A data flow architecture for smart city applications

The smart city is often presented as the combination of sensor networks (IoT) with big data processing, but this largely ignores the issues of bridging these two universes, as well as the need to integrate other environments, which is typically swept aside as back end concerns. We present in this paper the challenges of integrating networks of sensor and actuator devices into a framework suitable for smart city applications, which includes various forms of efficient sharing and processing of information. We propose architectural elements for distributed implementations of gateways in a data flow architecture. We finally discuss how implementing this framework can benefit from contemporary hybrid networking/computing technology, such as SDN/NFV.