2. Key requirements for IoT-based Smart City environments

The Smart City concept has many definitions and implementation approaches. However, from an infrastructural point of view, all Smart Cities have at their core a highly capable ICT system, in the form of an IoT platform, connected to wired and wireless sensor networks. The hardware and communication part, together with advanced data analytics that settle the basis for developing intelligent applications and services for citizens [7]. Still now, even after some years of functionality, the key requirements for the requirements for IoT platforms operating in a Smart City scenario are difficult to define.

A forerunner of architectural designs is the PROBE IT EU-financed project having as main aim to benchmark IoT deployments and to set the guidelines for IoT roll-outs for Smart Cities [8]. Using some of these guidelines, considering various other surveys [9–12] and consulting the requirements fulfilled by some of the existing commercial IoT architectures and platforms [13, 14], we extracted a set of key requirements tailored specifically for accessible tourism applications in the Smart City context.

#### 2.1. Security requirements

very large amount of connectable devices and generated data, completely new features and services can arise that can constitute the basis for various innovative concepts, as for example, Big Data and Smart Cities. The latter concept has the potential to make citizen lives smarter

The Smart Cities architectures implemented or designed up to date are tackling with use cases from the following use cases: transportation, energy, environmental management and waste disposal. The specific architectures for these use cases rely mainly on IoT platforms connecting heterogeneous devices and systems with the upper layers where services and applications are implemented [2]. Among the aforementioned use cases, transportation is of particular interest, taking into consideration that tourism is currently the largest growing economy branch worldwide. Without transportation -local one included- there is little or no tourism, so the development of tourism is tightly linked to the concept of mobility which, for the specific case of an urban environment, can be included in the frame of the Smart Cities

Recent estimations state that there are more than 1 billion persons with disabilities worldwide, to be summed to other more than 2 billion representing the spouses, children or caregivers of the persons with disabilities, for a total of almost a third of the population directly affected by disability [3]. While this signifies a huge potential market for the aforementioned economic branches of travel and tourism, it still remains vastly under-served due to inaccessible travel and tourism facilities and services. The concept of accessible tourism [4] is an enabler for all categories of people to be part of and to enjoy tourism. Each person can have a specific access need, related or not to a physical condition. A typical example is the one of older and less mobile persons, that come with specific needs for traveling or touring activities. The concept of accessible tourism is starting to gain importance in order to enable destinations, products and services to all people, independently from their physical limitations, disabilities or age [5]. The changes induced by this new concept can affect public and private tourist locations, facilities and services. From idea to the practical implementation of a trip, a single destination visit normally involves many factors, including accessing information, local transportation, accommodation, shopping, and dining [5]. For these reasons, it can be stated that the impact of the implementation of the accessible tourism concept can reach far beyond the specific case of

tourism, adding accessibility to the social and economic values of society [3, 6].

persons with physical impairments or special access needs.

and the future work.

Putting together the previously mentioned elements, this chapter aims, to offer an overview on IoT requirements and technologies for Accessible Tourism applications in a Smart City environment, and to propose a specific architecture together with a practical implementation tailored for the use case of accessible tourism. The proposed implementation is targeted for

The content of the chapter is structured as following: the next section analyses briefly the key requirements for an IoT architecture operating in a Smart City environment for the specific implementation; Section 3 presents an overview on the use of IoT technologies for accessible tourism, while Section 4 is dedicated to the proposed general IoT architecture. Section 5 describes the accessible tourism solution based on the optimization algorithm presented in Section 6, while Section 7 presents a series of simulations. Section 8 presents the conclusions

and more sustainable and, at the same time, to create extended market opportunities.

paradigm.

32 Assistive Technologies in Smart Cities

By the year 2020, worldwide there will be 50 billion connected devices [13], accounting for a mean value of 6 devices pro capita. IoT platforms aggregating data imply that these devices can be accessible over the Internet. Data networks, especially poorly configure ones, are vulnerable to all kind of attacks. IoT environments, always connected to the Internet, are not at all different, therefore there is the need for solid security mechanisms, which, specifically for a Smart City environment can be summarized in the following form:


#### 2.2. Flexibility

The IoT market is still in its early stages of adoption, as it is also the case for the Smart City concept. The next generation of connected devices and products needs to rely on a certain software flexibility and for these reasons, an IoT platform in a Smart City environment should comply with following flexibility rules [15]:

make easier for people with some kind of impairments to carry out their daily activities and

Using IoT for Accessible Tourism in Smart Cities http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.77057 35

However, despite the rapidly increasing number of tourists with disabilities, both the tourism industry and the scientific community has paid little to no attention to find solutions to facilitate and make their tourist experience more enjoyable, due to the assumption that this

The few works analyzing the needs of people with disabilities aim to understand which can be their stimuli to travel; in [5], for example, the authors research the criteria consumers with disabilities regards as being important to their choice of accessible accommodation; similarly, the work proposed in [19] deals with understanding how tourists with mobility disabilities

Nevertheless, even if there are several solutions which apply the IoT paradigm to sustain and manage tourism (smart tourism scenarios), little work has been done to offer assistance and support to people with disabilities. In [20], the authors underline the strict correlation between smart city and smart tourism conceptualizations and the focus on public service models at the expense of comprehensive and systematic exploration of its business opportunities and implications. In [21], several possible smart tourism scenarios are presented: from services to help select destinations and search suitable travel arrangement to services that provide on-site support to the tourist during the trip helping her/him to discover nearest places of interest. Another example is proposed in [22], where the authors propose an agent-based system; such a system enables to model different kinds of activities in a flexible way, and allows the

Finally, in [23], an IoT solution for sustainable tourism has been proposed and applied to a specific Smart City scenario. The authors take into account two main elements in order to propose the best set of Point of Interests (PoIs) for the tourist, namely the choice of the transportation mode and the information regarding the queue time expected at each PoI. Even if no implementation has been provided, simulated results show how such an approach based

To the best of our knowledge, in this chapter we go for the first time beyond the state of the art, by proposing a solution to apply the IoT paradigm to accessible tourism for people with disabilities, in which cruise ship tourists, with limited available time, wants to maximize their

As mentioned in Section 1, in this work we introduce an IoT platform suitable for a Smart City environment and applied to the sustainable management of the tourist flow in the city of Cagliari, Sardinia's capital, which is one of the two biggest island in Italy and one of the most attractive point for tourism, especially in summer. In such a scenario, we envision that, through the use of virtualization technologies, each object in the real world is associated to its

then increase their autonomy and self-confidence.

group of people is usually not interested in traveling [18].

make decisions to choose accessible travel products.

implementation of location-aware applications.

tourist experience.

4. Proposed architecture

on the IoT paradigm can increase the tourists' satisfaction.


#### 2.3. Data requirements

The data in the IoT world comes mainly from things but can also arrive in the form of metadata from users. IoT and Smart Cities are more than a sink for incoming data, data intelligence being the key concept. This implies relatively strict requirements in terms of data [13, 14]:

