Combining SysML and Timed Coloured Petri Nets for Designing Smart City Applications

A smart city is an urban centre that integrates a variety of solutions to improve infrastructure performance and achieve sustainable urban development. Urban roads are a crucial infrastructure highly demanded by citizens and organisations interested in their deployment, performance, and safety. Urban traffic signal control is an important and challenging real-world problem that aims to monitor and improve traffic congestion. The deployment of traffic signals for vehicles or pedestrians at an intersection is a complex activity that changes constantly, so it is necessary to establish rules to control the flow of vehicles and pedestrians. Thus, this article describes the joint use of the SmartCitySysML, a profile proposed by the authors, with TCPN (Timed Coloured Petri Nets) to refine and formally model SysML diagrams specifying the internal behaviour, and then verify the developed model to prove behavioural properties of an urban traffic signal control system.