SMART CITY: A PROTOTYPE FOR CARBON FOOTPRINT MOBILE APP

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Degree project in

SMART CITY:

A PROTOTYPE FOR CARBON FOOTPRINT MOBILE APP

Seyed Mohammad Fazeli

Stockholm, Sweden 2014

XR-EE-ICS 2014:007 ICS Master thesis

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Abstract.

Global warming has increased significantly over the past decades and at its center, there are human factors which have the greatest impacts on productions of carbon dioxide which is considered as a primary greenhouse gas in development of global warming. Greenhouse gas emissions and, in particular, carbon dioxide emissions are growing significantly to the extent that if no initiatives are taken, it can have dramatic consequences for our future generations and in general for human’s life on Earth, therefore we need means by which we can control and maintain the levels of greenhouse gas emissions and in particular carbon dioxide emissions.

One of the efficient solutions that can significantly decrease the levels of carbon dioxide emissions is the construction and development of smart cities. In this context (smart city), individuals can play an important role in reducing the CO2 emissions.

Byconsidering the new opportunities that can result from development of Smart Cities and the essential role of information and communication technology (ICT) in such cities, this thesis work tries to introduce the idea of a self-tracking Carbon Footprint mobile application which enables users to keep track of their individual’s carbon dioxide emissions occurred as a result of their daily activities such as eating, transportation, shopping, energy consumption, and etc. in real time.

Being able to measure the generated carbon footprint with respect to each of the user’s activities, users will be able to monitor and control it. This monitoring and controlling of one’s carbon footprint can have significant influences in reducing those human factors which result in production of more carbon dioxide gases and consequently more global warming effects.

Keywords. Smart Cities, Global Warming, Carbon Footprint, CO2,

Incentive Systems, Quantified Self, CO2 Tracking, Self-Tracking,

Telerik AppBuilder.

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Abstrakt.

Global uppvärmning har ökat betydligt under de senaste decennierna och som i en central roll finns mänskliga faktorer vilka har den största påverkan på framställning av koldioxid. Utsläppen av växthusgaser och i synnerhet utsläppen av koldioxid har ökat avsevärt och om inga åtgärder vidtas kan det få dramatiska konsekvenser för våra kommande generationer och i allmänhet för människors liv på jorden. Vi därför behöver medel genom vilka vi kan styra och kontrollera utsläppen av växthusgaser, särskilt utsläpp av koldioxid.

En lösning som avsevärt kan minska koldioxidutsläpp är utveckling och konstruktion av så kallad ’Smart Cities’. I detta sammanhang (smart city) spelar individen en viktig roll när det gäller att minska koldioxidutsläppen.

Med de nya möjligheter som kan uppstå till följd av utvecklingen av Smart Cities och den viktiga roll som informations- och kommunikationsteknik (IKT) i dessa städer har, försöker detta examensarbete introducera idén om en mobilapp som mäter användarens personliga koldioxidutsläpp som uppstår vid dagliga aktiviteter, exempelvis äta, transport, shopping och energiförbrukning. Mobilappen mäter detta i realtid.

Genom att mobilappen mäter de genererade koldioxidutsläppen för varje användare kommer användaren kunna kontrollera och övervaka sitt personliga koldioxidavtryck i samhället. Möjligheten att kontrollera sina personliga koldioxidutsläpp kan ha stor påverkan för att minska de faktorer som leder till produktion av mer koldioxid gaser och därmed ökad global uppvärmning.

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III

Acknowledgements

First I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Pontus Johnson, Head of the Department of Industrial Information and Control Systems at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) for allowing me to conduct this thesis work under his auspices.

As a thesis supervisor, Professor Pontus Johnson supported me in all stages of this work. He is the initiator of this project and he always gave me constant encouragement and advice, despite his busy agenda.

Without the support of all members of my family, I would never finish this thesis and I would never find the courage to overcome all the difficulties during this work. My thanks go to my parents for their constant support and their unconditional love. I would especially like to express my gratitude to my wife, Paniz H., who has always supported me and helped me throughout this work.

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Davood Babazadeh, PhD candidate in the dep. of Industrial Information and Control Systems at KTH - Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) who offered me valuable suggestions for writing this thesis. With his recommendation, I first met Professor Pontus Johnson and I had the honor of conducting this thesis work under his auspices.

I extend my sincere thanks to all my friends and colleagues who helped me conduct the evaluation of this thesis work.

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To my wife

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IV

4.5.7.2.1.Bet start view 39

4.5.7.2.2.Bet personalization views 40

4.5.7.2.2.1. Housing settings view 41

4.5.7.2.2.2. Vehicle settings view 42

4.5.7.2.3.Bet target settings views 43

5 EVALUATIONS 45

5.1 Evaluation process 45

5.2 Data analysis 46

5.2.1. General demography 46

5.2.2. Area understanding/Awareness 47

5.2.2.1 Global warming 47

5.2.2.2 Self-Tracking 51

5.2.3. Carbon Footprint Application user experience 52

5.2.3.1 Usefulness and Ease of use 52

5.2.3.2 Underlying motivations for using the App 55

5.3 Conclusion 56

6 DEMONSTRATION AND COMMUNICATION 58

6.1 Demonstration 58

6.2 Communication 58

7 CONCLUSION 59

8 DISCUSSION AND FUTURE WORK 60

9 REFERENCES 61

10 APPENDIX A: Evaluation questionnaire 64

11 APPENDIX B: Telerik AppBuilder environments 68

12 APPENDIX C: Stockholm Royal Sea Port Project 70

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V LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 – Earth’s annual global mean energy balance 4

Figure 2 – Sea level rise due to global warming 5

Figure 3 – Potential climate change impacts 6

Figure 4 – Characteristics and factors of a smart city 8

Figure 5 – Smart cities taxonomy 8

Figure 6 – Global population increase trend based on Forrester Research 9 Figure 7 – Classification of the Objects of Tracking based on … 11

Figure 8 – Telerik platform overview 13

Figure 9 – Telerik Development Environment tools and services 14 Figure 10 – Telerik’s holistic application development lifecycle 16 Figure 11 – Carbon Footprint App mock-up architecture 21 Figure 12 – Smart City Marketplace required architecture 23

