This is a Call-for-Participation for the W3C Workshop on Smart Cities.

The workshop is free, although you will need to email a brief proposal. Please see the information for speakers for detail.

Background

"Smart Cities" refers to a range of technologies and processes for intelligent management of our built and inhabited environment. As interest rises, we see prospects for smarter and easier integration of various technologies from multiple vendors related to IoT devices and Web services.

Several use cases on Smart Cities have been discussed within the Web of Thing (WoT) IG as part of the WoT standardization based on the proposal during the Second WoT Workshop in Munich. However, Smart Cities include various technologies, of which WoT is just one. We would therefore like to create a dedicated W3C Interest Group:

  • to identify and document use cases and requirements that W3C specifications need to meet to support Smart City services,
  • to obtain feedback from all stakeholders on the usage of Web technologies for Smart Cities,
  • to gather expert input on important features for Smart Cities based on Web technology, and
  • to provide a forum for technical and business discussions related to Smart Cities.

We've generated an initial draft Charter for the potential Smart Cities Interest Group. We would like to collect even more use cases along with concrete system implementation experiences from all over the world, since uses may depend on cities' locations, cultures, etc., and include various sub-systems from many different vendors. Therefore we'd like to hold a dedicated W3C workshop on the possible standardization for Smart Cities.

As cities include diverse populations including people with disabilities, we need to account for accessibility as well as security, privacy protection and multi-language support and security for Smart Cities.

Goals

The Web has become a platform for various industries and services including payments and commerce, publishing, media distribution, video conferencing and connected cars, and it's becoming a promising platform for IoT interoperability, as mentioned in the Web of Things Press Release in April 2020. Also there is an expectation for the Web of Things standards to be applied to integration of huge numbers of sub-systems for Smart City services. We've been generating a draft Charter for a potential Smart Cities Interest Group to (1) introduce the W3C as a place to have discussions on interoperability for Smart City services and (2) document use cases and requirements that W3C specifications need to meet to support Smart City services.

Now we would like to improve and finalize the description of the draft IG Charter. In this W3C Workshop, we aim to see what can be done with existing Web standards, and what is still missing from the web that would help people to implement Smart Cities.

The goals of the workshop are:

  • Identify stakeholders of Smart Cities standardization to drive the development of Web standards aligned with the real needs of Smart Cities
  • Clarify reasonable applications for Smart Cities technologies we agree to build
  • and then see how to improve the draft Charter for the potential Smart Cities Interest Group for further discussions within that IG

As Smart Cities' applications are tightly related to the people who live in cities, and potentially would have negative impacts on their lives, it is very important to begin from inclusive design, including accessibility, privacy and security as well as internationalization.

Topics

Possible topics for the workshop may include:

  • Summary of the current status of Smart Cities:
    • What we already have
    • What kind of standards are typically used in Smart City scenarios
    • Common issues on the interoperability among products from multiple vendors
    • Missing features with the existing mechanisms
  • Needs for Web-based Smart Cities of the stakeholders including the users, the developers and the governments:
    • Smarter and easier integration
    • Improving/extending existing services
    • Applying advanced technologies like robotics, speech processing, AI, etc., to the Smart Cities use cases
    • Necessary metadata to handle information on humans, devices, location, environment, etc.
  • Cross-cutting issues for integration of multiple sub-systems:
    • accessibility, internationalization, security and privacy
    • Trustworthiness of data and data governance
    • Discovery of resources
    • Semantics and syntax definition by taxonomy and ontology
    • Semantic interoperability of the data described in different data formats/models
    • High-speed network environments for realtime interaction

Examples of possible use cases

The possible use cases for Smart Cities should include integration of many devices and sub-systems developed by different vendors, and also should be considered from various stakeholders' viewpoints.

Some use case examples from users' viewpoints are listed below:

  • Support for the whole population
    • Inclusive design to enable full participation of people with disabilities
    • Support for multi-language and multi-modality
    • Security and privacy protection throughout the life
    • Disaster preparedness and emergency response
    • Life monitoring and protection
  • Transportation and connected cars
    • Autonomous vehicles with accessible operator influences
    • Accessible ride hailing services
    • Traffic management
  • Education
    • E-learning and educational institutions
    • Accessible virtual classrooms
    • Lifelong learning
  • Healthcare
    • Infection prevention
    • Remote surgery
    • Everyday medical checkup
  • Information infrastructure
    • Universal broadband to help close the digital divide
    • 5G mobile networks

Who should attend?

Various stakeholders of Smart Cities including:

  • Users from various countries and communities
  • Government agencies
  • Service providers
  • System implementers
  • Web browser vendors
  • Retail sellers
  • Transport businesses
  • Accessibility experts
  • Legal and civil society experts
  • Other SDOs working on IoT and Smart Cities

How can I attend?

The attendance is free for all invited participants and is open to the public, whether or not W3C members.

Please register for the event before June 18, 2021 to be notified of the videos availability, of the forum set up to facilitate discussion among registered participants, and of the 25 June 2021 live sessions logistics. The Program Committee will only accept participants whose registration data shows relevant to the topic of the workshop.

This workshop, as other W3C meetings, operates under its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

How can I suggest a presentation topic?

To submit a talk for the workshop, please refer to our information for speakers.

Program Committee

You can send emails to the workshop Program Committee at: group-smartcity-ws-pc.

Chair

  • Daihei Shiohama, Media Do
  • Carl Ward, Amazon

Committee

  • Michael McCool, Intel
  • Sebastian Kaebisch, Siemens
  • Carl Ward, Amazon
  • Daihei Shiohama, Media Do
  • Tomoaki Mizushima, Internet Research Institute
  • Yun Li, Tencent
  • Andrea Cimmino, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
  • Cristiano Aguzzi, University of Bologna
  • Linda van den Brink, Geonovum
  • Takuji Kiura, W3C Agriculture CG Chair
  • Farshid Tavakolizadeh, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
  • Philip Tran, Singapore Government Technology Agency
  • Kaz Ashimura, W3C

Sponsors

TBD

What is W3C?

W3C is a voluntary standards consortium that convenes companies and communities to help structure productive discussions around existing and emerging technologies, and offers a Royalty-Free patent framework for Web Recommendations. We focus primarily on client-side (browser) technologies, and also have a mature history of vocabulary (or “ontology”) development. W3C develops work based on the priorities of our members and our community.