Framework and Methodology for Establishing Port-City Policies Based on Real-Time Composite Indicators and IoT: A Practical Use-Case

• Main Authors: Ignacio Lacalle, Andreu Belsa, Rafael Vaño, Carlos E. Palau
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-07-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: Smart Port-Cities; composite indicator; real-time; Internet of Things; traffic congestion; framework and methodology
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/15/4131

During the past few decades, the combination of flourishing maritime commerce and urban population increases has made port-cities face several challenges. Smart Port-Cities of the future will take advantage of the newest IoT technologies to tackle those challenges in a joint fashion from both the city and port side. A specific matter of interest in this work is how to obtain reliable, measurable indicators to establish port-city policies for mutual benefit. This paper proposes an IoT-based software framework, accompanied with a methodology for defining, calculating, and predicting composite indicators that represent real-world phenomena in the context of a Smart Port-City. This paper envisions, develops, and deploys the framework on a real use-case as a practice experiment. The experiment consists of deploying a composite index for monitoring traffic congestion at the port-city interface in Thessaloniki (Greece). Results were aligned with the expectations, validated through nine scenarios, concluding with delivery of a useful tool for interested actors at Smart Port-Cities to work over and build policies upon.