A Web of Things based eco-system for urban computing - towards smarter cities

Environmental awareness and knowledge may help people to take more informed decisions in their everyday lives, ensuring their health and safety. The Web of Things enables embedded sensors to become easily deployed in urban areas for environmental monitoring such as air quality, electromagnetism, radiation, etc. In this paper, we propose an eco-system for urban computing which combines the concept of the Web of Things, together with big data analysis and event processing, towards the vision of smarter cities that offer real-time information to their habitants about the urban environment. We touch upon near real-time web-based discovery of sensory services, citizen participation, semantic technologies and mobile computing, helping people to take more informed everyday decisions when interacting with their urban landscape. We then present a case study where we demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of this eco-system to the everyday lives of citizens.