Cyber‐Physical Vulnerabilities of Wireless Sensor Networks in Smart Cities

The advancement of smart city infrastructure depends heavily on the deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to monitor environmental conditions, traffic, healthcare systems, and public safety in real time. However, the limited energy resources of sensor nodes pose a critical challenge to network longevity, data reliability, and service continuity. This research presents the design and evaluation of an adaptive energy-efficient routing protocol that dynamically integrates residual energy levels, spatial topology awareness, and traffic load adaptability into routing and cluster-head selection processes. Using simulation-based experiments, the proposed protocol was compared with benchmark schemes including LEACH, TEEN, and SEP under varying traffic and deployment conditions. Results reveal that the proposed approach significantly delays first-node-death, increases overall network stability, and sustains higher Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR)s across different traffic loads, while simultaneously improving throughput and reducing end-to-end delay. Statistical analysis confirms that these improvements are systematic and not incidental, validating the hypothesis that energy-efficient routing in WSNs requires a holistic and adaptive design. The findings emphasize the potential of such protocols in enabling cost-effective, reliable, and scalable WSN deployments for smart cities. Practical recommendations derived from this research highlight the importance of incorporating adaptive cluster-head selection, multipath routing, and traffic-awareness into network design, while encouraging pilot projects and integration with renewable energy and edge computing to further optimize performance. Collectively, the study provides a pathway for transforming WSNs into robust, energy-aware communication backbones that underpin sustainable urban intelligence systems.

The deployment of wireless sensor networks in smart cities for environmental monitoring is a complex issue. One of the main problems is to determine the most appropriate places for these tasks. This paper proposes the use of information from crowdsourcing to identify places of interest from the environmental point of view to deploy the sensor network.

The concept of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has garnered significant global attention due to their wide range of applications. According to the IEEE 802.11 standard, WSNs are wireless networks consisting of sensor nodes (SNs) that interconnect via wireless communication links. These SNs are capable of sensing, processing, and wirelessly transmitting data, even in challenging environments. WSNs are primarily utilized for communication in various domains, including smart cities, healthcare, residential areas, and military applications. However, the deployment of WSNs in environments such as smart cities come with some challenges, particularly traffic congestion. Traffic congestion in smart cities, particularly during peak hours, is often caused by a high volume of vehicles traveling at the same time, resulting in delays, accidents, and inefficiencies under various weather conditions, including sunny and rainy days. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel algorithm called the Fusion-based Intelligent Congestion Management (FICM) algorithm, developed through the integration of the Navigation Reference Spatial Data (NRSD) algorithm and Fusion-based Multimodal Abnormal Detection (FMAD) algorithm. The objective of FICM is to mitigate on-road traffic congestion within smart cities effectively. The algorithm’s performance was evaluated using Network Simulator 3 (NS-3) by comparing its effectiveness with the NRSD and FMAD algorithms. Under sunny weather conditions, the NS-3 simulation results revealed that the FICM algorithm achieved an average False Alarm Rate (FAR) of 0.83%, a Mean Time to Detection (MTTD) of 76.0%, and a Detection Rate (DR) of 84.3%, outperforming both the NRSD and FMAD algorithms. Similarly, under rainy weather conditions, the FICM algorithm demonstrated an average FAR of 14.09%, an MTTD of 57.03%, and a DR of 78.04%, surpassing the performance of the NRSD and FMAD algorithms within the smart city environment.

An exploration of smart city approaches by international ICT firms

This paper contributes to building a systematic view of the mobility characteristics of smart cities by reviewing the lessons learned from the best practices implemented around the world. The main features of smart cities, such as smart homes, smart infrastructure, smart operations, smart services, smart utilities, smart energy, smart governance, smart lifestyle, smart business, and smart mobility in North America, Asia, and Europe are briefly reviewed. The study predominantly focuses on smart mobility features and their implications in newly built smart cities. As a case study, the modern city of Lusail located in the north of Doha, Qatar is considered. The provision of car park management and guidance, real-time traffic signal control, traffic information system, active-modes arrangement in promenade and busy urban avenues, LRT, buses, taxis, and water taxis information system, and multimodal journey planning facilities in the Lusail smart city is discussed in this study. Consequently, the implications of smart mobility features on adopting Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) will be studied. The study demonstrates that the implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) when supported by Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), could result in making the most efficient use of existing transportation infrastructure and consequently improve the safety and security, mobility, and the environment in urban areas. The findings of this study could be considered an initial step in the implementation of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) in cities with advanced public transportation such as Doha, the capital of Qatar. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2022-08-10-09 Full Text: PDF

