Smartphone-based Architecture for Smart Cities

Urban areas now account for more than half of the world's population, with the United Nations (UN) forecasting that by 2050 this number is expected to rise up to 70 percent as a result of urban growth and migration from rural areas. Increasing population density in urban environments demands adequate provision of services and infrastructure, In addition to other major challenges including air pollution, traffic congestion, health concerns, energy and waste management. Smart cities promise to leverage advances in information and communication technology to improve the quality of life for their residents in a number of ways. There are numerous applications for smart cities but the costs associated with some of the sensors used are limiting the growth of smart city technologies. Today smartphones include powerful sensors which can be accessed through customizable applications. This paper present an architecture for using sensory data generated by smartphones in order to improve the public transportation systems. The architecture provide transit officials a real time view of user demand for their systems, accounting capabilities for each bus stop, and unparalleled planning capability for additional bus routes.