Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

Volume 2017, Article ID 9429676, 12 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/9429676

Research Article
Big Data Analytics Embedded Smart City Architecture for
Performance Enhancement through Real-Time Data Processing
and Decision-Making

Bhagya Nathali Silva, Murad Khan, and Kijun Han

School of Computer Science and Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Republic of Korea

Correspondence should be addressed to Kijun Han; [email protected]

Received 25 October 2016; Accepted 12 December 2016; Published 18 January 2017

Academic Editor: Jaime Lloret

Copyright © 2017 Bhagya Nathali Silva et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.

The concept of the smart city is widely favored, as it enhances the quality of life of urban citizens, involving multiple disciplines, that
is, smart community, smart transportation, smart healthcare, smart parking, and many more. Continuous growth of the complex
urban networks is significantly challenged by real-time data processing and intelligent decision-making capabilities. Therefore, in
this paper, we propose a smart city framework based on Big Data analytics. The proposed framework operates on three levels: (1)
data generation and acquisition level collecting heterogeneous data related to city operations, (2) data management and processing
level filtering, analyzing, and storing data to make decisions and events autonomously, and (3) application level initiating execution
of the events corresponding to the received decisions. In order to validate the proposed architecture, we analyze a few major types of
dataset based on the proposed three-level architecture. Further, we tested authentic datasets on Hadoop ecosystem to determine the
threshold and the analysis shows that the proposed architecture offers useful insights into the community development authorities
to improve the existing smart city architecture.

1. Introduction smart city notion is initially coined with the aim of utilizing
public services and resources efficiently to increase the quality
The novel concept of “connected everyday objects” over the of services offered to the urban citizens [7]. In fact, the
existing network has been evolved with the emergence of offered services, that is, transportation, parking, surveillance,
the smart devices. The tremendous growth of the devices electricity, healthcare, and so forth, are optimized with the
connected to the network has expanded the boundaries of autonomous data collection via the heterogeneous devices
conventional networks. This major breakthrough introduced connected to the urban IoT. It is essential to process a
Internet of Things (IoT) as the third wave of the web after large amount of data on a real-time basis in order to serve
static pages web (WWW) and social networking web [1, 2]. the service requests efficiently. Consequent to the immense
The IoT is an unceasingly growing network, capable of iden- increase in data volume, the general data processing and
tifying and sharing data autonomously among heterogeneous analytical mechanisms become impotent to satisfy the real-
devices, which are uniquely addressable. IoT has become time data processing demand. Hence, the collaboration with
the spotlight of attention among multiple interest groups Big Data analytics is considered to be the ideal first step
due to the advancement of embedded device technology and towards a smarter city. It assures flexible and real-time data
rapid increase in the number of devices. The IoT concept has processing followed by intelligent decision procedures [8]. As
been matured with the attention of multiple interest groups a result of adopting Big Data analytics to the urban IoT, this
and with the advancement of embedded device technology. enhances the quality of services provided by the smart city.
This comes up with its productive applications like smart In addition, multiple efforts have been made by aca-
home, smart city, smart health, and so forth [3–6]. The demic and industrial experts to realize the notion of the
2 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