Figure 13 – Steps to Start a Bet 40

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VI LIST OF SCREENSHOTS

Screenshot 1 – Login View 24

Screenshot 2 – Sign up View 25

Screenshot 3 – Sign up Verification Email 25

Screenshot 4 – Sign up Welcome Email 26

Screenshot 5 – Home view (User tapped on bubble with $10 data object) 27 Screenshot 6 – Home View (After user tapped on $10 data object) 27

Screenshot 7 – CO2 Usage View 28

Screenshot 8 – CO2 Usage View (tapping on CO2 status) 29

Screenshot 9 – CO2 Usage View (swiping left) 29

Screenshot 10 – Bus Transportation Activity Detail View 30 Screenshot 11 – Clothing Purchase Activity Detail View 31

Screenshot 12 – Food Activity Details View 32

Screenshot 13 – Achievements View 33

Screenshot 14 – Detail View of a gained bet 33

Screenshot 15 – Detail View of a lost bet 34

Screenshot 16 – Statistical View Landing Page 35

Screenshot 17 – Statistical Views (swiping to left) 36

Screenshot 18 – Navigation Menu Panel 37

Screenshot 19 – Bet Start Views 40

Screenshot 20 – Bet Personalization Landing View 41

Screenshot 21 – Housing Settings Views 42

Screenshot 22 – Vehicle Settings Views 43

Screenshot 23 – Bet Target Settings Views 44

Screenshot 24 – Bet Initialization Closure Views 44

Screenshot 25 – AppBuilder coding environment 68

Screenshot 26 – AppBuilder iPhone simulator 68

Screenshot 27 – Telerik Backend tools and services 69

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VII LIST OF GRAPHS

Graph 1 – Age distribution by gender 46

Graph 2 – Participants by gender 46

Graph 3 – Participants by occupation category 47

Graph 4 – Participants' Awareness of Global Warming 48 Graph 5 – General average responses with respect to Global Warming 49 Graph 6 – Participants’ opinion about importance of Climate Change 49 Graph 7 – Participants’ opinions about importance of reduction of CO2 … 50 Graph 8 – Participants’ opinions regarding who should consider reducing … 50 Graph 9 – Participant’s responses with regard to their knowledge about … 51 Graph 10 – Participant’s responses with regard to if they are keeping records … 51 Graph 11 – Participant’s responses with regard to how they keep track … 52 Graph 12 – Participant’s opinions with regard to App’s user-friendliness 53 Graph 13 – Participant’s opinions with regard to difficulty and ease of use … 53 Graph 14 – Participant’s opinions with regard to App’s overall GUI 54 Graph 15 – Participant’s opinions with regard to App’s features usefulness 54

Graph 16 – Overall features usefulness 55

Graph 17 – Participant’s willingness to use this App for tacking their CO2 … 55 Graph 18 – Participants’ motivational reasons to use Carbon Footprint App 56

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Dept. of Industrial Information and Control Systems KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

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1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Global warming has increased significantly over the past decades and at its center, there are human factors which have the greatest impacts on productions of carbon dioxide which is considered as a primary greenhouse gas in development of global warming.

According to (Maslin, 2004), “The Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other gases. It is these other gases that we are interested in, as they include the so-called greenhouse gases.” He further explains that the two most main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide and water vapour, which “carbon dioxide accounts for 0.03-0.04 % of the atmosphere” (Maslin, 2004). As Maslin states in his book, the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide has started primarily since the beginning of industrial revolution where the first measurement of CO2 concentration in atmosphere started in 1958 and since then the level of CO2 concentrations have increased every single year.

Proper initiatives to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and in particular the emissions of carbon dioxide have to be taken to reduce the impacts of global warming, otherwise there would be dramatic consequences which can endanger human’s life on Earth.

One of the greatest initiatives that can help in reduction of carbon dioxide is the idea of development of Smart Cities with the aim of creating an ecofriendly environment where not only greenhouse gas emissions are reduced but also there is better management and planning of global energy resources.

1.2 Problem

Greenhouse gas emissions and, in particular, carbon dioxide emissions are growing significantly to the extent that if no initiatives are taken, it can have dramatic consequences for our future generations and in general for human’s life on Earth, therefore we need means by which we can control and maintain the levels of greenhouse gas emissions and in particular carbon dioxide emissions.

1.3 Purpose and goal

One of the efficient solutions that can significantly decrease the levels of carbon dioxide emissions is the construction and development of Smart Cities. In this context (smart city), individuals can play an important role in reducing the CO2 emissions.

From this perspective, the purpose of this thesis is to study the smart city idea as a strategy which can help in reduction of global warming and introduce means by which users can influence their Carbon Footprint emissions.

The goal of the work is to develop a mobile application prototype that could be used by users to keep track and measure their carbon dioxide emissions and help them take actions to reduce/control their Carbon Footprints.

1.4 Scope and limitations

This thesis work aims to develop a prototype for a Carbon Footprint mobile application that can be used by users in a smart city context. Besides this, the thesis will try to study topics such as smart city, global warming, incentive systems, and quantified self in order to provide context for such a self-tracker application.

The time limitations of the master thesis work will not make it possible to develop a fully functional application and therefore some of the back end systems and services that will support the final application developed by this thesis work will be mocked systems/data. In addition, the entire

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development work conducted for accomplishment of this thesis work undergoes with the assumption that the developed App is a visioned application designed with Smart City Marketplace idea in mind.

2 METHODOLOGY

2.1 Introduction

This section intends to provide justifications of the thesis work. The section starts with a description of the research framework followed by the processes for which the research is carried out.

2.2 Research framework

A research framework can provide useful guidelines for initiating a research, conducting it and evaluating the end result. The design science research methodology (DSRM) was introduced by Peffers et al. for “[…] production and presentation of DS research in IS” (Hevner & Chatterjee, 2010).

