The advantages of IoT and cloud applied to smart cities: ClouT user scenarios and reference architecture

The European Commission and the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) have made a big effort to promote collaboration between the IoT and Cloud communities and define a common baseline for future research. ClouT (Cloud+IoT) project is co-funded as part of the first FP7 EU-Japan cooperation call and gives life to a fruitful collaboration between six European and seven Japanese organizations. The overarching objective is to provide enhanced solutions for smarter cities by using cloud computing to overcome some of the current challenges and limitations in the IoT domain. Through the combination of IoT and cloud computing, smart cities will be able to build new and enhanced services by using the large amounts of data stored in the cloud and by processing it in quasi-real time. This paper describes ClouT Reference Architecture which was outlined by leveraging on existing works performed by established IoT and cloud Research Communities both in Europe and Japan. ClouT Reference Architecture establishes a common ground of objects, definitions and rules mapping the IoT and cloud advantages into a unique context.