smart city. However, many efforts on individual aspects customizing. However, the decision and control management
of interest are seen in the literature [9–11] covering water is the most influential component for the realization of a
management, garbage management, parking management, smart city. Hence, the attainment of real-time and prompt
and so forth. Therefore, complete and resilient smart city decisions has become the utmost goal of the proposed
architecture has become a crucial demand, as lack of integrity scheme. Also, fusion techniques work to expedite the pro-
deteriorates the practicability. In addition, it has to facilitate cessing of the enormous amount of collected data in Big
autonomous behavior, real-time data processing, real-time Data analytics. In this study, Hadoop is chosen as the storage
decision-making, and smart energy consumption and cus- and processing medium for the heterogeneous data. The
tomization. Thereupon, the processing and analyzing of the Hadoop processing is followed by the generation of intelligent
colossal amount of data become a necessity. Henceforth, the decisions related to the smart city operations. Finally, the
urban IoT integrates Big Data analytics for the realization of actions or events corresponding to the decisions are executed.
the smart city [12]. For example, a smart meter at a residential The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
building collects the meter reading that is compared with a presents a detailed description of the recent literature and
predefined electricity consumption threshold and, based on smart city management based on Big Data analytics. Section 3
the result, the current energy demand is notified to the smart gives a brief description of the proposed architecture. The
grid. Simultaneously, consumers are notified with the current results and analysis are presented in Section 4. Finally, the
level of energy consumption, allowing them to manage the conclusion is outlined in Section 5.
energy utilization efficiently. Indeed, the preceding scenario
generates a reasonable amount of data for a single house. 2. Related Work
Moreover, data processing and decision-making should be
carried out in a timely manner. Nevertheless, thousands of The rapid development of the smart city system diverts the
residential and public infrastructures in the city generate focus of many researchers and architects towards an efficient
a prodigious amount of data related to a single task as communication and standard architectural design. Standard-
mentioned above. Thus, the unification of data sources and izing the smart city models can provide various benefits to
Big Data analytics is considered to be an expedient solution the researchers and engineers in different contexts, nam-
to facilitate real-time operation of the smart city. ing standalone communication paradigm, detailed layering
Even though the smart city has become a buzzword in architecture, processing of information in real time, and so
the modern technological era, the actual implementation is forth. In addition, the smart city architecture covers a variety
still in its infancy. In this regard, multiple efforts are made of research approaches ranging from abstract concepts to a
to implement a realistic smart city. An urban IoT, “Padova complete set of services. Recently, the researchers are working
Smart City,” was implemented to provide ICT solutions for on deriving various solutions to present generic architecture
the city administration [7]. The framework consists of a data of IoT-based smart city. Similarly, various schemes have
collection system, street lighting monitoring system, and a been proposed in the current literature that follows thorough
gateway. By means of the collected environmental parame- experimentation and test bed based simulations to overcome
ters, that is, temperature, humidity, and light, it assures the the challenges. A scheme based on experimenting a complete
operation of streetlights. SmartSantander test bed in North set of smart city services on various test bed modules has
Spain is used in [8] to determine the potential benefits of been proposed in [15]. The authors in [15] developed the
Big Data analytics for smart cities. The authors have ana- physical implementation of a large-scale IoT infrastructure
lyzed temperature, traffic, season, and working days to in a Santander city. The experimental facility is designed to
define a network with many interacting parts, which behave be so user-friendly so that the experimenter can test the
according to individual rules. Smart city architecture from a facility in different urban environments and smart city plan-
data perspective is proposed in [13]. The architecture con- ning. A variety of new mechanisms were developed follow-
sists of six layers covering multiple aspects of a smart city. ing the Santander city requirements. These mechanisms
Moreover, three-tier pyramidal architecture is proposed in include mobility support, security and surveillance systems,
[14] to facilitate transactions among heterogeneous devices large-scale support, scalability, and heterogeneity in a smart
across a wireless ubiquitous platform. However, most of the city environment. The test bed results show that the proposed
proposed architecture types focus on specific area of interest architecture covers several challenges in the current litera-
such as lighting, traffic congestion, and water management. ture. However, the data collected from various sensors is not
Thus, the claim is valid that there is a necessity of realistic tested for future urban planning and designing. Therefore, the
smart city architecture competent enough to make real-time architecture can guarantee better services in one environment
intelligent decisions to uplift the quality of urban IoT services. but may show poor performance in another environment.
Figure 1 presents the overview of a conventional smart city Similarly, the demands of the user in an IoT-based smart
that consists of smart community, smart transportation, environment rapidly change. Hence, it decreases the chances
smart grid, smart water management, and so forth. of understanding the context and dynamicity of the IoT-
In this paper, Big Data analytics are integrated with the based smart user. On the other hand, the IoT is not yet
smart city architecture to propose a realistic and feasible matured to deploy it as generic standard for designing smart
framework for the deployment of smart cities. The pro- services such as smart homes and smart cities because
posed architecture is capable of real-time intelligent decision- of the following two major reasons: (1) the current IoT-
making, autonomous data collecting, and user-centric energy based solutions are limited to specific application domain
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 3

Smart water management system

Smart electricity system

Smart community
Smart decision and
control system

GSM/WIFI/3G/4G

Smart waste
management system Smart natural gas system

Smart transportation Smart car

system parking system

Smart meter

Acoustic sensor

Figure 1: Typical smart city architecture.