This thesis work follows the steps introduced by DSRM framework. The DSRM framework consists of six steps. According to (Hevner & Chatterjee), these steps are named and described as follow:

1. Problem identification and motivation. In this step the research problem will be specified and proper justifications will be made towards a possible solution.

2. Define the objectives for a solution. From the problem definition in step one, the objectives of the solution will be identified. These objectives can be of type quantitative or qualitative.

For example, in a quantitative manner, the preferred solution could be better that the current ones. Or for example in a qualitative manner, a new artifact is necessary to be built to address problems that have not been solved previously.

3. Design and development. At this step the actual artifact is supposed to be developed.

According to Hevner (Hevner, et al., 2004), the artifact could be in the form of a construct, a model, a method, or an instantiation.

4. Demonstration. This step involves the demonstration of the developed artifact to solve the problem. “This could involve its use in experimentation, simulation, a case study, proof, or other appropriate activity.” (Peffers, et al., 2006)

5. Evaluation. This step involves the evaluation and the measurements of the usefulness of the solution to solve the identified problem.

6. Communication. The last step involves the communication of the problem, the artifact and the solution to the community and relevant audiences.

2.3 Research process

As described earlier, this thesis is using design science research methodology (DSRM) as a research framework. The six steps explained in DSRM framework will be used to conduct this thesis.

In research there are two broad approaches of reasoning, known as inductive and deductive approaches (Taylor, et al., 2008). In an inductive approach, reasoning starts from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories, while in a deductive approach reasoning works from the opposite direction which is from a more general to more specific one. (Burney, 2008)

In inductive approach, the process will begin by identifying that an artifact is needed, therefore empirical studies will be carried out “[…] to find out, what the requirements should be/what functionality should exist/which algorithms are useful/which data is needed/which information should the system produce/which other systems are in use, etc. etc. The result of this type of approach is that the result is the system design.” (Brash, 2010, p. 23). In this

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approach, the data collection will be “qualitative through interviews/case study/ethnographical study/observations/literature study etc.” (Brash, 2010).

Conversely, in a deductive approach, we claim that a specific hypothesis will solve a problem. In this approach, the data collection is normally of type quantitative where the aim is to investigate if the hypothesis is valid or invalid. (Brash, 2010, p. 23).

The line of reasoning in this thesis work is of type inductive, where the reasoning starts by identifying that there is a need for an artifact (Carbon Footprint App) that can help users measure their daily carbon dioxide emissions in a smart city context, therefore the initiatives for identifying requirements, possible functionalities and features are carried out by studying literatures, observations of similar systems and discussions with stakeholder.

In the following, the six steps to carry out the thesis work based on DSRM will be explained in details:

Problem identification and motivation

Carbon dioxide emissions are increasing significantly and we need to take initiatives towards CO2 reductions. Smart city ideas are one of the solutions that can have significant influences in reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and in particular carbon dioxide emissions. In such cities, managing and controlling the amount of CO2 is highly important to keep the CO2 levels low. Having said this, the need for a mobile application that can keep track of individual’s carbon footprint is necessary.

Knowing the daily carbon footprint emissions, an individual can take initiatives to either reduce it, if it is more than average, or maintain it and keep it low.

Define the objectives for a solution

This thesis aims to develop a prototype for a carbon footprint mobile application that can help users to manage and maintain their daily carbon footprint emissions by measuring their daily CO2 emissions created from their daily activities where this application acts as a self-tracker device providing real-time data regarding individual’s daily carbon emissions.

Design and development

The final output of this thesis work will be a prototype for a mobile application. The development of the application will be done using App Builder platform by Telerik. In addition, two architecture solutions will be proposed known as mock-up architecture and a required architecture.

The development process will be done using agile development methodology, where development work will be done in small iterations and new features and functionalities will be implemented as the development process continues.

Demonstration

The final App prototype which is developed as a result of this thesis work along with the two proposed architectures (a mock-up architecture which supports this prototype and a required architecture which shall support a fully functional App) will be demonstrated in a presentation held by the master thesis work, where a demo will be played during the presentation for the audiences and the thesis inspectors.

Evaluation

The mobile application will be put into testing by random people to express their opinions about the application usefulness and its features. Further improvements or modifications to the application can be considered from users’ experiences during the evaluation session.

Communication

In addition to the work being presented at the end of the thesis, the thesis work will be accomplished in a complete written report which will further be published in the KTH university library and it will be publically available for the IS community to access it.

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4 3 EXTENDED BACKGROUND

This chapter intends to provide a deeper description and discussion of topics such as smart cities, global warming, incentive system/theory, lifelogging, quantified self, and incentive-centered design.

3.1 Global warming

Global warming has increased significantly over the past decades and at its center, there are human factors which have the greatest impacts on productions of carbon dioxide which is considered as a primary greenhouse gas in development of global warming. In fact, one of the biggest problems that put our today’s planet into great danger is global warming and perhaps, the best way to better understand global warming is to refer to its definition.

In general, the term global warming refers to a gradual increase in Earth’s average temperature. As explained by Maslin, Earth’s temperature “is controlled by the balance between the input from energy of the sun and the loss of this back into space.” (Maslin, 2004, p. 4) He further explains that around one-third of the energy that is received from the sun reflects back into space and the remaining is absorbed by the atmosphere and the Erath’s surface including both lands and oceans. This makes the Erath’s surface warm and it will cause the Earth to project long-wave infrared radiation into space. Greenhouse gases including water vapour, carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, and nitrous oxide in the upper layer re-emit the projected long-wave infrared radiation from the Earth and warm the atmosphere resulting in a blanket effect warming the Earth by 35 degrees Celsius. (Maslin, 2004)

Figure 1 illustrates this energy transition in more details,

Figure 1 – Earth’s annual global mean energy balance adapted from (Maslin, p. 5)

According to Maslin, “The Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other gases. It is these other gases that we are interested in, as they include the so-called greenhouse gases”. He further explains that the two most main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide and water vapour, which “carbon dioxide accounts for 0.03-0.04 % of the atmosphere” (Maslin, 2004). As Maslin states in his book, the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide has started primarily since the beginning of industrial revolution where the first measurement

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of CO2 concentration in atmosphere started in 1958 and since then the level of CO2 concentrations have increased every single year. (Maslin, 2004)

3.1.1. Impacts of global warming

Global warming has a direct influence in Earth’s climate changes to the extent which it can change the climate permanently and consequently, this climate change will affect weather, oceans, agriculture, forests and in general human’s life.

