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Technological innovations endorsed the transition towards
smart city deployments. Harnessing the advancements in
scientific fields such as big data, Internet-of-things (IoT), and
cloud technologies (BIC), can assist cities become secure,
economically efficient, and sustainable infrastructures, while
addressing most of the arising urbanization challenges.
Apart
from the aforementioned, contactless technology (CT)
has recently received great adoption due to its practical and
secure way for completing transactions [
6
–
8
]. Recently, the
COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for CT in smart
cities. CT has been in use for almost a decade in applica-
tions involving smart gadgets and embedded chip-based
tools used for contactless payments, identity verification,
attendance monitoring, etc. In early 2000, magnetic strip-
based payments were used in banking systems, and later on,
CT payment methods were introduced through which users
could make payments at dedicated embedded devices. Over
the past few months and given the COVID-19 outburst, a
massive digital transformation has occurred, forcing com-
panies to adapt to the new circumstances.
In more details,
almost 68% of enterprises have turned to digital technolo-
gies to retain their customer base, service provisioning and
with minimum impact on the enterprise operation. Notably,
during the pandemic global crisis, technology-driven smart
applications including IoT devices (e.g., smartphones, com-
puters, smart watches, and sensors) improved the security
and safety of citizens while keeping them socially isolated
from the outside world to disrupt the virus spread per the
government safety regulations.
A field study from the World Health Organization (WHO)
and the United Nations predicts that there will be a 40–75%
increase in technology-driven startups by 2030, which will
be addressing the socio-environmental challenges around
the world. Smart cities can furnish technological innova-
tions improving the sustainability and living quality of urban
environments. Different information and communication
technologies (ICT) technologies
assisting this digitization
thrust along with their functional capabilities and resource
requirements in different sectors are illustrated in Fig.
1
.
Consumer engagement, business objectives, and applica-
tion interfaces motivated the shift towards CTs which can
positively influence smart ecosystems, making them envi-
ronmentally friendlier (e.g., by reducing the use of paper
for documents, plastic for cards, etc.). Different use cases
and application-specific fields encountered within smart city
deployments (e.g., mobility, energy,
healthcare, etc.) can be
leveraged for the design, development, and evaluation of
contemporary technologies enabled by BIC. Smart cities
Fig. 1
Overview of the information and communication technologies (ICT) within smart cities assisted by big data, Internet-of-things (IoT), and
cloud (BIC) infrastructure
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equipped with CT gateways can support high growth rates,
become more competitive, and attain bigger market capitals
when compared to business entities operating using outdated
tools. COVID-19 has demonstrated the effectiveness of CT
for different applications and paved the way for even some
rural areas which
tested BIC-enabled techniques, mainly in
industry-based applications, proving their cost-effectiveness.
Depending on the actual environment, where such CT are
are employed, for instance in construction, transportation,
business models, consumer engagement policies, etc., they
can furnish a plethora of additional features [
9
].
The key contribution of this paper is to showcase the
increasing number of CT applications within smart cities
that can be promoted by BIC. A field study as well as a
forecasted statistical analysis about BIC in their individual
domains are briefly presented in Sect. 2. Detailed case stud-
ies,
related literature, and the impact of ICT in smart cities
are discussed in Section "
Related Work
" to raise the readers’
awareness regarding the benefits of CT. The inter-relation-
ship between BIC and application-specific innovations for
CT are explained in Section "
Contactless Technology (CT)
”.
Different technologies and their actual/forecasted impact on
societal implications from the smart city’s perspective are
also explained. Cross-platform technologies, applications,
and technologies driving CT towards smart ecosystems in
smart cities are discussed in Section "
CT in Smart City
”.
The impact of big data in healthcare, national security, and
various surveillance schemes is detailed in Section “
Big
Data Biometric Analytics: A CT Paradigm
”. The importance
of IoT for autonomous vehicles (AV) is examined in Section
"
IoT in Autonomous Vehicles (AV)
”. Furthermore, given
that cloud-based infrastructures
are increasingly used in
many embedded applications, the relation between contact-
less payments and cloud-based requirements are explained in
Section “
Frictionless Payment Technology and Cloud Infra-
structure
”. A case study about the impact of BIC for smart
cities in India during COVID-19 is presented in Section
“
Contactless Payments with NFC
”. The security and safety
standards which should be mandated before the deployment
of CT in the smart city ecosystems are introduced in Sec-
tion “
A Case Study of Utilizing BIC Technologies During
COVID-19
”. Finally, Sections “
Discussion on the Implica-
tions of Utilizing BIC
”,
Conclusion
” delineate the implica-
tions of CT and conclude with directions for future work on
this topic.
