Rapid urban population growth challenges cities and sustainable urban development. Despite the effort deployed with conventional urban design, the current solutions are unable to significantly respond to existing challenges. The concept of smart city (SC) has been gaining popularity and cities have developed strong interest for transformation into SCs. However, given that a city is both a complex system of systems and a dynamic complex environment, achieving a state of SC can be challenging. Urban transformation into smart city has been straggling and has shown contrasting and disconnected views. Many studies have covered the design and modelling of an SC, but their focus has been mostly thematic and lack an integrated view of a smart city system. This study presents a methodology helped by a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach and Systems Modelling Language (SysML) to develop a model of an integrated SC system. The model brings all subsystems to operate together in one system and focuses on the information perspective of a city system. Three scenarios are presented to illustrate how an integrated information platform can be a gateway and easy access to information in an SC system, as well as a starting point towards modelling an integrated SC system.

Over the past few years, the ‘‘smart city’’ concept has emerged as a new trend to answer challenging issues related to urban development. Transformation of a city system into a smart system is meant to improve the quality of life for its people and their way of living, its environment, economy, transport, and governance. Due to benefits associated with the concept of the smart city and associated implementation challenges, traditional city systems have been undergoing transformation into smart city systems. However, observed approaches of transformation presented disconnected and fragmented city systems that usually hamper the interaction of city subsystems with the efficient and environmentally friendly urban environment. This work emphasizes the systematic view of a city system and proposes a novel method of smart city system integration. The results of our study show that in a smart city environment, where ecosystem services are valorised, air pollution emitted by vehicles can be removed by taking into consideration information related to air pollution reduction. A case study is presented to demonstrate that, with an integrated system, information outputs on travel decisions are different and more valuable. The case study explores the operability of the system, its limitations, and potential future improvements.

A city is a very complex area with complex governing bodies and a number of decision makers. More often, cities are engines of economic development and are attractive places for people seeking employment and better quality of living [1]. As a consequence, cities are now facing a growing urban population which imposes stresses on urban quality of life and the environment. Among the major challenges faced by cities around the world, urban population growth is at the forefront as it is expected that future cities will be home for more than 70% of the global population by 2050. Other associated challenges include traffic congestion, environmental degradation, security, level of quality of public services, and effective resources management. To ensure sustainable development of cities with such a boom of urbanisation, cities around the world are embracing technology and adopting smart cities concept following the recorded development of information and communication technologies and internet of things. However, the literature [2] shows that the concept of smart cities is not being approached efficiently. A smart city is a system of subsystems and should be approached as a whole as opposed to infusing technology into subsystems one by one. To achieve this, there is a requirement of a standard platform to integrate all the subsystems of a smart city system. This work proposes a holistic model which integrates all the subsystems of a smart city system. The proposed model is based on systems engineering approach and Systems Engineering Modelling Language (SysML) is adapted as a potential modelling language. It is a general purpose visual modelling language for Systems Engineering applications and for complex systems such as smart cities and can handle better complexity and challenges such as documentation, communication, and management.