The paper explores the impact of organizational culture on the effects that the implementation of information and communication technology has on decentralization of organization. The starting assumption is that the implementation of information and communication technology does not have a predetermined and unique impact on centralization or decentralization of organization, but this impact rather depends on the context in which the implementation is performed. Organizational culture has a considerable influence on thinking and behavior of employees and managers since it shapes their interpretive schemes through assumptions, values, and norms that it contains. Therefore, organizational culture must be considered as one of the possible elements of the context on which the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on structure decentralization depends. Starting with Handy's classification of organizational culture types, hypotheses on different impacts that ICT might have on decentralization in each of the culture types are generated. The conclusion is the following: ICT implementation in people culture will lead to a high decentralization, ICT implementation in task culture will lead to a moderate decentralization, ICT implementation in power culture will lead to a moderate centralization, and ICT implementation in role culture will lead to a high centralization.

The digital age has brought about a completely different way of providing library services resulting in the development of new services. This study assessed the challenges of effective implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in polytechnics and colleges of education libraries in Delta State. Descriptive survey research design was used for this study; data was collected by means of a questionnaire from thirty-nine (39) librarians of six (6) academic libraries in polytechnics and colleges of education in Delta State. The study revealed that the academic libraries under review is face with the following challenges in implementing ICT policy, thus, unreliable power supply, inadequate funding, shortage of manpower, lack of information and computer literacy skill among librarians. The study concluded that information and computer literacy skills are vital for the proper implementation of ICT in libraries for better information service delivery and therefore recommended that library administrators should introduce and organize different ICT training programmers for librarians at regular interval and federal government should provide adequate funding for ICT implementation.

The device-to-device (D2D) communication paradigm in 5G networks provides an effective infrastructure to enable different smart city applications such as public safety. In future smart cities, dense deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be integrated with 5G networks using D2D communication. D2D communication enables direct communication between nearby user equipments (UEs) using cellular or ad hoc links, thereby improving the spectrum utilization, system throughput, and energy efficiency of the network. In this paper, we propose a hierarchal D2D communication architecture where a centralized software-defined network (SDN) controller communicates with the cloud head to reduce the number of requested long-term evolution (LTE) communication links, thereby improving energy consumption. The concept of local and central controller enables our architecture to work in case of infrastructure damage and hotspot traffic situation. The architecture helps to maintain the communication between disaster victims and first responders by installing multi-hop routing path with the support of the SDN controller. In addition, we highlight the robustness and potential of our architecture by presenting a public safety scenario, where a part of the network is offline due to extraordinary events such as disaster or terrorist attacks.

While there is extensive research on emotion in the workplace and on information and communication technology (ICT) implementation, largely ignored is the emotionality of ICT implementation and change management more generally, even though the emotional experience of such processes is critical to their success. The current paper integrates insights from research on emotion at work and the social construction of technology to demonstrate the role of emotion in ICT‐based organisational change through a case study of a not‐for‐profit organisation’s implementation of a Webbased case management system. In particular, it is argued that emotions and new ICT systems are experienced as ambiguous phenomena, which makes people susceptible to influence through interaction. Furthermore, such interaction to negotiate meanings for the emotional experience of ICT implementation is critical to its success.

Multi-objective energy-efficient dense deployment in Wireless Sensor Networks using a hybrid problem-specific MOEA/D

How can smart city shape a happier life? The mechanism for developing a Happiness Driven Smart City

A smart city is a city that uses information and communication technologies (ICT), smart sensors, actuators and video cameras to better support and optimize the delivery of urban services and to address challenges within city communities. A smart city collects and analyzes data from smart IoT sensors (IoT devices/nodes) and video cameras. The data collected by the sensor nodes can be used to develop applications and systems that benefit the city and the community. Smart city industry is projected to be a $400 billion market by 2021, with 600 cities around the globe expected to generate 60% of the world's GDP by 2025, according to McKinsey research. Many cities have adopted at least one smart city project. However, the majority of cities around the globe are not yet smart cities. The key hurdle is securing the huge fund needed to start a smart city project, and ensuring that there are sufficient resources to sustain the project over time. Because implementing new smart city infrastructure is a large and complex financial undertaking that poses a financial hurdle, specifically, for most of the under-developed countries, a viable and cost-effective strategy is needed to tackle this problem and conquer the digital divide. Building upon and leveraging existing infrastructure is the key to address this problem. This minimizes the cost of technology upgrades and allows for an easier integration process. In addition, leveraging existing infrastructure can give cities a better and quicker return on investment. The main objective of this work is to devise an innovative research and development initiative, which builds upon and leverages ongoing global deployment of smart city and outdoor lighting infrastructures trend, to explore the potential and assess the feasibility of gradually transitioning existing Egypt’s cities infrastructure into truly IoT-enabled smart cities. Specifically, we propose and develop an innovative cost-effective, future-proof, scalable and modular end-to-end device-to-cloud connected outdoor Lighting network infrastructure solution that is based on P2P 4G LTE cellular technology to provide the direct connectivity between lighting poles (IoT devices) and the cloud. The proposed intelligent Lighting solution includes three key building blocks:1) light pole-mounted smart control nodes; 2) cloud-based smart city software solution (NetServ) to remotely monitor, manage, and control the entire lighting infrastructure; and 3) P2P 4G LTE cellular network. In the proposed architecture, smart streetlights serve as the framework for a high- bandwidth, low-latency wireless sensor network, capable of transporting large amounts of data in real-time, while concurrently supporting deployment of a wide range of smart city services.

