The Road to Intelligent Cities João Carlos N. Bittencourt, Thiago C. Jesus, João Paulo Just Peixoto, Daniel G. Costa Smart Cities, 2025 The smart-city revolution has been promoted as the next step in urban development, leveraging technology to achieve enhanced development standards amid the increasingly complex challenges of urbanization. However, despite the implementation of more efficient urban services, issues regarding their tangible effects and impact on people’s lives remain unresolved. In this context, the concept of intelligent cities is seen as a necessary evolution of the smart-city paradigm, positioning human factors as the driving forces behind urban technological evolution. This integrative concept embodies advanced technology to enhance essential urban functions, with sustainability, equity, and resilience as macro-development goals. This study reviews the multifaceted dimensions of intelligent cities, from designing and deploying smart infrastructure to implementing citizen-centric decision-making processes. Additionally, it critically examines the digital divide and highlights the importance of equitable development policies as essential for enabling transformative urban change. By linking technological advancement to social issues, this article provides practical insights and case studies from the cities of Helsinki, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires, demonstrating that smart-city initiatives are still failing to bridge the equity service distribution gap. This comprehensive assessment approach ultimately serves as a reference for future evaluations of intelligent urban transformations.
Urban Emergencies in the Age of 15-Minute Cities: Assessing Response Capability to Critical Situations João Paulo J. Peixoto, João Carlos N. Bittencourt, Thiago C. Jesus, Daniel G. Costa Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Smart Cities Conference Resilient and Sustainable Smart Communities Isc2 2025, 2025 Urban planning to enhance emergency preparedness and resilience has been at the center stage, with new approaches emerging to assess spatial inequalities and strengthen emergency service coverage. In recent years, the advent of disruptive smart city design based on space-time compression, such as the now popular 15-minute city (15MC) concept, has opened new possibilities for more sustainable and accessibility-focused urban living. Nevertheless, while urban mobility has mostly benefited from this new concept, emergency preparedness and resilience after disasters have not been considered at its core. In this context, this paper presents a geospatial analytical approach to evaluate emergency resilience through the lens of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{1 5 M C}$</tex> principles. The proposed method measures travel-time accessibility to emergency mitigation units, such as fire stations and medical facilities, using a 15 -minute threshold, enabling the spatial classification of urban zones based on their service coverage through isochronous maps. In doing so, this innovative urban vulnerability perspective integrates localized accessibility into urban resilience and emergency preparedness strategies. This approach is applied to the cities of Paris and Copenhagen, revealing the method's capacity to identify spatial disparities in emergency service distribution and offering insights into how localized accessibility can inform resilience-oriented urban planning.
A geospatial multi-domain flood prediction tool exploiting open datasets João Paulo Just Peixoto, Daniel G. Costa, Paulo Portugal, Francisco Vasques Software Impacts, 2024 Floods and other natural disasters have been threatening cities for hundreds of years, highlighting the importance of preventing emergencies and assessing risks. Urban flood risk assessment methodologies are of paramount importance when planning cities development and mitigation facilities. In this sense, a comprehensive tool was developed, enabling any stakeholder to perform analysis of an area of interest. To achieve this goal, CityZones-Flood was developed. It performs flood risk assessments in cities with respect to the presence of rivers, response centres, and the elevation of the zones. To evaluate it, risk assessment was performed in the region of Porto Alegre, Brazil. • A flood risk assessment tool was developed and presented. • The tool is capable of performing flood risk assessment from open and publicly available data. • The use of OpenStreetMap data for response centres and rivers locations combined with elevation data was demonstrated as feasible for flood risk assessment.
