Technical Papers

  • CityHub: A cloud based IoT platform for Smart Cities

    Abstract: Cloud based Smart City hubs are an attractive approach to addressing some of the complex issues faced when deploying PaaS infrastructure for Smart Cities. In this paper we introduce the general notion of IoT hubs and then discusses our work to generalize our IoT hub as a Smart City PaaS. Two key issues are identified, support for hybrid public/private cloud and interoperability. We briefly describe our approach to these issues and discuss our experiences deploying two cloud-based Smart City hubs, one in the UK and the other in Canada

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  • IoT Interoperability: A Hub-based Approach

    Abstract: Interoperability in the Internet of Things is critical for emerging services and applications. In this paper we advocate the use of IoT ‘hubs’ to aggregate things using web protocols, and suggest a staged approach to interoperability. In the context of a UK government funded project involving 8 IoT projects to address cross-domain IoT interoperability, we introduce the HyperCat IoT catalogue specification. We then describe the tools and techniques we developed to adapt an existing data portal and IoT platform to this specification, and provide an IoT hub focused on the highways industry called ‘Smart Streets’. Based on our experience developing this large scale IoT hub, we outline lessons learned which we hope will contribute to ongoing efforts to create an interoperable global IoT ecosystem.

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  • Smart Cities: An IoT centric approach

    Abstract: A number of recent Smart City testbeds and deployments have focused on the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm and technologies for improving the efficiency of city infrastructures. Building on this work, we have explored the use of IoT hubs as easy-to-use aggregators and focal points for access to emerging data infrastructures of smart cities. A hub can support not only access to infrastructure data, but also participatory sensing and crowd sourced data where city employees and citizens contribute directly to the data infrastructure of a city. In this way, smart cities can realize a variety of new applications created by local entrepreneurs and community groups without the need for ongoing coordination by governments. In this paper, we outline the growing interest in a hub-centric approach to the IoT and discuss our own experiences in building an IoT hub for two Smart City projects, one in the UK and the other in Canada.

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