Leveraging big data in smart cities: A systematic review

Abstract Recently, the notion of a smart city, which includes smart well‐being, smart transit, and smart society, has attracted much attention due to its impact on people's quality of living. Data in smart cities are characterized by variety, velocity, volume, value, and veracity that are the well‐known characteristics of big data. The fast pace expanding of IoT devices and sensors in smart cities generates a huge volume of data that can help decision‐makers and managers in city management. The aim of this article is to wholly and systematically review big data handling approaches in smart cities, in which we analyze research efforts published between 2013 and February 2021, where these techniques are categorized based on their algorithms and architectures. Further, the main ideas, evaluation techniques, tools, evaluation metrics, algorithm types, advantages, and disadvantages are explored. Additionally, essential evaluation factors are introduced in which scalability and availability by 16%, time by 15% and accuracy by 11% are more in focus, and finally, some of the challenges, open issues, and future trends that are valuable for further research are suggested in big data handling approaches in smart cities.