ICT and Digital Technology based Solutions for Smart City Challenges and Opportunities

Purpose: Today's Smart Cities are rapidly evolving with the help of the latest tools and technologies and also due to large investment and priority focus by various countries across the globe. Smart Cities while growing also consider the environmental aspects such as producing lower carbon footprint, lower harmful gas emissions, and lower consumption of power. Abiding by this new paradigm, various Smart Cities started focusing on continuous improvement and innovation in their different services. Many Smart Cities have their own pain points such as traffic congestion, water scarcity, energy deficiency, waste management, poor participation of citizens in city administration, maintenance of complex IT Infrastructure, and so on. Such kind of issues may differ in scale and type but mostly common across geographies. While developing, operating, and maintaining Smart Cities, it is necessary to identify the most pressing and urgent issues that Smart City solutions must tackle on priority. In such cases, high-end technologies and tools can help to focus and eliminate the problems. In this paper, we analysed key challenges faced by Smart Cities during the development, operation, and maintenance related activities of various Smart Services and how these challenges and issues are effectively addressed by some of the key technologies with special attention to ICT and digital technologies. We have also reviewed some selected research papers devoted to Smart Cities challenges ad issues and how these issues are addressed using the latest tools and technologies. Finally, we have also specified the future plans about the discussed technical solutions to undertake its full-fledged implementation and addressing of its some of the limitations. Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper is based on the primary data collected while preparing research papers written by us on Smart Cities and a systematic literature review of existing literature including journal research papers, book chapters, dedicated websites, and white papers. Findings/Result: Smart Cities various operational and development challenges are effectively get addressed using various ICT and digital technologies. Some of the key technologies that played an important role in addressing some of the key concerns of Smart Cities include IoT, AI and ML, Blockchain, Data Analytics, Digital Twin, 5G, and Cloud Computing. Originality/Value: The Information presented in this paper is genuine and original and based on own research, data collected from industry professionals, systematic literature review of existing relevant research papers, and relevant data analysis and findings. Most of the information presented in this paper is derived from our own research papers written on Smart City services and solutions. Paper Type: Technology oriented Research