Home // International Journal On Advances in Intelligent Systems, volume 5, numbers 3 and 4, 2012 // View article

Towards the Live City – Paving the Way to Real-time Urbanism

Authors:
Bernd Resch
Alexander Zipf
Euro Beinat
Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis
Marc Boher

Keywords: live city, ubiquitous sensor networks, real-time city, urban services, real-time information services

Abstract:
In contrast to projections, which stated that the wide-spread distribution of high-speed Internet connections would render geographical distance irrelevant, cities have recently gained importance in academic research. Yet, real-time monitoring of urban processes is widely unexplored. We present the concept of a Live City, in which the city is regarded as an actuated near real-time control system creating a feedback loop between the citizens, environmental monitoring systems, the city management and ubiquitous information services. After clarifying the term ‘live’ – as opposed to common understanding of ‘real-time’ – we identify four main barriers towards the implementation of the Live City: methodological issues, technical/technological problems, lacking quantification of economic revenues, and finally privacy and legislative questions. In this paper, we discuss those challenges and point out potential future research pathways towards the realisation of a Live City – ranging from sensor network developments, real-time quality assurance and new user interface paradigms to world-wide legislation measures, a standardised urban operating system and the idea of a ‘tuned’ city.

Pages: 470 to 482

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2012. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2012

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2679