscape by developing Smart Cities. Smart Cities can dramatically improve their citizens' quality of life, encourage business to invest, and create a sustainable urban environment. This chapter specifically focuses on the various applications of smart object networks in the fields of environmental monitoring, increased public safety and security, efficient resources management such as energy and water, ITS, and the development of new social networks. All of these new applications rely on the deployment of IP smart object networks offering a high degree of scalability, reliability, and security in harsh and unattended environments. Smart object networks will consist of smart objects of various nature such as magnetic, thermal, visual, seismic, infrared, acoustic, and radar, which would be able to monitor a wide variety of ambient conditions that include temperature, humidity, sunlight, soil makeup, air makeup, noise levels, pollution, energy, presence or absence of certain kinds of objects, and mechanical stress levels. In some cases, Virtual Private Network (VPN) technologies can be deployed to logically separate the flows, if required.