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A Hyper-Connected Smart City Framework: Digital Resources Using Enhanced Pedagogical Techniques

The framework presented in this paper    highlights challenges within  the  smart  city  application, especially regarding  the centralisation of knowledge to implement smart city services with a secure architecture, and synthesises the techniques feasible to solve them. The authors analyse the impact of a potential breach on smart city applications as well as state-of-the-art architectures available. The learning gathered for the framework is presented in the form of a purpose-built website with interactive resources.  

Recent technological advancements have given rise to the concept of hyper-connected smart cities being adopted around the world. These cities aspire to achieve better outcomes for citizens by improving the quality of service delivery, information sharing, and creating a sustainable environment.  Within this context, there are several stages related to big data where a breach in security and privacy could result in catastrophic impacts. According to the authors, the security and privacy of big data circulating within the smart cities are paramount towards a real-time decision-making process. This work recognises current research gaps in the domain of smart cities and presents a holistic framework.

The framework analysed in this paper has been developed bearing in mind stakeholders’ requirements and the impact that data privacy and security have on the operations. The authors  identify the stakeholders who may have an interest in learning about the relationships between the significant aspects of a smart city and demonstrate these relationships through force-directed network diagrams. This way they intend to raise the awareness amongst the stakeholders regarding the planning of the development of a smart city.

The framework follows a structured research methodology with the identification of theoretical concepts, gaps, and implementation via kinaesthetic learning methodology. To develop an interactive resource, the authors focused on a portfolio of services that fall under the remit of a smart city to fully comprehend the challenges pertaining to security and privacy, towards addressing challenges. Furthermore, they map the challenges to the available solutions and highlight relationships between the key aspects delivered via pedagogical techniques.

The paper “A Hyper-Connected Smart City Framework: Digital Resources Using Enhanced Pedagogical Techniques”:

  1. Developed a knowledge base of key terms, definitions, and relationships between important concepts relating to smart cities along with relevant references.
  2. Analysed the learning of state-of-the-art exemplary smart cities around the world and identified key stakeholders within the smart city framework. This framework helps in demonstrating the key aspects of privacy & security within the smart city applications.
  3. Presented a framework for privacy and security preserved data sharing in hyper-connected smart cities. The framework is delivered via open-source interactive digital resources highlighting fundamental building blocks and the key relationships between entities.

The chapters are organised as follows: Following an introduction to the topic in section 1, a literature review of smart cities along with examples is provided in section 2. Section 3 describes the proposed framework. Section 4 explains the usefulness of the framework and a discussion on the designed interactive resources. Section 5 contains the conclusion and proposes a future outlook of research within this domain.

Further research will follow, to explore the evolving trends within smart city domains and update the digital resources periodically.

Find the paper here