A smart city has changed the city landscape with the assistance of ICT, and sensor-enabled internet of things (IoT) devices. The development of a ubiquitous connected source environment is to be complicated and global to improve service performance delivery, cost-effectiveness, and using all capabilities of technology resources. For gaining those benefits in the smart city, it is necessary to design a capable ICT architecture. The ICT architecture in the smart city must provide the facility to organize all technology resources, the produced data, network communication orchestration, and services in the large scale of smart cities. In today’s smart cities, three main different ICT architecture proposals are available, Centralized, Decentralized-to-Centralized, and Distributed-to-Centralized. Centralized ICT architectures are designed based on Cloud technologies. The Decentralized-to-Centralized and Distributed-to-Centralized ICT architectures are using the multiple facilities from the joined benefits of edge to Cloud technologies orchestration. In this paper, we first describe these three ICT architectures in smart cities. Besides, we present our proposed Decentralized-to-Centralized and Distributed-to-Centralized ICT architectures in smart cities. Second, we show how our ICT architecture can be beneficial for Large-Scale ICT management through different use case studies. Finally, we describe the advantages of our ICT architecture and discuss challenges.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) introduced in the second half of the last century have shaped substantially the mode of peoples’ interaction, business process, entertainment and learning. ICT are encouraging globalization, exchange of information and the proliferation of cyber space. The benefits of using these technologies are immense and they are here to stay. Today, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) acquisition and implementation are facing a lot of problems. Considering the enormous benefits that are experienced in the impact of ICT in Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), NSCDC still experience some obstacles or hindrances in the effective and efficient use of the ICT resources in combating crime. This includes the problem of insufficient data, due to lack of strategic use of ICT as resources tools in combating crime. Secondly, inadequate government funding of the NSCDC leading to lack of relevant materials and equipment needed in cyber threat combating. Additionally, the lacks of competent ICT personnel or technical team engaged in such critical and sensitive operations seem to be another threat to the security or crime combat mission. This research has been conducted to expose some of the inhibiting factors, and to ascertain the impact of ICT on national security with special focus on the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC’s) case. A hypothetic deductive methodology (quantitative approach) involving survey design, distribution, collation and computational analysis using, frequency distribution and percentage method, and Chi-Square; Discriminant Analyses using statistical packages such as SPSS. The results of such analysis would be discussed and interpreted in relation to the key issue of the research. The results of the analysis of the responses from the field work conducted reveal that the NSCDC do have the required ICT tools in combating crime, and that information gatherings do help the Corps in the actualization of their technological goals. The outcome of the research suggests from all indications, that using Nigeria Security Civil Defence Corp, FCT Command, Abuja as a study, ICT has tremendous impacts on security and fight against cybercrime. ICT has roles in the security of any nation. Impacts can be direct, through growth of the ICT sector and ICT-using industries, and indirect through multiplier effects.

Using wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in delay and reliability critical environments is highly desired due to their unique advantages such as low cost, ease of deployment, and redundancy. However, successful deployment of resource-limited WSNs in such applications requires strict quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning techniques to meet the desired latency and reliability targets of those applications. Implementation of QoS techniques in WSNs is significantly challenging since WSNs have been initially devised for low-data-rate non-real-time applications. Therefore, WSN designers and developers resort to different cross-layer interaction and optimization techniques to provision QoS in WSNs. In this paper, we present a survey on the state of the art of cross-layer QoS approaches in wireless terrestrial sensor networks to achieve delay and reliability bounds in critical applications. Our paper provides a unique classification of cross-layer QoS approaches in WSNs that allows surveying a large amount of studies with utmost clarity. Furthermore, we highlight the main challenges of implementing QoS protocols in WSNs and present an overview of QoS-aware WSN applications.