Building smart cities applications using IoT and cloud-based architectures

The concept of a Smart City highlights the need to enhance quality, interconnection and performance of various urban services with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). Smart City technologies promote cloud-based and Internet of Things (IoT) based services in which real-world user interfaces use smart phones, sensors and RFIDs. Cloud computing and IoT are presently two most important ICT models that are shaping the next generation of computing. Both concepts have major impact on how we build and deploy smart applications/solutions for smart cities. Cloud computing represents the delivery of hardware and software resources on demand over the Internet-as-a-service. On the other hand, IoT concept envisions a new generation of devices (sensors, both virtual and physical) that are connected to the Internet and provide different services for value-added applications. This paper addresses the convergent domain of cloud computing and IoT for any smart city application deployment. Dubai as a smart city is discussed with some application-based scenarios. An IoT-based healthcare framework is also proposed in the paper.