and (2) new technologies and optimization techniques are different parts such as data collection unit (IoT broker) and
good in one area but may be not in another. For example, IoT agent (a repository to store data), a Big Data processing
wireless sensor networks (WSN) suffered high packet loss module, and a city model communication server providing
in a heterogeneous wireless environment. In addition, the the communication facilities with an external object. The data
deployment of IoT for one particular purpose such as waste from different applications is collected and is passed to the
management, air quality, noise pollution, and so forth does city model server. The city model server processes the data
not reflect a standard solution [16–18]. Similarly, wireless local and passes it to the IoT broker. The IoT broker separates
area network can provide low-cost services but it provides a the data based on the sensors’ IDs and assigns an index
narrow coverage compared to other technologies. Therefore, number to the data. Finally, the IoT broker sends data to IoT
the researchers have come up with several solutions which agent for further processing. The proposed scheme achieves a
ultimately lead to a generic communication model covering higher throughput in processing of the data. Similarly, various
a wide set of services [19–22]. Moreover, a generic commu- other projects are developed based on Big Data analytics such
nication model can be achieved by integrating the WSN with as SCOPE [24] and FIRWARE [25]. These projects help in
the existing infrastructure and, thus, helps in achieving a real various aspects and provide different mechanisms to deal
IoT environment with multifaceted architecture [23]. with Big Data in the real-time environment. However, they
In order to design efficient and generic smart city archi- are not openly available to the researchers and engineers for
tecture, the Big Data that is obtained from the existing smart use in different environments.
city should be carefully examined and analyzed. The process The wireless-based technologies such as wireless sensor
of collection of data can be done by placing sensors in various network, wireless LAN, 3G/4G, and LTE play a vital role
locations in a smart home or smart city environment. Offline in providing always best-connected services in the smart
processing of Big Data can help in designing and planning city environment [26]. These technologies are employed in
of the urban city environment. However, it does not help various fields and sectors of the smart city such as health care,
in performing real-time decisions. Various techniques based transportation, schools, universities, and marketing. More-
on Hadoop ecosystem are developed to analyze the data for over, these technologies enable a real-time communication
better usage and designing of the services for a smart city. For with the smart cities devices. Thus, the data generated by the
example, architecture called City Data and Analytics Platform smart city sensors can be efficiently processed to take real-
(CiDAP) has been proposed in [8]. The authors developed time decisions. However, real-time decisions require fast and
layered architecture of data processing between the data efficient data processing tools. For example, Hadoop presents
sources and applications. The entire architecture consists of a solution to process the big amount of data in possible time.
4 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

Table 1: The amount of data collected in one year. Figure 2. Both layering and workflow are presented in a
top-down manner starting from data generation and acqui-
Collection frequency 1/day 1/hour 1/30 min 1/15 min sition level to data management and processing level to
Records collected 365 m 8.75 b 17.52 b 35.04 b application level. The proposed city architecture encompasses
Terabytes collected 1.82 tb 730 tb 1460 tb 2920 tb smart community development department, smart traffic
m: million, b: billion, and tb: terabyte. control department, smart weather forecast department, and
smart hospital and health department. The aforementioned
components are liable for the collection of heterogeneous
In addition, employing any existing tool to process Big Data data within the city suburbs, thus acting as the bottom
depends on three properties of Big Data, that is, velocity, level of the proposed framework. These components are fur-
variety, and volume. However, processing a huge amount of ther connected with the smart decision and control system
data in the minimum possible time and performing real-time via heterogeneous access technologies such as GSM, Wi-Fi,
decision are a challenging task. Therefore, the recent research 3G, and 4G. The autonomous decision-making uplifts the
presents several models to process the data in the offline form. reliability as well as the practicability of the proposed scheme.