One of the major problems of the global warming is the gradual rise of sea levels. Greenhouse gases emitted by human, results in a temperature increase and it will consequently cause melting Earth’s icecaps and eventually a rise of sea level and flooding.

According to Bjørke, sea level has risen around 10 to 25 cm over the past decade and if the rise continues the same pattern, sea level can rise between 20 to 88 cm in the next 100 years. Figure 2, which is adapted from his report, illustrates this more precisely.

Figure 2 – Sea level rise due to global warming (Åke Bjørke, et al., 2001)

The rise of sea level can result in the flooding of coastal areas and cities near the sea shores. This can have catastrophic outcomes, for example for the case of small island countries such as Maldives in the Indian Ocean or the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, a one meter rise in the sea level would flood up to 75% of the land (Maslin, 2004). The sea level rise can even result in disappearance of some countries.

Global warming can also affect weather changes causing extreme temperature fluctuations, droughts, severe rain, severe hurricanes and earthquakes and as a result all these effects have direct influences on human’s life. Extreme temperature fluctuations can be considered as a dangerous factor for human’s life in different parts of the Earth, an extreme low temperature in tropical countries can not only be killer factor for human but the entire ecosystem (e.g. animals, environment, etc.) of that country and in a same manner, an extreme hot summer in the North hemisphere can put many human’s lives into great risks and result in a big scale ecosystem change.

Figure 3 illustrates some of the impacts of climate changes as a result of global warming.

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Figure 3 – Potential climate change impacts (Baker, et al., 2005)

3.1.2. What is the cure?

As a matter of fact, there are many ways that could be taken to omit or reduce the impacts of global warming. At its center, human factors play a great role in production and development of global warming. Factors such as emissions of greenhouse gases generated from factories, manufacturing plants, and in general from burning of fossil fuels or deforestation factor which can harm the carbon cycle significantly as trees play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. Therefore, one important step to overcome all these problems is to control the human factors in an effective way so that the impacts of global warming are omitted or reduced.

In a bigger scale, there are governments who are responsible to set proper action points and initiatives to control the carbon dioxide emissions into atmosphere and in fact an international cooperation and efforts are needed in such a plan to save the Earth. In addition to the big scale governments’ efforts, it is also necessary for every individual to contribute to efforts leading to development of less carbon dioxide emissions.

3.2 Smart Cities

With the current challenges in urbanization, pollution, resource scarcity, and concentration of population within cities, the needs for more efficient and smarter solutions to overcome these issues are highly demanded. The term - Smart City - acts as an umbrella concept which promises to contribute towards a better and smarter resource and infrastructure management, a more eco-friendlier environment, and in general, a higher living standards in different areas such as environment, city administration, education, health, transportation, etc.

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In fact, there are many different definitions of the term Smart City among academicians and practitioners and the term is still used as a buzzword referring to various aspects in a smart city context but most of these definitions have a similar point of view and that is the focus in efficiency to increase capacity whereby the city itself has the ability to interact and respond to the needs of citizens.

In the following, to provide a common understanding about the term Smart City, we will refer to some of these definitions.

As referred by Giffinger, a smart city is defined as a ‘[…] city well performing in a forward-looking way in six characteristics, built on the ‘smart’ combination of endowments and activities of self-decisive, independent and aware citizens’ (Giffinger, et al., 2007). These six characteristics are as follow:

1. Smart economy 2. Smart mobility 3. Smart environment 4. Smart people 5. Smart living 6. Smart governance

This definition will further list 33 factors that are used to describe each of the six characteristics. Figure 4 illustrates these factors.

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Figure 4 – Characteristics and factors of a smart city (Giffinger, et al., 2007)

Another definition by Caragliu claims that ‘a city to be smart when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance.’ (Caragliu, et al., 2009) From these definitions and many other similar explanations of smart cities, we can group them based on objectives and elements according to Figure 5.

Figure 5 – Smart cities taxonomy ( Lee & Hancock, 2012)

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3.2.1. Importance of smart cities

Why do we need to build smart cities? A shot answer to this question would be to save global energy consumption and consequently reducing amount of world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As stated by Webb, cities are considered to be the main global energy consumer, responsible for nearly 80% of the global energy consumption resulting in half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and with an increasing rise in the trend. (Webb, 2010)

Urbanization and the city populations are growing quickly where population forecasts show a 3.1 billion increase in urban population by 2050 resulting in a total of 6.4 billion people. Studies also show that by 2050, nearly 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities.

Figure 6, based on Forrester Research, illustrates the population increase trend and the forecast by 2050.

Figure 6 – Global population increase trend based on Forrester Research adapted from (Pardo, 2012)

As a matter of fact, with the current trend in population growth and the rapid increase of greenhouse gases accumulation in the atmosphere, moving towards smart solutions is inevitable. Having said this, smart cities can be considered as a great initiative to address many of the obstacles with regard to urbanization growth including population growth, climate changes, natural resource scarcity, healthcare, education, etc. by making use of ICT to maximize efficiency and effectiveness towards more sustainable ecofriendly smart cities.

3.3 Incentive Systems

Incentive system/theory is considered as one of the important topics in human psychology and it plays a crucial role in the way people act and do things. According to (Franzoi), ‘incentive theory states that any stimulus that you think has either positive or negative outcomes for you will become an incentive for your behavior. An incentive is a positive or negative stimulus in the environment that attracts or repels you’. (Franzoi, 2011)

In other words, incentive theory tries to emphasize the fact that human’s behavioral change pattern occurs as a result of foreseen rewards and incentives that an individual believes to gain from his/her intended action in a way that all his/her ’[…] actions are directed towards gaining rewards’ (Cherry, 2013). In fact, human mind under the influence of a reward gaining philosophy constantly produces positive reactions and pulses and it helps human in realization of his/her motivational desires concerning the actions he/she wishes to do in a given situation.