Flood-Resilient Smart Cities: A Data-Driven Risk Assessment Approach Based on Geographical Risks and Emergency Response Infrastructure João Paulo Just Peixoto, Daniel G. Costa, Paulo Portugal, Francisco Vasques Smart Cities, 2024 Flooding in urban areas is expected to become even more common due to climatic changes, putting pressure on cities to implement effective response measures. Practical mechanisms for assessing flood risk have become highly desired, but existing solutions have been devoted to evaluating only specific cities and consider only limited risk perspectives, constraining their general applicability. This article presents an innovative approach for assessing the flood risk of delimited urban areas by exploiting geospatial information from publicly available databases, providing a method that is applicable to any city in the world and requiring minimum configurations. A set of mathematical equations is defined for numerically assessing risk levels based on elevation, slope, and proximity to rivers, while the existence of emergency-related urban infrastructure is considered as a risk reduction factor. Then, computed risk levels are used to classify areas, allowing easy visualisation of flood risk for a city. This smart city approach not only serves as a valuable tool for assessing the expected flood risk based on different parameters but also facilitates the implementation of cutting-edge strategies to effectively mitigate critical situations, ultimately enhancing urban resilience to flood-related disaster.
Achieving Sustainable Smart Cities through Geospatial Data-Driven Approaches Daniel G. Costa, João Carlos N. Bittencourt, Franklin Oliveira, João Paulo Just Peixoto, Thiago C. Jesus Sustainability Switzerland, 2024 In recent years, the concept of smart cities has become increasingly important in the pursuit of sustainable development goals. In general, common urban challenges have been addressed through smart-city services, and new perspectives for more sustainable cities have emerged. To realize the full potential of such smart urban environments, geospatial approaches have been used as a focal point, offering a plethora of applications that contribute to a better understanding of urban challenges and innovation potentials. Nevertheless, although significant progress has been made, different problems may arise when the available technologies and resources are not understood or even when their potentialities are not properly capitalized. This article reviews the state of the art in the field, highlighting success cases and remaining challenges in exploiting geospatial data-driven strategies, particularly when leveraging geographic information systems, satellites, and distributed sensors to produce and process geospatial data and datasets in urban scenarios. Moreover, a more organized perspective of the area is provided in this article, as well as future development trends, supporting new research efforts in this area when empowering smart cities for a more sustainable future.
Exploiting geospatial data of connectivity and urban infrastructure for efficient positioning of emergency detection units in smart cities João Paulo Just Peixoto, João Carlos N. Bittencourt, Thiago C. Jesus, Daniel G. Costa, Paulo Portugal, Francisco Vasques Computers Environment and Urban Systems, 2024 The detection of critical situations through the adoption of multi-sensor Emergency Detection Units (EDUs) can significantly reduce the time between the initial stages of urban emergencies and the actual responses to relieve its negative effects, usually through the rescuing of endangered people, the attending to eventual victims, and the mitigating of its causes. However, although the benefits of such units are well known, their proper positioning in a city is challenging when considering a limited set of available units. In this sense, data-driven approaches can be leveraged to provide a better perception of the urban environments under consideration, allowing emergency management systems to be tailored to the specificities of a target city, thus improving the positioning of EDUs. This article proposes the processing of geospatial data of emergency-related urban infrastructure to support the computing of risk zones in a city, which is retrieved from the OpenStreetMap database together with the map of streets within a defined area. Since risk zones indirectly indicate the proportional number of detection units to be deployed, for each configuration setting of the EDUs, we propose an algorithm that computes the positions for such units only on streets, in a balanced way. Furthermore, considering that EDUs are expected to report detected emergencies through a wireless connection, we have also modelled the coverage area of existing networks in a city, which is also processed according to a suitable dataset. The proposed algorithm performs a fine-grained positioning of EDUs based on the number of active networks, flexibly favouring the EDUs' connectivity requirements such as reliability, throughput, latency, and transmission costs according to the actual demands of any urban emergency management system. Experimental results with real data demonstrated the applicability of the proposed mathematical model and the associated algorithm, reinforcing its practical application for the planning and construction of smart cities.