Thus, the outcomes can be used for management of urban Upon receiving the collected data, intelligent decisions are
planning. In order to elaborate the idea of urban planning carried out by the smart decision and control system, situated
based on Big Data analytics, we present a few example in the middle level of the smart city framework. Moreover,
scenarios. The energy consumption recorded by smart meters the middle level regulates the events conforming to the made
in a time span of one year is shown in Table 1 [27]. The decisions. The event generation is taken place at the top level
information clearly illustrates the exponential growth of data (application level), upon the reception of autonomous deci-
generation. The amount of data collected was calculated sions.
assuming 5 kilobytes per record [27]. The utmost goal of this study was to exploit realistic smart
The table shows that the amount of data collected by 1 city architecture to enhance the data processing efficacy to
million meters per 15 mins in one year is equal to 2920 TB. enable real-time decision-making. In this paper, we proposed
Thus, this high amount of data cannot be processed at once. smart city architecture that incorporates Big Data analytics.
Therefore, sophisticated tools and techniques are required In fact, there are previous studies, which integrated Big Data
to process the data and come up with proper planning and analytics into the smart city architecture. However, the pro-
management. Similarly, processing the parking data from posed scheme is not a conventional Big Data embedded smart
various parking garages in a smart city can help in designing city as it performs explicit data filtration using Kalman filter
smart parking systems. The vehicular data from various roads (KF) prior to the Big Data processing. Data filtration is per-
of a city can be used to design a smart transportation system. formed to further expedite the data processing. The KF
Moreover, this data can be used in the development of roads applies threshold based filtration to distinguish between valu-
and bridges in various places in the smart city. Similarly, able and noisy data. Thus, it reduces the load that requires fur-
several examples of using Big Data analytics in planning ther processing. Similarly, we occupied a Hadoop two nodes’
and developing of smart cities services are presented in cluster for the Big Data processing. As shown in the Results
recent literature [17, 28]. However, real-time decision-making and Data Analysis, the unification of data filtration and sys-
and processing on such a large amount of data are still a tem architecture has enhanced the throughput of the smart
challenging job. In addition, an efficient smart city can be city, while reducing the processing time. Thus, the proposed
built by considering the following two points: (1) generic scheme was able to fulfill the demand for smart city architec-
communication model and (2) real-time Big Data analytics. ture capable of processing data and making decision in real
The above literature reveals some important challenges time.
that need to be addressed, for example, designing a generic
communication model, real-time Big Data analytics, and 3.2. Data Generation and Acquisition Level. A realistic smart
acquisition of data from sensors in a smart city. Therefore, city not only includes a prodigious amount of data but
in this paper, we identify the need for an efficient and generic also includes complex and comprehensive computation and
communication model for future smart cities based on Big multiple application domains. The realization of the smart
Data analytics and integration of WSN. city implementation relies on all forms of data and com-
putation due to their indispensability [13]. The smart city
3. Proposed Scheme notion aims to optimize residential resources, to reduce
traffic congestion, to provide efficient healthcare services,
The proposed smart city architecture comprises three levels: and to perform the water management. The acquisition of
(1) data generation and acquisition level, (2) data manage- data associated with the daily operational activities become
ment and processing level, and (3) application level. A brief vital in terms of achieving the preceding aims. However,
overview of the proposed smart city architecture is provided the data acquisition has become tedious and challenging
in the next subsection followed by detailed description of due to the massive amount of data created by people and
three levels of the proposed framework. other connected devices. For the sake of further processing,
the phenomena of interest from the real world are sensed
3.1. Overview. The layering architecture and working flow and identified. Consequently, conversion into digital data
of the proposed smart city architecture are illustrated in employs various mechanisms. Low-cost and energy efficient
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 5

