Edge Computing: The Computing Infrastructure for the Smart Megacities of the Future

Future mega-cities are expected to be smart and integrate sensing, wireless communications, and artificial intelligence to offer innovative services to their citizens. This development has the potential to generate massive amounts of data which need to be processed in a cost-effective, scalable, and continuous manner. Fulfilling this requirement requires solutions that can offer the necessary computational infrastructure while meeting the constraints of cities (e.g., budget and energy). This paper contributes a research vision for using edge computing to deliver the computing infrastructure for emerging smart mega-cities. We present use cases, identify key requirements, and reflect on the current state-of-the-art. We also address edge server placements, which is a key challenge for the adoption of edge computing, demonstrating how it is needed to determine a scalable and effective deployment of edge nodes for satisfying the processing needs of smart mega-cities.