Urban computing

Urban computing is an interdisciplinary field which pertains to the study and application of computing technology in urban areas. This involves the application of wireless networks, sensors, computational power, and data to improve the quality of densely populated areas. Urban computing is the technological framework for smart cities.[1][2]

The term "urban computing" was first introduced by Eric Paulos at the 2004 UbiComp conference[3] and in his paper The Familiar Stranger[4] co-authored with Elizabeth Goodman. Although closely tied to the field of urban informatics, Marcus Foth differentiates the two in his preface to Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics by saying that urban computing, urban technology, and urban infrastructure focus more on technological dimensions whereas urban informatics focuses on the social and human implications of technology in cities.[5]

Within the domain of computer science, urban computing draws from the domains of wireless and sensor networks, information science, and human-computer interaction. Urban computing uses many of the paradigms introduced by ubiquitous computing in that collections of devices are used to gather data about the urban environment to help improve the quality of life for people affected by cities. What further differentiates urban computing from traditional remote sensing networks is the variety of devices, inputs, and human interaction involved. In traditional sensor networks, devices are often purposefully built and specifically deployed for monitoring certain phenomenon such as temperature, noise, and light.[6] As an interdisciplinary field, urban computing also has practitioners and applications in fields including civil engineering, anthropology, public history, health care, urban planning, and energy, among others.[7]

  1. ^ Bouroche, Mélanie; Dusparic, Ivana (2020). "Urban Computing: The Technological Framework for Smart Cities". Handbook of Smart Cities. Springer International Publishing. pp. 1–25. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-15145-4_5-1. ISBN 978-3-030-15145-4. S2CID 219809513.
  2. ^ Kamilaris, Andreas; Pitsillides, Andreas; Prenafeta-Bold, Francesc X.; Ali, Muhammad Intizar (May 2017). "A Web of Things based eco-system for urban computing - towards smarter cities". 2017 24th International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT). pp. 1–7. doi:10.1109/ICT.2017.7998277. ISBN 978-1-5386-0643-8. S2CID 19278271.
  3. ^ Paulos, Eric; Anderson, Ken; Townsend, Anthony (September 7, 2004). UbiComp in the Urban Frontier (workshop). Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. Nottingham, England.
  4. ^ Paulos, Eric; Goodman, Elizabeth (2004). The familiar stranger: anxiety, comfort, and play in public places. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. pp. 223–230. doi:10.1145/985692.985721. ISBN 1-58113-702-8.
  5. ^ Foth, Marcus (2009). Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics: The Practice and Promise of the Real-Time City. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. ISBN 978-1-60566-152-0. OCLC 227572898.
  6. ^ Akyildiz, I.F.; Su, W.; Sankarasubramaniam, Y.; Cayirci, E. (2002). "Wireless sensor networks: a survey". Computer Networks. 38 (4): 393–422 [395]. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.320.5948. doi:10.1016/S1389-1286(01)00302-4. S2CID 1230643.
  7. ^ Kukka, Hannu; Ylipulli, Johanna; Luusua, Anna; Dey, Anind K. (2014). Urban computing in theory and practice. Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational (NordiCHI '14). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. pp. 658–667. doi:10.1145/2639189.2639250. ISBN 978-1-4503-2542-4.