Data generation and

acquisition level

Data sources

Vehicular Weather and forecast

Smart home system E-health services
transportation system

Data Data Data Data

Communication technologies
ZigBee Bluetooth Wi-Fi Data and cellular networks

Data management
and processing level

Data fusion Data analysis Data processing Data storing

Kalman filter

Noise removal MapReduce

Filtered Useful
big data data

HBASE
Map Reduce
Real-time
HDFS
lookups

Distributed
Event management storage

Events Intelligent
Services Resources Decision management
Classify decisions
events events Generate
events decisions

Application level

Unicast
Identify departments
decisions
Generate smart city
Departments
service events

Service
Smart Smart Smart hospital events
Smart traffic
community weather and health
control dept.
development forecast dept. dept. Notify

Data flow
Level entry
Level exit

End user

Figure 2: Working of the proposed architecture.

6 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

sensors have become a promising mechanism to acquire data analysis, while manipulation and storing are performed
heterogeneous data from the urban IoT. The city becomes by Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS), HBASE, and
smarter, along with the expansion of the number of con- HIVE.
nected devices [15]. Hence, the realization of the proposed The fusion techniques enhance the data processing effi-
smart city architecture begins with the extensive deployment ciency by applying data filtration. Kalman filter (KF) is used
of heterogeneous sensors within the city suburbs. These to perform data filtration in the proposed framework [29].
sensors are liable for the collection of real-time data from the The KF is an optimal estimator, which removes noise from
neighboring environment. The deployed context determines the sensed data [30, 31]. The working mechanism of KF in
the type of collected data, that is, smart home, vehicular different steps for sensor data filtration is shown as follows.
transportation system, healthcare management system, and
meteorology system. Working of KF for Sensor Data Filtration
The bottom layer of the proposed scheme consists of
(1) Initialization
multiple components. The key concern of the smart home is
to enhance the energy utilization of the residential buildings. 𝑇𝑘 : state transition model (applied to the previ-
The home appliances are equipped with a sensor, which ous state 𝑓𝑘−1 )
determines the real-time energy consumption and moves 𝑂𝑘 : observation model
to the middle layer afterward. The data processing layer
defines a threshold value for particular household’s energy 𝑄𝑘 : covariance of the process noise
consumption. A data filtration process is performed by the 𝑅𝑘 : covariance of the observation noise
fusion techniques to determine the values exceeding the 𝐶𝑘 : control input model (applied to the control
threshold and thus optimizes further processing. Conse- vector V𝑘 )
quently, the decisions made at the middle level send to the 𝑤𝑘 ∼ N(0, 𝑄𝑘 )
smart community development in application level, which
notifies energy consumption of a particular household to (2) Computing the new state 𝑓𝑘 using the previous state
the respective residents. Meanwhile, it empowers the energy 𝑓𝑘−1
usage customization of residential buildings. The prime
objective of the vehicular transportation system is to reduce 𝑓𝑘 = 𝑇𝑘 𝑓𝑘−1 + 𝐶𝑘 V𝑘 + 𝑤𝑘
(1)
the city traffic congestion. The data processing level defines ℎ𝑘 = 𝑂𝑘 𝑓𝑘 + 𝑢𝑘 𝑢𝑘 ∼ N (0, 𝑅𝑘 )
the mean time that is taken to travel between two stated
points. The sensors implanted on the roadsides collect vehicle
(3) Current state estimation from the previous state
entrance and departure between two points. The embed-
ded fusion techniques determine the roads with congestion Predicted state
by analyzing the current travel time of stated locations,
̂
𝑓 ̂
𝑘|𝑘−1 = 𝑇𝑘 𝑓𝑘−1|𝑘−1 + 𝐶𝑘 V𝑘
which exceeds the defined mean time. Thence, vehicular (2)
transportation system autonomously generates alternative
paths and notifies the travelers via the application level. The Predicted covariance
utmost goal of the meteorology department is to ascertain
the weather conditions and other environmental parameters. 𝐺𝑘|𝑘−1 = 𝑇𝑘 𝐺𝑘−1|𝑘−1 𝑇𝑘𝑇 + 𝑄𝑘 (3)
For example, the sensors implanted in certain locations
determine the carbon monoxide (CO) concentration of the (4) Combining current prediction with the current
city. These sensors convey the acquired data to the middle observation
level for filtering and processing accordingly to facilitate Current observation
decision-making and event generation.
The proposed city architecture occupies multiple com- 𝑥 ̂
̃ 𝑘 = ℎ𝑘 − 𝑂𝑘 𝑓 (4)
𝑘|𝑘−1
munication technologies; ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and data
and cellular networks to transmit sensed data to the data Observation covariance
management and processing level.
𝑆𝑘 = 𝑂𝑘 𝐺𝑘|𝑘−1 𝑂𝑘𝑇 + 𝑅𝑘 (5)
3.3. Data Management and Processing Level. The data man-
agement and processing level acts as the mediator between Optimal gain
the data acquisition and application levels. Since the crucial
processes such as filtering valuable data, analyzing, pro- 𝐾𝑘 = 𝐺𝑘|𝑘−1 𝑂𝑘𝑇 𝑆𝑘−1 (6)
cessing, storing, decision-making, and generating events are
Update state (prediction and observation)
carried out in this layer, this layer is considered as the
brain of the proposed framework. In order to perform the ̂ =𝑓
𝑓 ̂ ̃𝑘
𝑘|𝑘 𝑘|𝑘−1 + 𝐾𝑘 𝑥 (7)
aforementioned tasks, multiple modalities are embedded into
this layer. Initially, the enormous amount of sensed data is (5) Update covariance (prediction and observation)
filtered by fusion mechanisms to obtain valuable real-time
and offline data. The MapReduce paradigm is used for the 𝐺𝑘|𝑘 = (𝐼 − 𝐾𝑘 𝑂𝑘 ) 𝐺𝑘|𝑘−1 (8)
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 7