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Perhaps we have all seen and experienced examples when we have been promised to be given a reward by our parents, teachers, friends, bosses, etc. if we could successfully achieve a given goal and this reward motivated us to work really hard to achieve that goal. In a normal situation, achieving that goal which could be anything such as getting good grades at school, or getting a certain certificate of recognition at work, etc. might not have been so important to us but things turn entirely differently when a reward is introduced. In fact, the introduction of this reward provides strong motivational factors which influence one’s actions towards performing activities that could result in gaining the reward.

Having said these, the incentive theory as a known and proven physiological approach to stimulate human’s motivations, is extremely used in many various applications, systems and design solutions such as applications within gaming and entertainment sector, educational sector, advertising sector, government and industrial sector, and etc.

One of the design approaches that can be considered in designing a system to incorporate incentive theory is Incentive-Centered Design (ICD) introduced by MacKie. According to (MacKie & Jian), Incentive-Centered Design (ICD) ‘is the science of designing a system or institution according to the alignment of individual and user incentives with the goals of the system. Using incentive-centered design, system designers can observe systematic and predictable tendencies in users in response to motivators to provide or manage incentives to induce a greater amount and more valuable participation’ (MacKie & Jian, 2012).

The design and implementation of the prototype presented by this thesis work also performed by considering an Incentive-Centered Design (ICD) approach in mind, whereby the proposed presented prototype tries to conceptualize this approach by incorporating a betting game scenario into the Carbon Footprint App prototype with the aim of motivating the potential App’s users towards lowering their daily CO2 emissions by rewarding them in a betting context.

In fact, the idea of the betting game presented in this thesis work acts as a way for introducing the incentive theory in form of a so called betting system. This betting system introduced to not only act as a motivation stimulator but also to result in a behavioral change in users actions concerning their individual’s daily carbon footprint production when they are engaged more and more in this betting game.

3.4 Quantified Self

Quantified Self is a new idea that was first introduced by Gary Wolf and his colleague Kevin Kelly on 2007, which can be considered as a type of lifelogging technique used to gather and track data about human’s actions and behaviors. According to the article presented in IADIS International Conference, lifelogging is defined as ‘[…] the process of tracking personal data generated by our own behavioral activities like data about sleep, exercise, food, mood, location, alertness, productivity, or even spiritual well-being’ (Rivera-Pelayo, et al., 2012).

The term lifelogging first coined by Gorden Bell in the late 1990s, who believed that tracking data about human’s behavioral activities and analyzing these data provide a significant source of information for optimizing his/her behavior. Since then, the idea of lifelogging evolved rapidly and it resulted in creation of great initiatives and movements, from both big IT corporations and also IT practitioner communities, in terms of development of new tools, services, technologies, applications, frameworks, guidelines, and etc. all with the purpose of tracking humans’ behaviors and actions.

One of the great movements within lifelogging context is the formation of Quantified Self community group, which is referred as a global movement of international collaboration users and makers of self- tracking tools who are brought together as a community founded by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly with a single motto of ‘self knowledge through numbers’. (QuantifiedSelf.com)

3.4.1. Quantified Self in practice

Using the collection of tools, apps, services, and in general self-tracking technologies, users are able to collect data about their daily actions and behaviors and turn these data into useful information and they

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also provide means for users to measure and improve their behaviors in a positive way. In fact, the application of self-tracking technology enabled devices and services can be really wide and they can provide potential opportunities in many different areas such as health sectors, educational sectors, lifestyle, and etc.

Figure 7 illustrates the classification of the objects of tracking based on the categorization of self- tracking possibilities with relation to the currently self-tracking tools and services used within different sector areas.

Figure 7 – Classification of the Objects of Tracking based on the categorization of self-tracking possibilities (Nißen, 2013)

Table 1, adapted from (Choe, et al., 2014), contains statistical data resulted from a qualitative and quantities data analysis performed by Eun K. Choe, Nicole B. Lee, Bongshin Lee, Wanda Pratt, Julie A. Kientz as part of a report paper in collaboration with Microsoft. The authors of this research article conducted a qualitative and quantitative analysis of 52 video recordings of Quantified Self Meetup talks to understand what the users did, how they did it, and what they learned from it. These data are then analyzed and presented as findings resulted from this paper work.

The table below is one of the findings presented by (Choe, et al.) and it shows the motivational factors inspiring users to use Quantified Self enabled devices and service for self-tracking. The data presented by Table 1 categorizes these motivational factors into three different categories such as (1) to improve health, (2)to improve other aspects of life, and (3)to find new life experiences based on the 52 individuals using a type of self-tracking device. This table also presents some sample Apps related to each sub category.

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Motivations Categories Tracking example

To improve health

To cure or manage a condition

Track blood glucose to hit the target range

To achieve a goal Track weight to get back to the ideal weight of 135 pounds

To find triggers Log triggers that cause atrial fibrillation To answer a specific

question

Track niacin intake dosage and sleep to identify how much niacin to take for treating symptoms To identify

relationships

Track exercise, weight, muscle mass, and body fat to see the relationships among the factors

To execute a treatment plan

Log food, exercise, and panic as a recovery plan for panic attack

To make better health decisions

Record ideas of things that thought were healthy and unhealthy to make better decisions

To find balance Log sleep, exercise, and time to get back from erratic lifestyle

To improve other aspects of life

To maximize work performance

Track time to know the current use of time and ways to be more efficient

To be mindful Take a self-portrait shot everyday for 365 days to capture each day’s state of mind.

To find new life experiences

To satisfy curiosity and have fun

Log the frequency of “puns” to see how often these puns happened and what triggered them

To explore new things Track every street walked in Manhattan to explore as much of the city as possible

To learn something interesting

Track heart rate for as long as possible and see what can be learned from it

Table 1 – Quantified-Selfers’ tracking motivations with example. Reprinted from (Choe, et al., 2014)

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13 4 DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT WORK

4.1 Development environment

The development work to setup and create this prototype is initiated using Telerik platform. Telerik platform provides a complete development environment for developing cross-platform mobile applications where a comprehensive set of tools for application design, development, test, deployment and publishing are integrated seamlessly on the cloud.

