Brazilian Smart Cities Through the Lens of Information Technology: A Systematic Mapping Study
Resumo
Research Context: The densification of urban populations has posed significant challenges to the scientific community, public administrators, and the private sector, demanding innovative and sustainable solutions to enhance the quality of life in these environments. Smart cities utilise information technology resources to harness data, applications, and devices, thereby enabling intelligent and integrated services across diverse urban contexts. Scientific and/or Practical Problem: Despite extensive research work across various application domains, there is a lack of recent and comprehensive studies that systematically examine the application of information technology within the Brazilian smart city research community. Proposed Solution and/or Analysis: This paper aims to map and categorise studies conducted by Brazilian authors that explore the use of information technology to deliver solutions in smart city scenarios, based on the indicator dimensions defined by the ABNT NBR ISO 37122 standard. Related IS Theory: The study is grounded in General Systems Theory, as the categorisation of primary studies facilitates a broader and more structured understanding of this research domain. Research Method: A systematic mapping of the literature was undertaken using the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, encompassing papers published between 2014 and 2024. Summary of Results: From a total of 1,041 unique publications identified during the search phase, 642 were selected and categorised. The findings reveal the thematic and contextual concentration of studies, the temporal evolution of publications by type, the national institutions and researchers with the greatest influence, as well as the principal venues for disseminating research outcomes. Contributions and Impact to IS area: This work offers a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of smart city approaches from the standpoint of information technology, contributing to the advancement of knowledge within the Brazilian research landscape.
Referências
Bernardini, F. C., Viterbo, J., Vianna, D. S., Martins, C. B., de Medeiros, A. P., Meza, E. B. M., Moratori, P. B., and Bastos, C. A. M. (2017). General Features of Smart City Approaches from Information Systems Perspective and Its Challenges, chapter 3, pages 25–40. Brazilian Computer Society.
Bittencourt, J. C. N., Costa, D. G., Portugal, P., and Vasques, F. (2024). A survey on adaptive smart urban systems. IEEE Access, 12:102826—-102850.
BRASIL, Ministério do Desenvolvimento Regional (2020). Carta brasileira para cidades inteligentes. [link]. Accessed: July 2025.
BRASIL, Ministério dos Transportes (2025). Secretaria Nacional de Trânsito – Frota de Veículos 2025. [link]. Accessed: August 2025.
Cacho, N., Lopes, F., Cavalcante, E., and Santos, I. (2016). A smart city initiative: The case of natal. In IEEE International Smart Cities Conference, pages 1–7.
Cervantes, C., Poplade, D., Lima, M. N., and dos Santos, A. L. (2015). Detection of sinkhole attacks for supporting secure routing on 6LoWPAN for internet of things. In International Symposium on Integrated Network Management, pages 606—-611.
Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (2025). 19º Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. São Paulo.
Júnior, F., Amin, A., Braide, E., and Cathedral, H. (2021). Cidades inteligentes: Uma abordagem humana e sustentável, volume 12 of Série Estudos Estratégicos. Câmara dos Deputados, Brasília (DF).
Khan, S., Muhammad, K., Mumtaz, S., Baik, S. W., and de Albuquerque, V. H. C. (2019). Energy-efficient deep CNN for smoke detection in foggy iot environment. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 6(6):9237—-9245.
Kitchenham, B. A. and Charters, S. (2007). Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. Technical report, School of Computer Science and Mathematics, Keele University, UK.
Machado, L. R., da Silva, F. J., Barradas, A., Viana, D., Teles, A., and Coutinho, L. (2020). Product Quality for Smart Cities Applications: A Mapping Study. In Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems, pages 1–8.
Ochoa, W. A. A., Neto, A. I., Junior, P. C. V., Calabokis, O. P., and Ballesteros-Ballesteros, V. (2024). The theory of complexity and sustainable urban development: A systematic literature review. Sustainability, 17(1):3.
Pardini, K., Rodrigues, J. J. P. C., Diallo, O., Das, A. K., de Albuquerque, V. H. C., and Kozlov, S. A. (2020). A smart waste management solution geared towards citizens. Sensors, 20(8):2380.
Petersen, K., Feldt, R., Mujtaba, S., and Mattsson, M. (2008). Systematic mapping studies in software engineering. In International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, pages 68–77.
Petersen, K., Vakkalanka, S., and Kuzniarz, L. (2015). Guidelines for conducting systematic mapping studies in software engineering: An update. Information and Software Technology, 64(100):1—-18.
Pinto, G. P., Donta, P. K., Dustdar, S., and Prazeres, C. (2024). A systematic review on privacy-aware iot personal data stores. Sensors, 24(7):2197.
Runeson, P. and Höst, M. (2009). Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empirical Software Engineering, 14:131–164.
Silva, T. H. F. E., Souza, V. C. O., and Paula, M. M. V. (2021). A Systematic Mapping of Literature on the Use of Geotechnologies in Smart Cities in the Government area. In Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems, pages 1–8.
Silva, T. P. d., Batista, T. V., Lopes, F., Neto, A. R., Delicato, F. C., Pires, P. F., and da Rocha, A. R. (2022). Fog Computing Platforms for Smart City Applications: A Survey. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, 22(4):1–32.
Souza, L. S., Neto, J. R. D. A., Melo, T. J. S., dos Santos Soares, M., Rocha, F. G., and do Nascimento, R. P. C. (2020). An investigation into technology solutions for urban public monitoring through ubiquitous devices in the context of smart cities. In Euro-American Conference on Telematics and Information Systems, pages 1–5.
Sowmiya, R. and Velavan, M. (2025). Leveraging Emerging Technologies for Inclusive and Sustainable Urban Governance: A Framework for Smart Cities in Developing Environments, pages 111—-136. IGI Global.
Ullah, A., Anwar, S. M., Li, J., Nadeem, L., Mahmood, T., Rehman, A., and Saba, T. (2023). Smart cities: the role of internet of things and machine learning in realizing a data-centric smart environment. Complex & Intelligent Systems, 10(1):1607—-1637.
United Nations (2024). World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results. United Nations, New York, NY.
United Nations and United Nations Population Fund (2007). State of world population 2007. United Nations Population Fund, New York, NY.
Vora, J., Nayyar, A., Tanwar, S., Tyagi, S., Kumar, N., Obaidat, M. S., and Rodrigues, J. J. P. C. (2018). BHEEM: A blockchain-based framework for securing electronic health records. In IEEE Globecom Workshops.
