Decentralized, Distributed, and Hybrid ICT Architectures: Hierarchical Multitier Big Data Driven Management for Smart, Sustainable, Scalable and Reliable Cities

A smart city hopes to intelligently manage a city’s resources to address urban challenges and complexities through urban development and digital transformation strategies. This involves the participation of all stakeholders, including private and public sectors and city residents, in addition to the municipality itself. Data is an essential resource in smart cities, often called green oil. To effectively organize data in smart cities, managing all data lifecycle stages, from creation to consumption, is essential, emphasizing the critical role of information and communications technology (ICT) and information technology (IT) in resource and data management. Sustainable technology focuses on designing, organizing, and managing Internet of Things (IoT) technologies within ICT and IT architectural solutions in smart cities, addressing management of data/databases, resources, network communication, cybersecurity issues, and software services development. This paper reviews various smart city ICT architectures, such as centralized, decentralized-to-centralized (DC2C-ICT), distributed-to-centralized (D2C-ICT), and hybrid-ICT architectures. This discussion comprehensively covers key concepts of big data-driven architecture, including various design perspectives, management, control, and monitoring systems, as well as a range of ICT/IoT technologies and techniques. It involves organizing city data within IoT networks, utilizing multiple computing nodes and platforms in edge-to-cloud orchestration. Emphasis is on the convergence and integration of ICT, IoT, and Big Data with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for efficient organization and management. The paper introduces an innovative big data-driven architecture for hierarchical multitier ICT management in smart city IoT networks, rooted in edge-to-cloud orchestration. This architecture can incorporate diverse ICT and IoT technologies across different multilayer ICT architectures over time, making it adaptable and suitable for various domains. Furthermore, it is well-equipped to manage ICT resources and address big data challenges, including the Vs challenges, for the Smart, Sustainable, Scalable, and Reliable development of cities. The paper summarizes key lessons from the author’s experiences, studies, and publications.