Infrastructure analysis and iot framework development for smart city in nepal

Abstract

In search of employment and improved lifestyles people move to cities. Due to this type of shift it becomes difficult to provide services to the citizens and hence the cities need to become efficient to maintain the services to the surging population. Sooner or later the concept of smart city will become norm for the cities and start using Internet of Things (IoT) devices which contains the sensors to receive the data and these sensors are connected to the microcontrollers to collect, transmit and analyze the data. The collected data are then used to enhance the existing infrastructure and provide efficient public services and many more. IoT framework developed in this study is generic and this study is concentrated taking water supply management into consideration. Automating the process of doing things in IoT systems begins with the management of fundamental needs like air, water and electricity. Used and leakage amount of water can be monitored and controlled remotely using an application of an IoT system. Injecting IoT in water supply management helps in online meter reading, online monitoring of water usage and leakage condition of a single house and then of municipalities and eventually of a country. IoT system installed in houses consists of an embedded system that contains microcontroller, sensors and coding in the microcontroller. The IoT system also uses the mathematical model that has been developed empirically to compute the usage and leakage of water of a country. The developed framework can be applied to other sectors as well. The infrastructure analysis has been carried out followed by the observation and interview taken with key people of Nepal Government. Altogether 23 interviews as a part of qualitative research were conducted to find out the answer to know where the problem is to establish efficient smart city. The result of the interview depicted that, lack of political initiation and commitment is the major problem, the second problem has been seen as low computer literacy, similarly lack of Public Private Partnership (PPPs) in establishing e-Government system, reluctance in technological usage and advancement are the major hindrances to develop smart city. Knowledge regarding Internet of Things (IoT), low awareness of about e-Government system is found to be other barriers to develop the smart city. This research has focused on water supply sector to realize the developed IoT framework. Keywords: IoT; Future internet; Smart city; WSN; Embedded devices.