Urban spaces are the man made microcosms where a number of entities interact with each other to offer citizens a variety of services, for instance, buildings and infrastructure, transportation, utility, public safety, healthcare, education. The interplay between this multitude of connecting entities creates a complex system with dynamic human, material, and digital flows. By 2050 the world’s urban population is expected to grow by 72%. This steep growth creates an unprecedented urge for understanding cities to enable planning for the future societal, economical and environmental well being of their citizens. The increasing deployments of Internet of Thing (IoT) technologies and the rise of so-called “Sensored Cities” are opening up new avenues of research opportunities towards that future. Although, there have been a number of deployment of diverse IoT systems in the urban space, our understanding of these systems and their implications has just scratched the surface.
 
The First International Conference on IoT in Urban Space (Urb-IoT 2014) is a new conference that aims to explore these dynamics within the scope of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the new science of cities. The conference solicits original and inspiring research contributions from technology experts, researchers, designers, urban planners, and architects in academia and industry, and promises to offer a perfect forum to share knowledge, experiences, and best practices primarily in the area of:
 
Citizen Awareness and Engagement:  Methods and studies for citizen involvement through participatory sensing or crowd-sourcing for urban tasks, as well as behavioural change of the citizen through awareness.
Urban Analytics: Understanding the massive digital traces created by IoT in the urban landscape through big data analytics.
IoT Applications and Services in Urban Context: Urban technologies and applications that challenge the state of the art and benefit citizens, decision and policy makers, and urban planners.