Towards an open data based ICT reference architecture for smart cities

Given that ICT is at the heart of today's Smart City approach, it is of paramount importance to investigate concepts, which would enable the unification, the common understanding and the replication of ICT architectures/solutions/models across multiple cities. This unified and replicable approach can be best achieved by a very abstract model, aiming to capture the taxonomy and high-level structure of complex integrative ICT solutions for Smart Cities. The approach should be based on the idea of openness with respect to interfaces, software components and especially data, which is to be seen as the main ingredient of an ICT eco-system for Smart Cities. This paper presents an Open Data based ICT Reference Architecture for Smart Cities, which is developed within the EU project Triangulum.