SmartSantander: Internet of Things research and innovation through citizen participation

Abstract

The Smart City concept relates to improving efficiency of city services and facilitating a more sustainable development of cities. However, it is important to highlight that, in order to effectively progress towards such smart urban environments, the people living in these cities must be tightly engaged in this endeavour. This paper presents two novel services that have been implemented in order to bring the Smart City closer to the citizen. The Participatory Sensing service we are proposing exploits the advanced features of smartphones to make the user part of the ubiquitous sensing infrastructure over which the Smart City concept is built. The Augmented Reality service is connected to the smart city platform in order to create an advanced visualization tool where the plethora of available information is presented to citizens embedded in their natural surroundings. A brief description of the smart city platform on top of which these services are built is also presented.