Block-based realtime big-data processing for smart cities

Administrators and operators of next generation cities will likely be required to exhibit a good understanding of technical features, data issues, and complex information that, up to few years ago, were quite far from day-to-day administration tasks. In the smart city era, the increased attention to data harvested from the city fosters a more informed approach to city administration, requiring involved operators to drive, direct and orient technological processes in the city, more effectively. Such an increasing need, requires tools and platforms that can easily and effectively be controlled by non-technical people. In this paper, an approach for enabling “easier” composition of real-time data processing pipelines in smart-cities is presented, exploiting a block-based design approach, similar to the one adopted in the Scratch programming language for elementary school students. Language primitives and corresponding REST representations are discussed, showing the viability of the approach. Future works will include experimentation of the proposed concepts in the context of a smart city pilot in Turin, Italy.