It initially assumes the current state 𝑓𝑘 is evolved from the the boundary for end users. The autonomous decisions from
previous state 𝑓𝑘−1 . The current state observation is denoted the data processing level are unicasted to the specific depart-
̂
by ℎ𝑘 . 𝑓 𝑘|𝑘−1 represents the estimation of 𝑓 at time 𝑘, while
mental service, that is, smart community development
the estimation accuracy is denoted by 𝐺𝑘|𝑘−1 . It deduces department, smart traffic control department, smart weather
valuable data from a large set of indirect and uncertain data. forecast department, and smart hospital and healthcare
Since the KF works recursively, it processes data on arrival. department. The intelligent decisions of the data processing
Thus, it assures the real-time operation of the smart city. level describe the decision according to a shared vocabulary
Moreover, it facilitates immediate processing with a minimal (ontology). The ontology is used to unicast the events
memory consumption. As KF removes noise from data, the throughout the application level. The respective departments
data processing level utilizes its capability to infer the best distinguish the high-level events and the low-level events.
estimate from a larger set of real-time data. Thereupon, the The high-level events are stored at the departmental level and
KF is manipulated to determine valuable data correspond- are forwarded in unicast to the recipients, whereas the low-
ing to the predefined threshold values. For example, the level events are not moved further. Sequentially, the corre-
roadside sensors of the streets and roads generate a massive sponding service event layer’s component receives the unicast
amount of city traffic data. Nevertheless, further processing event from the departmental events. For example, the service
of uncongested street data is a superfluous task. Thence, the events, smart home and waste management, are readily avail-
KF determines best fitting sensed data in accordance with the able to receive the departmental events from the smart com-
predefined thresholds. Ultimately, it reduces the amount of munity development department. Similarly, the service
futile data resulting in a swift analysis. events are further categorized into subservice events, that is,
The proposed scheme stores and processes data in water management and energy management under the smart
Hadoop framework. Thus, MapReduce has been selected as home services events. The subservices events layer generates
the mechanism for analyzing filtered data. MapReduce works the respective event and transmits to the embedded notifica-
in two steps. First is the mapping process where the set tion component. Finally, the notification component deter-
of filtered data is converted into another set of data. Next mines the specific recipient with respect to generated event.
is the Reduce process which combines the data created in Accordingly, it notifies the user with the generated event for
mapping process and results in a set of values that are reduced the event execution.
in amount. Data storing and processing play a major role Assume the sensors implanted on a particular city
in the realization of a smart city. As shown in Figure 2, observe a street congestion. The congestion level is analyzed
the proposed framework utilizes multiple techniques, that is, at the data processing level. Subsequently, the data processing
HDFS, HBASE, HIVE, and so forth, to facilitate the above level generates the appropriate intelligent decision. At the
requirements. The storage demand of the proposed smart same time, the decision is communicated to the application
city is facilitated by HDFS, which is the primary storage of level. The ontology determines the respective departmental
Hadoop. Since the storage of HDFS is distributed, it augments event according to the decision message, that is, street con-
the MapReduce execution on smaller subsets of larger data gestion. Accordingly, the event is unicasted to the smart traffic
cluster. In addition, HDFS assists the scalability demand of control department at the application level. The departmental
the Big Data processing. In order to favor the autonomous level determines service event component as traffic conges-
decision-making, the real-time read/write facility over the tion. Sequentially, the generated event is forwarded to the
complete cluster is essential. Hence, HBASE is used to subservice level of alternative paths. Finally, the alternative
enhance the processing speed on Hadoop as it offers real-time path event is notified to the respective recipient via the
lookups, in-memory caching, and server side programming. notification component of the application level. Moreover,
Further, it enhances the usability and the fault tolerance. the paths are notified to the potential travelers, who may enter
HIVE provides querying and managing facility over the large the congested street. The smart traffic control department
amount of data that resides on the Hadoop cluster. Since SQL determines the fact by the GPS destination check and the
cannot be used to query on HIVE, we have used HiveQL current positioning of the vehicle.
to query the data on Hadoop cluster. Finally, the derived
intelligent decisions are transferred to the application level of 4. Results and Data Analysis
the smart city framework.
The designing of a smart city free from existing issues entirely
3.4. Application Level. Application level resides on top of the depends on the processing and analysis of the previous data
proposed framework. Thus, it is liable for the generation of that is obtained from various sources, that is, transportation,
actions corresponding to the conveyed autonomous intelli- community department, health care, and so forth. We obtain
gent decision. The application level is the mediator between such data from various authentic sources as is given in
data management level and the end user. Figure 3 presents “Working of KF for Sensor Data Filtration” part. Initially, the
the extended layering structure of the application level data is fuzzy and consists of raw data entries. Therefore, on top
that is proposed for performance improvement of service of Hadoop system, we filter the data through KF according
generation. The application level is subdivided into three to our requirements that result in significant optimization of
layers, that is, departmental layer, services layer, and sub- the processing time and performance efficiency of Hadoop.
services layer. Department layer is the boundary at the data Moreover, the filtration process helps in processing the real-
management and processing level. Subservices layer acts as time data with less amount of time.
8 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing
Notification
events

