Multi-Access Edge Computing for Urban Informatics

Rapid development in the fields of emerging technologies like 5G communications, Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIOT) and edge-cloud-mobile computing has opened up a wide range of possibilities towards developing the next-generation of smart cities. Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) as an integrated part of ETSI standard 5G architecture promises better user experience, resource utilization and application performance by bringing computing and storage facilities at the edge of the network, closer to the data sources. Urban informatics, which is used for better realization of future smart cities, can leverage the power of MEC for real-time analysis and inference from massive amount of multimodal sensory data. This tutorial focuses on the scope and capabilities of MEC in the broad domain of urban informatics. We will discuss MEC fundamentals including the architecture, major technology enablers like SDN, NFV, etc., specific challenges covering resource management, offloading, caching and migration of content/task, and future research directions. Then we plan to motivate the audience with the relevance and scope of further research in urban computing and urban informatics giving special attention to urban information systems (UIS). The premise of UIS management revolves around sensing, forwarding, and processing of real-time multimodal sensory data at the network edge. Finally we bring in the challenges associated with MEC based data management for different application verticals covering health, pollution, transportation, governance and so on with a specific case study in the connected/autonomous vehicles domain.