A smart city initiative: The case of Natal

This paper describes the Natal Smart City initiative, a bottom-up approach to make Natal, a city in Northeastern Brazil, smarter through decentralized initiatives and gradual implementation of successive projects. Such an initiative is hereby described by making use of a well-known problem-oriented roadmap, defining stages and steps to make the city smarter. Some initial results are presented in terms of city connectivity, skill workforce development, innovation network and city resource management. Finally, a set of applications and platforms created by the initiative are described, such as: public safety, non-emergency services, open data, social media and tourism.