Foreword

The continuing dispersal of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is opening new opportunities, and the foremost amazing application is the smart city concept, which is endlessly progressing in many dimensions. Generally, a smart city can be defined as integrating IoT and other Information Communication Technologies (ICT) into city management, controlling, or monitoring to address the exponential rise in urbanization and population, therefore significantly improving people’s living standards. The smart city model is also strictly associated with the aspects of sustainability. But with the evolution of the Internet of Everything (IoE), which provides connectivity not only among things, but also among people, data, and processes, smart cities will become smarter. The IoE enhances connectivity and intelligence to about every entity in the system, including things, data, processes, and people, giving it special functions. This integration will have a vivid impact on every aspect, from city management to planning, controlling, and health.

Intelligent Systems for IoE-based Smart cities are emerging as a primary need for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) across the world. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have played an important role in the progress and automation of city operations and in supporting the development of CPS in cities. Extensive use of intelligent decision-making and data-driven modelling under uncertainty are establishing the basis for advancements in public services, safety, connectivity, transportation, and health services. The examples include improved public transportation systems, advanced traffic solutions, energy modelling, smart emergency response and autonomous driving, being some of the applications that have benefited from the methodologies of principled decision-making.

This book focuses on the characteristics, requirements, issues, challenges, and development of intelligent systems for smart cities based on IoE. The allied topics, including data science and open-source data sets for IoE-based smart cities, decision-making for IoE-based smart cities, design of intelligent systems for IoE smart cities, and challenges in deployment, equity and fairness in IoE smart cities, and security and privacy in AI for smart cities are being addressed in this book. Since the smart infrastructure paradigm is now shifting from IoT to IoE, this book will certainly be appealing to readers. The fusion of three main technologies, including intelligent systems, smart cities, and IoE, has been presented in this book, which is a relatively unique approach.