Software Architecture for Smart Cities: A Systematic Literature Review of Quality Attributes

Background: A Smart City leverages on Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), and several other infrastructures for improvement of citizens’ quality of life, efficiency in managing all aspects of city’s operations and services. Having the right architecture in developing smart city applications is paramount to achieving the minimum set of Quality Attributes (QAs). Several architectures and frameworks were proposed that are aimed at satisfying different set of QAs. However, there is a little or no effort in developing a product line architecture that satisfies all QAs that are considered common and essential to smart city applications. Aim: This work is aimed at reviewing existing smart city architectures and frameworks to identify the QAs each of these architecture and frameworks satisfy, categorizing these QAs into high level QAs as well as proposing key QAs for smart city. Method: To achieve this objective, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted and two research questions (RQs) were defined, and the result was analyzed using descriptive statistics techniques. Results: Sixteen (16) architectures/frameworks were reviewed, and identified eight (8) high-level QAs, among which four (4) were proposed as key Quality Attributes for smart city.