Crowd-Powered Sensing and Actuation in Smart Cities: Current Issues and Future Directions

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current state of crowd-powered sensing and actuation in smart cities, discussing key concepts, applications, challenges, and future research directions to enhance urban living through citizen and device participation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive literature review of CPSC, clarifies core concepts, identifies research challenges, and suggests future directions for leveraging crowds in smart city initiatives.

Findings

Identifies key characteristics and applications of CPSC

Highlights current research challenges and limitations

Suggests future research opportunities in CPSC

Abstract

With the advent of seamless connection of human, machine, and smart things, there is an emerging trend to leverage the power of crowds (e.g., citizens, mobile devices, and smart things) to monitor what is happening in a city, understand how the city is evolving, and further take actions to enable better quality of life, which is referred to as Crowd-Powered Smart City (CPSC). In this article, we provide a literature review for CPSC and identify future research opportunities. Specifically, we first define the concepts with typical CPSC applications. Then, we present the main characteristics of CPSC and further highlight the research issues. In the end, we point out existing limitations which can inform and guide future research directions.