Smart Cities and Sensor-Driven Mapping

A smart city uses networks of connected sensors, feeding data into centralized geospatial platforms, to monitor and manage physical infrastructure in close to real time. Barcelona's smart-city program, developed from around 2012 onward, is among the most frequently cited early examples: the city deployed sensor networks to monitor parking-space occupancy, adjust street lighting, optimize irrigation for public parks, and track fill levels in waste bins, feeding the results into a centralized municipal data platform used to coordinate city services more efficiently than manual inspection allowed.