US/Morocco Workshop on Sensors and Wireless Networks for Smart Cities
Rabat, Morocco

Developing smart cities to better support growing urban populations is a global challenge that requires global perspectives. To meet that challenge, this workshop seeks the input of many scholars from different countries. These scholars will discuss current obstacles and share experiences in smart city development, in an effort to work toward building solutions and best practices.

Smart Cities and the Challenges They Present

Recent technical achievements in sensors and controls integrated with active systems can allow for the ability to control our built environment and tailor it to our preferences, while still maintaining optimal operation, energy conservation, sustainability and resiliency. With the use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) our cities can move toward the concept of smart cities. A smart city behaves as a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) that deeply integrates sensing, computation, communication and control.

However, implementations of smart CPSs that are reliable and autonomous are facing many challenges from different perspectives. From a network point of view, designing reliable information systems that provide predictable delays and ensure an efficient and stable operation of smart systems presents significant challenge. Furthermore, these smart systems are composed of a large number of heterogeneous sensors, and the processing of such real-time data still presents challenges merely because the generated data falls in the realm of Big Data.

To that end, two researchers are exploring the use of Cloud computing to provide HPCaaS (High performance Computing as a Service) for Big data processing. Big data provide opportunities of Artificial Intelligence and deep learning algorithms to address smart algorithms challenges. These challenges are interdisciplinary and involve expertise from different fields such as Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, and social sciences.

About the Workshop

The workshop will be organized into sessions that will include research and concept papers, and discussions in breakout sessions will be an important part of this process. Participation of local Moroccan students will be highly encouraged through their attendance to workshop sessions and their presentation of work in poster sessions or in joint papers with their advisors, and this participation will add to the discussions on educational curriculum improvement and enrich the students' research experience through exposure to experts from abroad. A summary and conclusions of the findings and recommendations, as well as plans for future research collaboration, will be prepared and made available to the community following the workshop.

The Venue

The proposed venue is the conference facility of the Mohammed V University, Avenue des Nations Unies, Agdal, Rabat 10000, Morocco. Morocco is currently in the process of building a few smart cities in cities and towns like Rabat, Casablanca, Ifrane and Bengrir.

Rabat, the capital of Morocco, is involved in several international smart cities-related initiatives and programs such as the IBM Smarter Planet initiative and the IEEE Smart City Initiative. Casablanca has just launched a similar initiative called e-Madinati. Bengrir is building its smart city, dubbed the "Green City", from the ground up. All these Moroccan smart cities involve local municipalities, universities and industries, and all envision the inclusion of smart grid, smart buildings, smart mobility and other smart infrastructure.

Sponsors

NSF—National Science Fondation (USA)

Université Mohammed V

Social Activities

Visits to the city of Rabat with its ancient history

Tours to the Green City and research centers