End-to-End Solution for Analog Gauge Monitoring Using Computer Vision in an IoT Platform João Peixoto, João Sousa, Ricardo Carvalho, Gonçalo Santos, Ricardo Cardoso, Ana Reis Sensors, 2023 The emergence of Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies has enabled the digital transformation of various processes and the integration of sensors with the internet. Despite these strides, many industrial sectors still rely on visual inspection of physical processes, especially those employing analog gauges. This method of monitoring introduces the risk of human errors and inefficiencies. Automating these processes has the potential, not only to boost productivity for companies, but also potentially reduce risks for workers. Therefore, this paper proposes an end-to-end solution to digitize analog gauges and monitor them using computer vision through integrating them into an IoT architecture, to tackle these problems. Our prototype device has been designed to capture images of gauges and transmit them to a remote server, where computer vision algorithms analyze the images and obtain gauge readings. These algorithms achieved adequate robustness and accuracy for industrial environments, with an average relative error of 0.95%. In addition, the gauge data were seamlessly integrated into an IoT platform leveraging computer vision and cloud computing technologies. This integration empowers users to create custom dashboards for real-time gauge monitoring, while also enabling them to set thresholds, alarms, and warnings, as needed. The proposed solution was tested and validated in a real-world industrial scenario, demonstrating the solution’s potential to be implemented in a large-scale setting to serve workers, reduce costs, and increase productivity.
A geospatial dataset of urban infrastructure for emergency response in Portugal João Paulo Just Peixoto, Daniel G. Costa, Paulo Portugal, Francisco Vasques Data in Brief, 2023 Emergency response plays a critical role in mitigating the impact of disasters and ensuring public safety. Understanding a city's capability for emergency response is vital for effective disaster management and urban planning. This paper describes a comprehensive geospatial dataset that assesses the emergency response capability of cities in Portugal based on their urban infrastructure, accounting for the number of hospitals, police stations, fire department units, and metro/railway stations. These infrastructures are essential for attending to victims, mitigating emergency situations, and performing rescue operations. Besides that, the GeoJSON definitions of all Portuguese cities are also provided in the dataset, which were used to compute the number of the target facilities based on data from OpenStreetMap. The potential applications of this dataset are numerous, ranging from urban planning and resource allocation to disaster response strategy development. Moreover, it indicates where public investments are most required, especially when combined with others continuously updated public datasets with incidents in urban areas.
On the positioning of emergencies detection units based on geospatial data of urban response centres João Paulo Just Peixoto, Daniel G. Costa, Washington de J.S. da Franca Rocha, Paulo Portugal, Francisco Vasques Sustainable Cities and Society, 2023 Urban areas have been subject to emergency situations with different causes and sometimes dramatic consequences. With the advent of smart cities technologies, multi-emergency detection units could be conceived and implemented taking advantage of affordable sensing technologies and efficient decision algorithms, allowing quick and distributed detection of emergencies. However, a recurrent problem has been the positioning and further deployment of such detection units in a way that the particularities of each target city are properly considered. In this sense, this article proposes the processing of geospatial data about existing urban infrastructure associated with some critical response after an emergency is detected, selecting hospitals, police stations, fire departments, and metro stations, in the target city. These infrastructures are then exploited to define the novel concept of mitigation zones, which indirectly express the perceived level of urban resilience to emergencies. Then, four positioning algorithms are proposed to exploit the mitigation zones considering a defined set of available detection units for deployment. Since the proposed approach is valid for any city, provided that geospatial data is available, it could be largely adopted to support different smart city systems, potentially bringing significant results in this area.