Figure 8 – Telerik platform overview (Telerik, 2014)

Figure 8, adapted from Telerik, depicts a holistic overview of the entire list of available integrated functionalities in the platform which support a cross-platform application development lifecycle. At its center there is Telerik IDE also known as AppBuilder acts as a development tool for developing and deploying applications. In addition, Kendo UI Mobile framework defines the means to structure the application and it provides a set of common user interface components. Moreover, the backend services in the Telerik platform are also provided by Telerik Backend Services which support the management and administration of simple CRUD data operations, databases and storage operations and etc.

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Figure 9 – Telerik Development Environment tools and services, edited from (Pelovski, 2013) As illustrated by Figure 9, the platform consists of two major layers, known as frontend and backend layers, where a middle API layer which is formed by a set of RESTful services links them together. The entire group of tools and services reside on cloud and are accessible through AppBuilder IDE. In the following, some of these tools and services that are used in this project are elaborated in more details.

PhoneGap

It is a framework used for development of cross-platform mobile applications using standards-based Web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). PhoneGap was produced by Nitobi in 2008 and later in October 2011, it was donated to Apache Software Foundations under the name Apache Cordova. In fact, PhoneGap is now an open source distribution of Cordova.

Integrated support for Apache Cordova into Telerik AppBuilder leverages the Cordova framework capabilities and enables the development of mobile applications that run natively on IOS, Android, and Windows phones by taking advantage of device capabilities, using nothing more than HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. (Cowart, 2013)

Kendo UI

Kendo UI is a comprehensive HTML5, jQuery-based framework used to develop GUI and layout on the frontend layer and it provides a seamless integration between the model data and the view. It offers a native look and feel and provides plenty of UI widgets, a rich data visualization framework, auto- adaptive mobile framework, data source, templating, Model View ViewModel (MVVM) architectural pattern, drag-and-drop API, and etc. for modern web and mobile app development (Telerik, 2013).

Kendo UI Mobile is a sub library under Kendo UI which provides UI widgets for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. It also offers an application to handle app navigation, views, layout templates, and other features ( Prasad, 2013) .

Phone simulator

AppBuilder provides the ability to simulate the look and feel of the app directly during development work by using the simulators for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. In addition, simulators also can be used for debugging and testing without the need for deploying and provisioning to multiple devices.

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jQuery Mobile

jQuery Mobile is described as an open source, touch-optimized web framework and a HTML5-based user interface system which is built on solid jQuery and jQuery UI foundation (Schmitz, et al., 2010).

jQuery Mobile and Kendo UI have many similarities and they both follow same goal and that is the fact that they both offer frameworks for developing mobile web sites and applications.

In fact, both jQuery UI and Kendo UI are JavaScript frameworks and they are built on top of jQuery which is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries (Bristowe, 2012). jQuery mobile and Kendo UI can be used as substitute, since they have many similar features and functionalities and they both support Model View ViewModel (MVVM) design pattern approach.

In this thesis work, Kendo UI framework is in use.

JavaScript SDK

JavaScript SDK in Telerik AppBuilder is used to provide an abstraction layer over Telerik Backend Services REST API by offering APIs for CRUD operations for plain objects and integration with Kendo UI framework.

Source control system

AppBuilder manages the code based version control by Telerik version control cloud services, which is integrated in AppBuilder windows client and in-browser clients. Collaboration within the project is also possible by adapting and setting up a GitHub repository, where the repository can be set to be available to public or it can be set to only enable invited collaborators to participate in a project team.

RESTfull services

These services in Telerik AppBuilder act as an intermediate layer between frontend and backend layers enabling the exposure of resources using XML or JSON. Representational State Transfer (REST) ‘‘[…]

specifies a collection of architecture principles defining how data resources are represented and addressed […] systems that follow the REST principles are often called RESTful’’ ( Su & Chiang, 2012).

“Applications that want to use these web services access a particular representation by transferring application content using a small globally defined set of methods that describe the action to be performed on the resource. This basic REST design principle establishes a one-to-one mapping between CRUD operations and HTTP methods.” (Telerik, 2014) Backend services

As defined by Telerik, backend services in Telerik platform is a set of cloud services used to provide backend support for the application so that the need to set up servers and infrastructure separately to serve the applications is eliminated (Telerik, 2014). The following functionalities are offered by Telerik backend services:

- User management - Database and file storage

- Email, SMS and push notifications - Backend module for asset management

Telerik backend services fall under the category of Backend as a Service (BaaS), or also known as Mobile Backend as a Service (mBaaS), which speeds up application development lifecycle by offering a managed and integrated environment for activities such as data storage, user management, push notifications and cloud-code execution.

Figure 10 illustrates a holistic view of application development lifecycle using Telerik AppBuilder.

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Figure 10 – Telerik’s holistic application development lifecycle

4.2 Development methodology

The nature of this thesis work required the work to be done in an agile way. Since the idea was to design and propose a prototype for an application that can be used as part of Smart City Marketplace platform in the Stockholm Royal Seaport project, then it was essential to perform this task using agile approach for the following reasons:

- Identifying and defining requirements simultaneously along with the development work.

- Working closely with stakeholders to achieve best performance and reduce possible ambiguities.

- Starting with development work in early stages of the project lifecycle.

- Being able to define new features and adapt new changes as they occur during the development phase.

- Being able to work with stakeholders throughout development and acquire feedbacks more often to revise or add new functionalities.

- Being able to complete the task within the given timeframe.

Therefore, the development work in this thesis performed using agile software development approach for which the project work, from initial idea creation and design to the finished job, small iterations were in use until the prototype was ready for the final delivery. Each iteration usually lasted one week where by the end of every week the work was presented to stakeholder for review and feedback. The feedback from stakeholder was then used to either improve the presented work or add new functionalities to it.

