Journal
Query Interface for Smart City Internet of Things Data Marketplaces: A Case Study
ACM Transactions on Internet of Things (TIOT), Volume 4, Issue 3, Article 19, pp. 1–39.
EPSRC Researcher in Residence
Quarriable Smart City Data Markets
(2019-2021)
Java
OpenHAB
Semantic Techniques
Smart City
Query Interfaces
Internet of Things (IoT)
Infrastructure / Systems (IS)
Search and Discovery (SD)
Privacy (P)
Project Overview
Cities increasingly deploy sensors through public, private, and academic initiatives, generating vast quantities of IoT data that hold significant value for urban planning, service delivery, and commercial applications. Data marketplaces enable third parties to purchase this sensor data, yet existing approaches rely on pre-defined data bundles that raise pricing friction, excessive bandwidth consumption, and information overload challenges for consumers who may only need specific subsets of the available data. This project proposes semantic techniques that assemble on-demand, queryable data offerings tailored to each consumer's specific task requirements. Rather than purchasing entire datasets, consumers can express fine-grained queries that specify the type, granularity, temporal range, and spatial scope of the IoT data they need, and the marketplace dynamically composes a bespoke data product in response.
The approach leverages semantic annotations and ontological descriptions of sensor capabilities to match consumer requests with available data sources across heterogeneous smart city deployments. The research demonstrates this query-driven marketplace model within the SynchroniCity IoT data marketplace, implementing interfaces built on Java and OpenHAB that enable structured data discovery and procurement.
Funded by EPSRC through a Researcher in Residence scheme with Digital Catapult, the project contributes to understanding how smart city data can be traded more efficiently. By enabling precise, on-demand data procurement, the approach reduces bandwidth waste and pricing barriers for data consumers while supporting more targeted urban planning and service delivery applications.
Team
Charith Perera
Hamed Hamed