A smart city represents an improvement of today’s cities both functionally and structurally, that strategically utilizes many smart factors, such as information and communications technology (ICT), to increase the city’s sustainable growth and strengthen city functions, while ensuring citizens’ quality of life and health. Cities can be viewed as a microcosm of “objects” with which citizens interact daily: street furniture, public buildings, transportation, monuments, public lighting and much more. Moreover, a continuous monitoring of a city’s status occurs through sensors and processors applied within the real-world infrastructure.

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept imagines all these objects being “smart”, connected to the Internet, and able to communicate with each other and with the external environment, interacting and sharing data and information. Each object in the IoT can be both the collector and distributor of information regarding mobility, energy consumption, air pollution as well as potentially offering cultural and tourist information. As a consequence, cyber and real worlds are strongly linked in a smart city. New services can be deployed when needed and evaluation mechanisms will be set up to assess the health and success of a smart city.