Citizens as sensors: The cognitive city paradigm

Intelligent/smart cities have been touted as one of the solutions to the challenges of ever increasing complexities faced by present and future urban environments. Leveraging information technology to allow better demand and supply management of key urban infrastructure system offer immense opportunities for efficiency and quality of service improvements in urban services. In this paper, we argue that implementing sensor networks are a necessary but not sufficient approach to improving urban living. Building on the concept of the cognitive city discussed elsewhere by the authors, this paper proposed an architectural process approach that allows city decision-makers and service providers to integrate cognition into urban processes. Cognition is the ability of a system to learn from previous experiences and adapt its behavior based on them. A cognitive system is able to sense, perceive and respond to changes in the environment and can therefore improve a system´s performance by increasing its adaptive capacity.