Big data and visual analytics brought groundbreaking new capabilities to intelligence systems, allowing improved analytics and sense making on large amounts of data from many sources – especially when coupled with support for data integration between different databases, collaboration between analysts and information exchange between organizations.
Today, most smart cities and intelligent transport systems are implemented in a very centralized way: Sensors send their data to a central control center, where all data is processed at in the same place and control signals, for example for traffic signs are generated. This very centralized approach is not efficient and does not scale well.