4.3 Requirements definition

This section intends to present and define the requirements for design and development of prototype for Carbon Footprint application. These requirements are extracted from meetings and discussions held with stakeholder/s during the project lifecycle with Smart City Marketplace idea in mind.

The requirements are defined into two different categories known as functional requirements and non- functional requirements. Functional requirements are defined as requirements which describe what the system must do while non-functional requirements describe how the system works and they define qualities for the resulting system.

Table 2 and Table 3 will present functional and non-functional requirements as follow:

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4.3.1. Functional requirements

Functional requirements are defined as requirements which describe what the system must do. These requirements for development of prototype for Carbon Footprint application are presented by Table 2 as follow:

Req# Requirement Brief description

1 The App shall enable users to register/signup. A registration view shall be available for signup.

2 The App shall enable users to login. A login view shall be available in order to authenticate users against the App.

3 The App shall enable users to logout. Users shall have the ability to logout from the app.

4 The App shall be able to capture users’ current housing conditions.

This view is needed to capture user’s current living place and its details. (E.g.

apartment or house, house’s size, number of households, main energy source for heating, electricity, etc.). These details are used for personalizing a bet.

5 The App shall be able to capture users’ vehicle type.

This view is needed to capture user’s transportation vehicle. (E.g. car, motor cycle, bike, etc.) These details are used later to for bet calculations. These details are used for personalizing a bet.

6 The App shall present users’ activities during a day.

This view is needed to let users keep track of their current CO2 emissions based on their daily activities which could generate CO2.

7 The App shall enable users to view their current amount of generated carbon emissions.

This information will enable users to keep track of generated carbon emissions as they occur.

8 The App shall enable users to view their bet’s status.

This information will enable users to keep track of their bet’s status.

9 The App shall enable users to view details of each recorded activities.

This view is needed to enable users to see details of a record. (e.g. How many kilometers they drove a car, what they have eaten and how much each of these activities generated carbon emissions) 10 The App shall enable users to view amount of

carbon emissions that was captured based on each individual activity.

This information is needed to enable users to see how much CO2 it is with response to each recorded activity. (e.g.

How much CO2 is emitted during a car drive )

11 The App shall implement a betting system idea. Betting system in this context tries to encourage users to get more involved in the App. This betting system is used

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conceptualize an incentive design approach.

12 The App shall enable users to initiate a bet. Users can start a bet. The idea of betting in this context is to encourage users to produce less CO2 in their daily activities by earning through bets while trying to decrease their possible CO2 emissions.

(E.g. Transportation, shopping, eating, etc.)

13 The App shall enable users to choose number of days for a given bet.

This view enables users to specify number of days for a bet. For each day a bet is missed users are charged based on their selection.

14 The App shall enable users to personalize their bets according to their conditions.

This enables users to customize their bets.

15 The App shall enable users to choose amount of stake for a bet.

This enables users to specify the bet’s amount of stake.

16 The App shall allow a bet to be made for 1 day up to 7 days.

This enables users to specify number of days for a bet

17 The App shall allow a bet to be made for 5 $, 10

$, or 15 $.

This enables users to specify the bet amounts.

18 The App shall present the distance traveled on a map.

This feature allows users to see the start point, end point, and the distance traveled while using a transportation vehicle.

19 The App shall present rewards that have been achieved by the user.

This view enables users to track their achievements and rewards gained by each bet.

20 The App shall present statistical reports for users achievements, carbon usage, etc.

This view enables users to have an overall picture of their earnings and CO2 emissions in a graphical representation.

21 The App shall present a counter displaying the remaining time of a started bet. Both number of remaining days and remaining time.

This view allows users to track amount of time remaining from a possible bet so they can take actions towards winning a bet by reducing their CO2 emissions during this period.

22 The design shall propose a mock-up architecture Refer to Figure 11 23 The design shall propose a required architecture

with respect to Smart City Marketplace

Refer to Figure 12

Table 2 – Functional requirements of Carbon Footprint App

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4.3.2. Non-Functional requirements

Non-Functional requirements describe how the system works and they define qualities for the resulting system. These requirements for development of prototype for Carbon Footprint application are presented by Table 3 as follow:

Req# Requirement Brief description

1 The App must be easy to use. App should be simple to use.

2 The App must support IOS 7 for iPhone 5 series. App must be compatible with iOS7 on iPhone 5 series.

3 The app must have nice GUI for end users App must provide satisfying user experience through nice GUI.

Table 3 – Non-Functional requirements of Carbon Footprint App

4.4 Solution architecture

This section intends to describe and discuss the application architecture. The section is divided into two parts namely mock-up architecture and required architecture. Since one of the main goals of this thesis work is to perform a preliminary study about implementation of a prototype for individual’s carbon footprint reduction, the final developed prototype acts as a proof of concept application with certain limited functionalities and features.

This application is supposed to be used as one of the applications of Smart City Marketplace platform in the Stockholm Royal Seaport project to provide users with means to track their individuals’ carbon footprint and give them the ability to take actions for keeping their carbon footprint low. The idea of betting in this context is realized to provide incentives for users to actively participate in activities which can result in less carbon emissions.

Having said this, the mock-up architecture in this section presents a general overview of how the prototype has been constructed based on limitations and assumptions that exist in the project. These limitations and assumptions are discussed in more details in mock-up architecture’s section.

The required architecture on the other hand, aims to demonstrate an ideal architecture which can be used to support the development of a fully operational application as part of Smart City Marketplace platform.

4.4.1. Mock-up architecture

As discussed earlier, the main goal of this thesis work is to design and develop a proof of concept mobile application for Smart City Marketplace platform to be used by users for tracking their carbon footprints with the intention of providing users means to manage and control their carbon emissions by keeping it low. This proof of concept application tries to help the realization of the idea and demonstrate its feasibility with the aim of providing grounds for future developments and conceptualizations. Therefore, there exist assumptions and limitations in this proof of concept prototype which will be explained here.

The actual contents and database entries used in this prototype are only mock-up data and it is assumed to be provided by data providers such as the smart city itself, energy providers (e.g. Electricity and heating companies), real estate companies (e.g. information about house, neighborhood), transport data providers (e.g. public transportation companies and road tax companies), and other possible data providers such as retail stores. These are considered as third party companies which can provide different sorts of data according to users’ daily activities.

