Architecture Requirements for Modelling Alignment in Smart City Architectures

Background

Today’s dynamics urban environment brings both opportunities and challenges for municipalities due to the rapid advance of information technologies (IT). The application of new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cyber-physical systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other recent technological innovations in Smart Cities makes the delivery of public services more efficient. Smart cities are innovative cities where IT play a significant role to deliver services and improve the quality of life. Stakeholders demand a constant development and integration of services from different domains (e.g. mobility, security, transportation, etc.) in dynamic and autonomous environments. These cities require a coherent and structured approach in order to digitally enable public services transformation and innovation.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an approach that can support the digital transformation in Smart Cities. Concepts, layers, and modelling approaches of EA provide a common framework for stakeholders and a guide to model different city concerns. EA addresses the alignment between different aspects of organizations by adopting a general perspective on the overall architecture. Enterprise Modelling (EM) is the practice of creating and using integrated EA models to capture the main aspects of organizations. The Open Group propose ArchiMate as an EM language dedicated to TOGAF. The ArchiMate language supports the business and IT alignment by providing the modelling concepts to describe the relationships between architectural layers (e.g. business, application, and technology).

Problem Statement

Aligning architectural layers in smart city architectures is a key task which is needed in order to model desired services, achieve city goals, and meet the needs of citizens. This is challenging because services should respond to the concerns of multiple stakeholders and meet the quality factors of heterogeneous systems. The ArchiMate language provides means to link different architectural layers in order to support the business-IT alignment. Nevertheless, it does not provide an accurate form for expressing the specific concepts of smart cities which are required in order to align the service and information layers. This lack of alignment causes smart city architectures to fail to guide the modelling of desired services and leads to offered services not meeting the needs of citizens.

This paper proposes to extend the ArchiMate language to address the recognised problem. We define the requirements of this extension for modelling the alignment of services and information layers in smart city architectures. For this purpose, this article follows a modelling method engineering and a structured literature review. The identified requirements are used to derive the architectural concepts, their attributes, relationships, and constraints of the ArchiMate extension. Furthermore, this paper presents the design considerations to guarantee the consistency and compatibility of the new elements with the ArchiMate language. This extension will be used to create coherent and integrated models to guide the modelling of services. We envisage researchers and practitioners using the extended ArchiMate language as a comprehensive guide to make more effective modelling decisions in smart city contexts.