Looking for new markets and revenue streams, the future Smart Cities comprise a good opportunity for traditional actors of the telecommunication industry. This opportunity requires a new mindset among these actors that corresponds to re-positioning in the Smart City value chain. This means that, in order to play a role that can not be overlooked, Telecom actors should perform rather different blocks of the Smart City value chain compared to their traditional activity blocks in Mobile Telephony value chain. The Fifth Generation of mobile telecommunications technology (5G), by some actors, is then considered as the major ICT enabler for this new paradigm. This paper intends to highlight the role of Machine Type Communications (MTC) for enabling Smart Cities. In order to do so, we introduce the building blocks of Smart City followed by four use cases from Intelligent Transport Systems and Digital Built Environment. We use these cases as the proof of concept for defining the generic MTC activities in the context of Smart City. Eventually the paper introduces the MTC value network in the context of Smart City, based on the resources associated with the activities.

This paper presents the main results obtained from the application of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sea surface image analysis to the validation of the baroclinic internal wave 3D modeling in the Strait of Gibraltar and Algeciras Bay. Appropriate SAR images, showing the occurrence of short-wavelength oscillations in the sea surface in this area, were selected and compared with the modeled spatial fields of the M2free-surface elevation at the corresponding tidal stages, sometimes corrected for the consideration of neap or spring episodes. A good agreement between SAR images and model fields was found. The analysis of SAR images has showed to be a powerful tool for the study of the internal wave phenomena in the Strait of Gibraltar and Algeciras Bay, providing a holistic way for the validation of 3D model experiments in that matter.

The Backtracking Spiral Algorithm (BSA) is a coverage strategy for mobile robots based on the use of spiral filling paths; in order to assure the completeness, unvisited regions are marked and covered by backtracking mechanism. The BSA basic algorithm is designed to work in an environment modeled by a coarse-grain grid. BSA has been extended to cover, not only the free cells, but also the partially occupied ones. In this paper, the concepts and algorithms used to extend BSA are introduced. The ideas used to extend BSA are generic, thus a similar approach can be used to extend most of the grid-based coverage algorithms. Finally, some simulation results that demonstrate that BSA performs a complete coverage are presented.