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82 Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities Smart Cities 83

smart cities will require that the transportation profession reaches out to these
new partners ensuring that the transportation elements of the smart city are
seamlessly connected to other elements.

5.4 What Is a Smart City?

A search for a definitive definition of the smart city proved inconclusive. It is
early in the development and application of smart city technologies, so perhaps
convergence on a single definition will occur in the future. In the meantime, the
Emerging Technologies Forum of ITS America has decided to adopt a working
definition of a smart city to guide its work on the subject. That working defini-
tion is the following:

You know your city is smart if you poke with a stick and it reacts
appropriately.

Although light-hearted, this definition captures the overall essence of a
smart city at the highest level. It requires that a smart city can sense opportuni-
ties, threats, and changes within the city and the wider context. It also assumes
that a smart city has sufficient intelligence to be able to develop an appropriate
response. In a more detailed look at the definition of a smart city included in a
recent White House report [2], smart city infrastructure can be summarized as
shown in Figure 5.3.
Note that Figure 5.3’s definition of a smart city includes energy, smart
buildings, utilities, manufacturing, and agriculture as well as transportation.
It is important to note that a smart city involves the application of advanced
technologies to a wide range of services and that transportation represents a
subset of such services.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation [3], which naturally
takes a transportation-centric view of the smart city, the smart city consists of
several vision elements, as shown in Figure 5.4 and described in the following
sections.

Urban Automation
Urban automation includes driverless private vehicles, freight, logistics, and
transit vehicles. It could also cover the use of drones to make deliveries.
Connected Vehicles
The U.S. DOT envisions that connected vehicles (discussed in Chapter 4) will
be connected to other vehicles and to back-office infrastructure via the use of
DSRC.