A Framework for the Development of Sustainable Smart Services for the Countryside

The recent spread of smart city technologies has enabled the
development of smart services and applications for citizens living in urban areas.
However, deploying similar services sustainably in decentralized zones is challeng-
ing, primarily due to the lack of a stable communication infrastructure. Toward this
goal, the use of secure and low-cost opportunistic networking technologies may
play a key role in supporting the development of services based on cooperative
(incentivized) communication models. We propose SUSY (SUstainable
smart Services for the countrYside), a general architecture for the development
of sustainable smart services. SUSY defines a set of high-level functionalities as
building blocks for creating smart services in rural environments. Environmental
sustainability is promoted through energy-efficient communication, decentralized
processing, and incentive-driven ecological monitoring. We will refer to this vision of
developing smart services in decentralized rural areas using the term “smart shires”.