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Call For Papers

Special Issue on Cloud and Fog Computing for Smart Cities Data Analytics and Visualisation in the Future Generation Computer Systems Journal

Information and Communication Technologies are becoming the prime enabler for smart and sustainable cities in recent years. This is mainly due to realising and making effective use of the ever-increasing data generated in urban environments. Sensors, smart phones, geo-tagged devices, RFIDs, smart gadgets and Internet of Things are major source of collecting ever increasing temporal and geo-coded land-use, built-environment, transport, energy, health, socio-economic and environmental Big Data. Often data is kept in different repositories and managed by different departments, which raise data access, harmonisation, processing and information visualisation challenges for generating new insights and knowledge.

Cloud and Fog/Edge are becoming enablers for managing cross-departmental temporal and geocoded Big Data, developing cross-thematic applications and providing necessary computation power to perform data analytics and present new knowledge to city stakeholders for awareness raising, city planning, policy development and decision making. High-performance visual processing techniques provide opportunity to intuitively present temporal and geo-coded information from neighbourhood scale to city or city-region scale and fosters innovation, co-creation and co-designing sustainable future cities.  

In the above context, the real value of smart city big data is gained by applying data mining, machine learning or new statistical methods for data analytics, visualisation and decision making. This becomes challenging when applied to large scale or real time data and hence requires appropriate tools and techniques to be applied using Cloud and Fog/Edge computing. These applications also require dealing with privacy and data security issues to avoid sharing intrusive details of citizens or other stakeholders. 

Important Dates:

·      Submission deadline: 1 March 2018

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include use of cloud and fog computing in smart cities but are not limited to:

- Smart city data analytics

- Geo-processing and innovative visualisation techniques

- Spatial data techniques and tools for analytics

- City data quality, harmonisation, integration and processing

- Real-time city data processing and visualisation

- Predictive analytics, visualisation and simulation for future city models

- Visual computing and analytics for city applications

- Interactive data analysis and visualisation

- Smart city services and applications platforms

- Security and privacy solutions for smart city applications

- Crowd sourcing and establishing trust on data sources

- Internet of Things for cross-thematic city applications

- Methods and techniques for city data collection and curation

- Automated and intelligent city data processing methods

- Design patterns and computing models for smart city applications

- Open government data for automated processing and knowledge generation

- Decision support systems for smart cities

- Data provenance techniques for city applications, decision making and policy making

- Smart city applications: mobility, energy, public administration & governance, economy, health, security and environment.

Submission Guidelines:

This special issue is focused on cutting edge research from academia, industry and practitioners, with emphasis on original, novel, innovative and impact-oriented research providing insights into smart cities’ needs, processes, services and frameworks using Cloud and Fog/Edge computing. Authors are required to prepare their manuscripts in accordance with the Future Generation Computer Systems journal Guide for Authors. Please select "SI: CloudFogSmartCities" when selecting the article type name during submission process.

Only technical papers describing previously unpublished, original, state-of-the-art research, and not currently under review by a conference or a journal will be considered. This Special Issue will accept extended conference papers, but extended work must have a significant number of new and original contributions along with more than 70% brand "new" material.

Guest Editors:

1. Zaheer Khan, University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom

2. Eva Klien, Fraunhofer-Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD), Darmstadt, Germany

3. Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA and University of South Australia, Australia