Urban Emergencies in the Age of 15-Minute Cities: Assessing Response Capability to Critical Situations JPJ Peixoto, JCN Bittencourt, TC Jesus, DG Costa 2025 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), 1-6 , 2025 2025
The road to intelligent cities JCN Bittencourt, TC Jesus, JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa Smart Cities 8 (3), 77 , 2025 2025 Citations: 20
A geospatial multi-domain flood prediction tool exploiting open datasets JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, P Portugal, F Vasques Software Impacts 21, 100697 , 2024 2024 Citations: 4
Analisando Centros de Resposta à Emergências em Capitais Brasileiras Utilizando uma Abordagem Baseada em Dados Geoespaciais Colaborativos JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha Simpósio Brasileiro de Sistemas Colaborativos (SBSC), 167-173 , 2024 2024
Flood-resilient smart cities: a data-driven risk assessment approach based on geographical risks and emergency response infrastructure JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, P Portugal, F Vasques Smart Cities 7 (1), 662-679 , 2024 2024 Citations: 26
Achieving sustainable smart cities through geospatial data-driven approaches DG Costa, JCN Bittencourt, F Oliveira, JPJ Peixoto, TC Jesus Sustainability 16 (2), 640 , 2024 2024 Citations: 101
Achieving sustainable smart cities through geospatial data-driven approaches. Sustainability, 16 (2), 640 DG Costa, JCN Bittencourt, F Oliveira, JPJ Peixoto, TC Jesus 2024 Citations: 11
Exploiting geospatial data of connectivity and urban infrastructure for efficient positioning of emergency detection units in smart cities JPJ Peixoto, JCN Bittencourt, TC Jesus, DG Costa, P Portugal, F Vasques Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 107, 102054 , 2024 2024 Citations: 29
A geospatial dataset of urban infrastructure for emergency response in Portugal JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, P Portugal, F Vasques Data in brief 50, 109593 , 2023 2023 Citations: 8
On the positioning of emergencies detection units based on geospatial data of urban response centres JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha, P Portugal, F Vasques Sustainable Cities and Society 97, 104713 , 2023 2023 Citations: 20
Enhancing the computation of risk zones based on emergency-related infrastructure in smart cities JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha, P Portugal, F Vasques 2023 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), 1-7 , 2023 2023 Citations: 2
CityZones: A geospatial multi-tier software tool to compute urban risk zones JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha, P Portugal, F Vasques SoftwareX 23, 101409 , 2023 2023 Citations: 15
Mapeamento e classificação da mancha urbana da cidade de Feira de Santana-BA com uso de imagens SENTINEL-2 e aprendizagem de máquina LS SILVA, JPJ PEIXOTO, B FERNANDEZ, TAS LIMA, DO SAMPAIO, ... Brazilian journal of development, Curitiba 9 (5), 17233-17246 , 2023 2023 Citations: 2
Optimizing the deployment of multi-sensors emergencies detection units based on the presence of response centers in smart cities JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha, P Portugal, F Vasques 2022 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), 1-7 , 2022 2022 Citations: 4
A survey of emergencies management systems in smart cities DG Costa, JPJ Peixoto, TC Jesus, P Portugal, F Vasques, E Rangel, ... IEEE Access 10, 61843-61872 , 2022 2022 Citations: 152
On the mathematical modelling of visual sensors when computing coverage metrics in camera-based sensing applications DG Costa, JPJ Peixoto 2021 IEEE International Conference on Automation/XXIV Congress of the … , 2021 2021
COVID‐19 pandemic: a review of smart cities initiatives to face new outbreaks DG Costa, JPJ Peixoto IET Smart Cities 2 (2), 64-73 , 2020 2020 Citations: 160
ClimIFBA: Um sistema de estação meteorológica usando Redes de Sensores Sem Fio em Valença JVS Silva, DP Santos, JPJ Peixoto, E Cambruzzi IV XBASE - Workshop de eXperimentos em Tecnologia - ERBASE 2020 , 2020 2020
An availability metric and optimization algorithms for simultaneous coverage of targets and areas by wireless visual sensor networks DG Costa, E Rangel, JPJ Peixoto, TC Jesus 2019 IEEE 17th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN) 1 … , 2019 2019 Citations: 9
MobSink: a Visual Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks Positioning Simulator JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa Simpósio Brasileiro de Sistemas Multimídia e Web (WebMedia), 103-107 , 2018 2018 Citations: 1
MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