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The mock-up architecture is mainly grounded on a three-layer architecture built on top of Telerik platform. As Figure 11 illustrates, these three layers are Presentation layer, Business Logic layer, and Data layer respectively from top to bottom.

The presentation layer encapsulates a set of components and functions that are used to provide a comprehensible user interface for the end users of the application. The application is written in pure HTML5 and CSS. ‘HTML (the Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are two of the core technologies for building Web pages. HTML provides the structure of the page, CSS the (visual and aural) layout, for a variety of devices. Along with graphics and scripting, HTML and CSS are the basis of building Web pages and Web Applications’ (W3C, 2014).

The graphical user interface (GUI) implementation follows a Model View ViewModel (MVVM) architectural approach with help of Kendo UI framework. The Model View ViewModel (MVVM) pattern is a known UI architectural pattern introduced by Microsoft as a variation of another presentation model design known as Model View Presenter (MVP). In MVVM, ‘[…] Model contains the data and does not know about the View or the ViewModel and the ViewModel is an abstraction of the View, which contains all of its data and state.’ (Jarnjak & Croatia, 2007) MVVM UI architecture provides the capability of separating the frontend layer from the backend layer and consequently reducing complexity in the development lifecycle.

The frontend layer in Figure 11 communicates with the other two layers namely Business Logic and Data layers through two components known as Java SDK and RESTfull services. JavaScript SDK in Telerik AppBuilder is used to provide an abstraction layer over Telerik Backend Services REST API by offering APIs for CRUD operations for plain objects and integration with Kendo UI framework.

The Business Logic layer in Figure 11 is assumed to provide a business rule engine containing a set of rules and logics that are required for the Carbon Footprint app for operations such as calculation of emitted carbon usage for a user, calculation of rewards, calculation of users’ bets, and other business rules that may be introduced for using the application. The Business Logic layer has not been implemented in this prototype but it was taken into assumption that such a rule engine is needed for a fully functional application. The back and forth communication between frontend and backend layers are assumed to be checked against the rules and logics in Business Logic layer in every occasion and both Business Logic and Data layers are assumed to be layers that belong to Backend layer.

The Data layer defines components which support the database management system (DBMS) operations. This layer contains the main database and a set of tools and services introduced by Telerik backend services for operations such as read, write, update, delete, and in general database management operations. This layer also includes a component for sending push notifications which provides the ability to send notification messages to users for certain operations such as when a user registers and so on.

Integrated support for Apache Cordova into Telerik AppBuilder provides the ability to deploy and publish the final application on iOS, Android, and Windows devices. Figure 11 illustrates the Apache Cordova component which is used as a JavaScript-to-Native bridge technology for the Carbon Footprint application publication for end user devices including iOS, Android, and Windows devices.

In fact, this developed prototype can be published on these three mobile operating systems but it was mainly optimized for iOS 7 on both iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 series.

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Figure 11 – Carbon Footprint App mock-up architecture

4.4.2. Required architecture

The required architecture which will be explained in this section aims to propose and conceptualize an integrated architecture solution for which the Smart City Marketplace can be built upon and eventually provide a comprehensive framework for a variety of applications to serve end users’ devices such as smart phones, tablets, PCs, and even Smart TVs. This proposed architecture is then assumed to provide the foundational architecture for which the Carbon Footprint application can be grounded upon.

Figure 12 illustrates this proposed architecture with all the different main players and components around it. In general, this architecture consists of two outer layers and one inner layer. Components in the outer layer, on the left side, act as data and content providers for the middle inner layer in terms of raw data accumulated from third party data providers, new projects and applications from developers, and management and administration operations imposed from administrator agents. The outer layer, on the right side, however consists of a series of user agent devices which can consume the outcome artifacts produced from the inner layer in terms of new applications and data offered by the App store.

The inner layer in this proposed architecture contains the main building blocks of the Smart City Marketplace providing a comprehensive framework for the entire system so that useful and powerful artifacts can be built upon to be used by the end user agents.

The left building block in the inner layer can be considered as an entry point of the platform where multiple entry gateways are defined in terms of portal points providing various types of content and data into the platform. As illustrated by Figure 12, the three components in this block are Partner Portal, Developer Portal, and Admin Portal.

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The Partner Portal acts as a standalone supplier gateway which enables third party companies and partners to provide different kinds of data to be processed and consumed for generating useful information by the platform. In a similar manner, the Developer Portal in this block aims to provide a comprehensive development environment for developer communities to define and implement various types of projects in terms of new applications using the contents and data provided by the data providers. Moreover, the Admin Portal aims to provide administration modules enabling system administrators to control and manage the platform.

The middle block in the inner layer consists of various components which are formed into three building blocks known as integration layer block, database management system block and a group of standalone modules on the upper block. The Integration layer in this block acts as a backbone layer for the platform and it aims to unify all data, contents, processes and operations that are imposed by partner, developer, and admin portals and provide a unified data structure to be used by the database layer.

The upper layer consists of components such as content, billing and payment modules, broker services, push notification module, reporting services, and analytics modules which can offer different kinds of services within the platform to be used either directly by partner portals or indirectly as a resource for the applications in App store.

As illustrated form Figure 12, the third block introduces the App Store. The App Store within Smart City Marketplace aims to provide a group of useful applications that are developed by the developer communities to be used by end user device agents within the smart city context. The App Store intends to provide a platform which can host different sorts of multipurpose applications that can be installed as standalone applications on smart phones, tablets, PCs, or Smart TVs offering a range of handy and useful features and functionalities for the citizens of smart city.

The applications in the App Store use the data and resources provided by the Smart City Marketplace platform to serve their intentions and they are in fact considered the end artifacts of the Smart City Marketplace. The Carbon Footprint application is also assumed to be one of the applications that can be developed based on the Smart City Marketplace platform to serve its users with useful information about their daily carbon emissions with the aim of reducing it.

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Figure 12 – Smart City Marketplace required architecture