Systems engineering approach to design and modeling of smart cities

Abstract

Cities shape our social-economic and environmental aspects of life, they are the engines of economic development and attractive places for people seeking employment and better quality of life. However, observed rapid urban population growth challenges cities and sustainable urban development. Among observed major challenges can be named resources scarcity, environmental degradation, security, quality of service, effective resources management and traffic congestion. Despite the effort deployed with conventional urban design, the proposed solutions were unable to significantly respond to existing challenges. Over the past few years, the ‘smart city’ concept has emerged as a new trend to answer challenging issues related to urban development. The concept of the smart city has been gaining popularity and cities have developed a strong interest in transforming into smart cities. 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. Often, observed approaches of transformation tend to present disconnected and fragmented city systems that usually hamper the interaction of city subsystems. Many studies have covered the design and modelling of smart cities, but their focus has been mostly thematic and lacked a systematic and integrative view of a smart city system. This thesis emphasizes the systematic view of a city system and proposes a novel method of a smart city system integration. It presents a methodology helped by a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Systems Modelling Language (SysML) to develop a model of an integrated smart city system whereby the model was developed and simulated using a system engineering approach. The model brings all subsystems to operate together in one system and focuses on the information perspective of a city system. The core objective is to provide a viable solution to the prevailing integration issue observed in the process of transformation of contemporary city systems into smart city systems. Three scenarios are presented (system’s capacity testing, system’s information coverage and information delivery in real time) to illustrate how an integrated information platform can be a gateway and easy access to information in a smart city system, as well as a starting point towards modelling an integrated smart city system. The developed model was further validated, through a case study, this thesis introduces a novel vehicle smart routing system based on the integration approach which maximises the benefits ii of completeness of information. The focus is directed to smart mobility and smart environment, two subsystems of a smart city system to deal with pollution in the urban environment. In a smart city environment, travellers are proposed routes which would rather minimize the footprint of their travel on the environment. To achieve this, the proposed system presents an option of a route that has higher capacity to remove air pollution to travellers seeking a route. This practice not only displays an integrated smart city system but also highlights the possibility to travel with less impact on the environment helped by green infrastructure. The results showed 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. The case study presented showed that the proposed technique eliminated air pollutant by up to 1.28%, this is equivalent to 209.19 g year−1per trip of CO and 2405.64 g year−1per trip of NO2. These results show that not only an integrated system allows to take informed decisions, but also is beneficial and a necessity. The emphasis of completeness of information through system integration can be a powerful tool to deal with prevailing challenges being faced by contemporary cities.