Determine and notify recipient

Subservices
events

Energy Waste Accidents Road ··· Hazardous Temperature, · · · Vaccinations ···

management · · · recycling · · · location tracking · · · congestion gases ··· humidity ··· Hospitals
Services
events

Smart waste Smart accidents Smart traffic Smart pollution Smart weather Smart healthcare Smart diseases · · ·
Smart home ··· ··· ···
management control management system system system control
Departmental

Smart
events

community Smart traffic Smart weather Smart hospital

development control dept. forecast dept. and health dept.
dept.

Data processing level

Figure 3: Event generation and processing at application level.

Table 2: Datasets information. Hadoop cluster on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS having Core I5 pro-
Sources Dataset Size
cessor and 8 GB RAM. The rationale behind this analysis is
to determine normal threshold values for the actual imple-
Surrey city, Canada [32] Water consumption 4 MB
mentation as well as to evaluate the performance of the
Aarhus city, Denmark [33] Traffic data 3.04 GB proposed scheme in terms of processing time and data
Aarhus city, Denmark [34] Pollution data 77.25 MB throughput. Moreover, various thresholds are defined on the
Aarhus city, Denmark [33] Parking lots 0.20 MB output from Hadoop system. The threshold is specific to the
dataset size used for the analysis. The threshold values are
shown in Table 3.
4.1. Dataset Information. The datasets are obtained from vari- Whenever the amount of data in a particular time exceeds
ous authentic and reliable sources. These datasets include the normal threshold, an event is generated to the respective
the following: (1) the energy and water consumption data of department. In order to validate the proposed event gener-
smart homes of survey, Canada, is obtained from the meter ation system, the time taken to process the data, generate an
readings of around 61263 houses [32] and (2) the transport- event, and send it to the respective user (𝑇𝛼 ) via the respective
ation and vehicular data used in the proposed analysis is department is shown in Table 3. The experiment reveals that
obtained from number of vehicles on various roads in Aarhus as the dataset size increases the time required to process
city, Spain [33]. The datasets used for the analysis are openly it significantly increases. However, in the case of real-time
available and authenticated. Water consumption data are processing the data is always available in streaming form and,
covered by Open Government License of City of Surrey, therefore, the size of the data does not affect the system. But it
Canada. Traffic data, parking lot data, and pollution data are is essential to make a system that directly processes the data
semantically annotated datasets for the CityPulse EU FP7 with high speed. Therefore, the proposed filtering helps in
project and the data is licensed under Creative Commons minimizing the processing time of the Hadoop system.
Attribution 4.0 International License. The dataset contains The proposed system efficiently processes the data and
very useful information, for example, the number of vehicles generates various events such as traffic intensity warnings
and their average speed between two points on a road. (3) when the number of vehicles increases on a particular
The parking lot dataset contain the information of various road compared to the normal threshold. Figure 4 illustrates
parking lots of Aarhus city, Denmark. The dataset is generated number of vehicles between two defined locations for a
from various parking garages from May 2014 to Nov 2014 period. The threshold value obtained from the analysis is used
and (4) the pollution dataset consists of the information of to determine valuable data and generate events accordingly.
various toxic gases such as ozone, carbon, sulfur and nitrogen The threshold value was eight vehicles between two defined
dioxide, and so forth [34]. The dataset consists of the detail of locations on a certain path. We set the normal threshold to 8
some other hazardous materials but we filter out the entries of vehicles on a specific portion of the road. The proposed sys-
those materials for performing real-time decisions. Informa- tem generates the warning events in real time and sends them
tion corresponding to each dataset is mentioned in Table 2. to the respective department. The department then broadcast
the message to the vehicles headed towards that particular
4.2. Results, Analysis, and Event Generations. The data col- road. A smart parking lot system helps the citizens to get
lected from various sources is analyzed with two-node the information of empty parking lots in the surrounding
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 9

Table 3: Threshold and event generation time analysis.

Dataset Size Threshold 𝑇𝛼

Water consumption 4 MB 80 cubic liters 11.23 s
Traffic data 3.04 GB 8 vehicles 212.88 s
Pollution data 77.25 MB 80% 16.97 s
Parking lots 0.20 MB <10/parking garage 3.67 s

16 1000
900
14
800

Empty parking lots

Number of vehicles

12 700
10 600
500
8 400
6 300
200
4 100
2 0

1
17
33
49
65
81
97
113
129
145
161
177
193
209
225
241
257
273
289
305
321
337
353
369
385
401
417
433
449
465
481
497
0
1
6
11
16
21
26
31
36
41
46
51
56
61
66
71
76
81
86
91
96
101
106
111
116
121
126
131
136

Time (mins)
Time (min) Bruun Kalkvaerksvej
Number of vehicles Busgadehuset Salling
Normal threshold
Figure 5: Empty parking lots in various places in Aarhus, Denmark.
Figure 4: A number of vehicles at different roads in Aarhus,
Denmark.

140000
120000
area. The parking dataset is carefully analyzed and the empty
parking lots information is sent to the respective department. 100000
Water usage

The department maintains a database of empty parking lots. 80000

The citizens can check the database before parking the vehicle 60000
in the surrounding parking lots. Thus, it helps the citizens
40000
to find an empty parking lot without physical checking of
the entire parking garage. Moreover, the entry for a parking 20000
lot is deleted when a citizen occupies it. Figure 5 shows 0
1
7
13
19
25
31
37
43
49
55
61
67
73
79
85
91
97
103
109
115
121
127
133
139
145
151
157
163
169
175
181
187
193
various empty parking lots during a different time of the day.
Initially, the Bruun city has more parking lots during daytime. Number of houses
However, the parking lots are rapidly filled with the passage Water usage
of time. The parking lots also depend on the population and Normal threshold
number of vehicles in a city. Thus, using the data obtain from
different parking lots can be used to fulfill the parking lots Figure 6: Water usage at different houses of Surrey, Canada.
requirements of the city. The shopping malls, departmental
stores, and offices parking lot’s data can be analyzed for better
management to serve the customers with the information
related to the empty parking lots. Moreover, a citizen can to control the water consumption. The warning event is
reserve a parking lot prior to reaching the destination. generated when the water consumption exceeds 80000 liters.
The excessive water usage can become a critical problem Moreover, new water generations methods can be developed
in near future. Therefore, we analyzed the water usage to come to fulfill the requirements of the citizens.
up with an appropriate solution for water management. The As the number of factories and vehicles is increasing,
dataset contains the water consumption information of Sur- the waste production and pollution rise dramatically. Thus,
rey, Canada. Figure 6 shows that each house consumed more controlling waste management and pollution is becoming a
than 80000 to 90000 liters of water each month. The normal critical issue. In order to design a solution to handle these
threshold for household water consumption was obtained consequences, we analyzed the pollution data of Aarhus city
from the data analysis performed on the water consumption at the various times of day. As shown in Figure 7, the quantity
dataset. This amount of water consumption is very high and of the Ozone (O3 ) is particularly high at the different times
therefore in future it can become a serious problem. However, of the day. The decision system generates various events to
the proposed decision mechanism generates various events to the weather and forecast and health department to circulate a
the water management department to take necessary actions message among citizens to take great care while visiting the
10 Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

