Information Integration in a Smart City System—A Case Study on Air Pollution Removal by Green Infrastructure through a Vehicle Smart Routing System

• DOI: 10.3390/su12125099
• Publication Date: 2020-06-23T13:05:33Z
• Authors: Jules Muvuna; Tuleen Boutaleb; Slobodan B. Micko...; Keith Baker; Ghoreyshi Seyed M...; Mario Cools; Wissal Selmi
• Keywords: Monitoring; Computer Networks and Communications; air pollution; 0211 other engineering and technologies; Energy Engineering and Power Technology; 02 engineering and technology; Environmental Science (miscellaneous); 7. Clean energy; 12. Responsible consumption; 11. Sustainability; Computer Science (miscellaneous); SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy; Renewable Energy; Planning and Development; Geography; Policy and Law; Sustainability and the Environment; Building and Construction; information integration; SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities; Management; smart city; Hardware and Architecture; 13. Climate action; vehicle smart routing

Over the past few years, the ‘‘smart city’’ concept has emerged as a new trend to answer challenging issues related to urban development. Transformation of a city system into a smart system is meant to improve the quality of life for its people and their way of living, its environment, economy, transport, and governance. Due to benefits associated with the concept of the smart city and associated implementation challenges, traditional city systems have been undergoing transformation into smart city systems. However, observed approaches of transformation presented disconnected and fragmented city systems that usually hamper the interaction of city subsystems with the efficient and environmentally friendly urban environment. This work emphasizes the systematic view of a city system and proposes a novel method of smart city system integration. The results of our study show that in a smart city environment, where ecosystem services are valorised, air pollution emitted by vehicles can be removed by taking into consideration information related to air pollution reduction. A case study is presented to demonstrate that, with an integrated system, information outputs on travel decisions are different and more valuable. The case study explores the operability of the system, its limitations, and potential future improvements.