Smart City as System of Systems: Subject of study ‐ Vertical Farming and Autonomous Driving in Smart city

• Published in: INCOSE International Symposium Vol. 29; no. S1; pp. 505 - 517
• Main Author: Kulkarni, Kunal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.12.2019
• ISSN: 2334-5837; 2334-5837
• DOI: 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2019.00703.x

“Growth is inevitable and desirable, but destruction of community character is not. The question is not whether your part of the world is going to change. The question is how.” – Edward T. McMahon The above quote fits perfectly on rapid urbanization today. With swift technological growth and enhancement in associated services, we are moving in future of digitalization and connectivity. At the same time, this transition must be safe and secure. This paper specifically talks about applying system architecture concepts to understand complexity of smart city as System of systems with focus on wildly important elements – Food and Commutation, summarizing problem, need and possible challenges. WHAT – To understand role of autonomous driving and vertical farming in concept of smart city, by doing logical decomposition and dependency analysis using systems engineering techniques. WHY – We need to make our cities smart to bring growth, ease, comfort, speed, safety and security of operations in balanced socio‐economic environment. By doing this we can take proactive actions instead of reacting to situations. HOW – First, Smart city system need to be decomposed into subsystems based on functionality of the system. Now identify stakeholders for each subsystem and map their needs to functions and forms. This paper takes example of two subsystems – Vertical Farming and Autonomous City Drive to demonstrate decomposition and architectural decision on a subsystem. This paper contrast on how increasing commutation problem in growing cities be managed by systematically planning electric autonomous vehicles to provide safe, fast, comfortable and economical city ride. Along with that, this paper also encircles need of vertical farming in growing cities to produce variety of crops, all year long, without soil. This will bring time to market down and will reduce overall carbon footprint. Advantages and challenges in adoption of above two subsystem in context of smart city are in scope of this paper.