Key technologies and applications for smart cities in China

With the advent and the rapid development of the next generation of the Internet, Internet of things, cloud computing, big data analysis and other information technology, IBM proposed the slogan of constructing "smart city" in 2008. When more and more serious urban diseases occur such as population expansion, resource shortage, serious environmental pollution, traffic congestion and increasing public safety hazards, etc.) it will lead to a helpless feeling for everyone while smart city ideas which are based on the new generation of information technology may bring new urban life expectation for the governments and people. It is with this expectation of the city's sustainable and healthy development that the smart city ideas eventually are accepted by the governments and the people. The smart city construction booms in the world. Smart city is a large-scale joint system consisting of multiple intelligent systems from different industries. It can facilitate enterprises, government departments, financial institutions, telecommunication providers, and public sector organizations to provide better services to residents. Simply speaking, smart city is the integration of the latest information technology such as Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and big data technologies, as well as various network platforms. In this chapter, we first introduce the concepts and characteristics of smart city, and then elaborate that constructing smart cities in China is a major strategy in economic and developmental transformation, and an important step towards an innovation-oriented country. Next, the chapter describes with full details the sub-systems and key technologies of the integrated smart city system.