COVID‐19 pandemic: a review of smart cities initiatives to face new outbreaks DG Costa, JPJ Peixoto IET Smart Cities 2 (2), 64-73 , 2020 2020 Citations: 160
A survey of emergencies management systems in smart cities DG Costa, JPJ Peixoto, TC Jesus, P Portugal, F Vasques, E Rangel, ... IEEE Access 10, 61843-61872 , 2022 2022 Citations: 152
Achieving sustainable smart cities through geospatial data-driven approaches DG Costa, JCN Bittencourt, F Oliveira, JPJ Peixoto, TC Jesus Sustainability 16 (2), 640 , 2024 2024 Citations: 101
Wireless visual sensor networks for smart city applications: A relevance-based approach for multiple sinks mobility JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa Future Generation Computer Systems 76, 51-62 , 2017 2017 Citations: 79
Twittersensing: An event-based approach for wireless sensor networks optimization exploiting social media in smart city applications DG Costa, C Duran-Faundez, DC Andrade, JB Rocha-Junior, ... Sensors 18 (4), 1080 , 2018 2018 Citations: 52
Exploiting geospatial data of connectivity and urban infrastructure for efficient positioning of emergency detection units in smart cities JPJ Peixoto, JCN Bittencourt, TC Jesus, DG Costa, P Portugal, F Vasques Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 107, 102054 , 2024 2024 Citations: 29
Flood-resilient smart cities: a data-driven risk assessment approach based on geographical risks and emergency response infrastructure JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, P Portugal, F Vasques Smart Cities 7 (1), 662-679 , 2024 2024 Citations: 26
The road to intelligent cities JCN Bittencourt, TC Jesus, JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa Smart Cities 8 (3), 77 , 2025 2025 Citations: 20
On the positioning of emergencies detection units based on geospatial data of urban response centres JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha, P Portugal, F Vasques Sustainable Cities and Society 97, 104713 , 2023 2023 Citations: 20
CityZones: A geospatial multi-tier software tool to compute urban risk zones JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha, P Portugal, F Vasques SoftwareX 23, 101409 , 2023 2023 Citations: 15
Achieving sustainable smart cities through geospatial data-driven approaches. Sustainability, 16 (2), 640 DG Costa, JCN Bittencourt, F Oliveira, JPJ Peixoto, TC Jesus 2024 Citations: 11
An availability metric and optimization algorithms for simultaneous coverage of targets and areas by wireless visual sensor networks DG Costa, E Rangel, JPJ Peixoto, TC Jesus 2019 IEEE 17th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN) 1 … , 2019 2019 Citations: 9
A geospatial dataset of urban infrastructure for emergency response in Portugal JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, P Portugal, F Vasques Data in brief 50, 109593 , 2023 2023 Citations: 8
Multiple mobile sinks in event-based wireless sensor networks exploiting traffic conditions in smart city applications ES Oliveira, JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, P Portugal 2018 IEEE 16th International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN … , 2018 2018 Citations: 8
QoE-aware multiple sinks mobility in wireless sensor networks JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa 2015 7th International Conference on New Technologies, Mobility and Security … , 2015 2015 Citations: 5
A geospatial multi-domain flood prediction tool exploiting open datasets JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, P Portugal, F Vasques Software Impacts 21, 100697 , 2024 2024 Citations: 4
Optimizing the deployment of multi-sensors emergencies detection units based on the presence of response centers in smart cities JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha, P Portugal, F Vasques 2022 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), 1-7 , 2022 2022 Citations: 4
Enhancing the computation of risk zones based on emergency-related infrastructure in smart cities JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa, WJS da Franca Rocha, P Portugal, F Vasques 2023 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), 1-7 , 2023 2023 Citations: 2
Mapeamento e classificação da mancha urbana da cidade de Feira de Santana-BA com uso de imagens SENTINEL-2 e aprendizagem de máquina LS SILVA, JPJ PEIXOTO, B FERNANDEZ, TAS LIMA, DO SAMPAIO, ... Brazilian journal of development, Curitiba 9 (5), 17233-17246 , 2023 2023 Citations: 2
MobSink: a Visual Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks Positioning Simulator JPJ Peixoto, DG Costa Simpósio Brasileiro de Sistemas Multimídia e Web (WebMedia), 103-107 , 2018 2018 Citations: 1