160 25
140

Throughput (Mbps)
20
Amount of pollution

120
100 15
80 10
60
5
40
20 0
500 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 5500 6000
0
Data size (MB)
1
11
21
31
41
51
61
71
81
91
101
111
121
131
141
151
161
171
181
191
Time (min) Hadoop two-node cluster with filtration
Single node Hadoop
Ozone Sulfur dioxide Java query based
Carbon monoxide Nitrogen dioxide
Figure 9: Efficiency of the system in context of throughput.
Figure 7: Amount of pollution at different time of day in Aarhus,
Denmark.

the usage of various services such as electricity and water

4.00E + 05 consumption, traffic intensity on a road.
3.50E + 05
Processing time (ms)

3.00E + 05
2.50E + 05 5. Conclusion and Future Work
2.00E + 05
1.50E + 05 The extensive expansion of IoT has encouraged the urban
1.00E + 05 networks to be smarter, coining the notion of “smart cities.”
5.00E + 04 However, the realization of the smart city is still emerging,
0.00E + 00
75 150 300 600 1200 2000 3500 5500 since the transformation of the conventional city opera-
Data size (MB) tions requires novelty, networking, and processing ability of
voluminous data. Therefore, the researchers and industrial
Hadoop two-node cluster with filtration experts are keen on shaping baseline architecture for a
Single node Hadoop
Java query based
realistic smart city. In this paper, we proposed architecture of
a smart city based on Big Data analytics. The key concern of
Figure 8: Processing time analysis. this study is to ensure intelligent decision management and
control center, which mediates the data acquisition sources
and applications. Based on testing various types of datasets,
we showed how Big Data can be used for future smart cities
polluted areas. Moreover, the environment control depart- development and planning based on the existing data from
ment can take necessary actions against those firms which are various sources. However, our system is designed for specific
generating high pollution. Thus, using the pollution data can goals and does not reflect a solution in general to every
help in the future planning of the smart city as well. system present in a smart city. Moreover, a scalability option
The processing time of the proposed system is compared is provided in order to extend the current work in future.
with the single node Hadoop and Java query system. The As is already mentioned this work targets specific issues
filtration of data and removing irrelevant entries from the of a smart city to facilitate a more advanced environment for
data significantly reduce the processing time. As shown in testing data in real time as well as offline. The data fusion
Figure 8, as the dataset size increases, the single node Hadoop functionality is used to reduce processing of Hadoop ecosys-
and Java query based systems required high processing time. tem on irrelevant and inappropriate data. Multiple technolo-
Thus, implanting such systems in the real-time data proc- gies are used on top of the Hadoop storage to facilitate
essing environment affects the proposed decision and event analysis and decision-making processes. Finally, real-world
generations schemes. Moreover, the efficiency of the pro- dataset of Surrey (Canada) and Aarhus (Denmark) cities are
posed system in the context of throughput is measured as analyzed to derive the threshold values. In this study, we
shown in Figure 9. Initially, the single Hadoop node and Java conceptually proposed the threefold smart city architecture
query based system process the data with similar speed. But, for real-time decision-making. In future endeavors, we plan
with the increase in dataset size, the speed of processing is to carry out a simulated experiment to confirm the accuracy
highly decreased. However, the proposed scheme efficiency is and efficiency of the proposed framework. Moreover, we plan
significantly high compared to the single node Hadoop and to evaluate the generalizability of the proposed model, in
Java query based system. order to standardize this smart city architecture.
The analysis also shows that a city can be made smarter
by analyzing data obtained from various departments. More- Competing Interests
over, the living style of the citizens can be improved and the
comfort level can be increased by informing the citizens with The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 11

Acknowledgments challenges,” China Communications, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 56–69,

2014.
This study was supported by the BK21 Plus project (SW [14] S. V. Nandury and B. A. Begum, “Smart WSN-based ubiquitous
Human Resource Development Program for Supporting architecture for smart cities,” in Proceedings of the International
Smart Life) funded by the Ministry of Education, School of Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and
Computer Science and Engineering of Kyungpook National Informatics (ICACCI ’15), pp. 2366–2373, Kochi, India, August
University, Korea (21A20131600005). This research was sup- 2015.
ported by Basic Science Research Program through the [15] L. Sanchez, L. Muñoz, J. A. Galache et al., “SmartSantander: IoT
National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the experimentation over a smart city testbed,” Computer Networks,
Ministry of Education (2016R1D1A1B03933566). vol. 61, pp. 217–238, 2014.
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