# Agreement Technologies for Coordination in Smart Cities
## 2 Background
### Smart Cities  
There is a broad variety of domains where the potential of AT becomes apparent (see Part VII of [1]). In these domains, the choices and actions of a large number autonomous stakeholders need to be coordinated, and interactions can be regulated, by some sort of intelligent computing infrastructure [9], through some sort of institutions and institutional agents [14], or simply by strategically providing information in an environment with a significant level of uncertainty [15]. The advent of intelligent road infrastructures, with support for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, make _smart transportation_ a challenging field of application for AT, as it allows for a decentralised coordination of individually rational commuters. However, also the infrastructure of the electricity grid is evolving, allowing for bidirectional communication among energy producers and consumers. Therefore, in the near future, large numbers of households could coordinate and adapt their aggregate energy demand to the supply offered by utilities. AT can also be applied to the domain of _smart energy_ in order to integrate large numbers of small-scale producers of renewable energy into the grid infrastructure. In much the same way, _smart governance_ can make use of electronic institutions that support citizens, for instance, in the process of dispute resolution. The above are only a few examples of applications and domains that are often referred to under the umbrella of _smart cities_. Even though many definitions of that term exist [3], there is still no commonly agreed conception of a smart city. Still, we believe that authors tend to concur that a key challenge of smart cities is to improve the efficiency of the use of shared urban resources (both physical and informational) through the use of Information and communications technology (ICT), so as to improve the quality of life of citizens (see, e.g., [16; 17; 18]). Most of the world's urban areas have a limited space to expand, congestion and contamination seriously affect people's well-being, and a constant and reliable supply of energy is essential for almost all aspects of urban life. Therefore, ICT-based solutions can help to adequately disseminate information and effectively coordinate the urban services and supplies so as to make urban life more comfortable and efficient. While initially smart city research had a strong focus on ICT and \"smartness\", more recently, impact indicators of environmental, economic, or social _sustainability_ have also gained importance [19], so in present days the term _smart sustainable city_ is commonly used [20]. This notion underlines that, on the tack to making our cities smarter, preserving the \"needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social and environmental aspects\" is of foremost importance [21]. The Internet of Things (IoT) is often considered as crucial in the development of smart cities [22]. It is usually conceived as a global infrastructure, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) devices based on ICT. Recently, it has been moving from interesting proofs of concept to systemic support for urban processes that generates efficiency _at scale_ (see, e.g., [23]). With increasing connectivity between people, data, and things based on IoT, the challenge is how to manage and _coordinate_ the decisions of a myriad of decision makers in real time, considering the scarcity of resources and stochasticity in demand. We believe that there is a significant potential in applying AT outlined in Section 2.1, targeting methods and tools that support the formation and execution of agreements in large-scale open systems, in order to progress towards the vision of smart and sustainable cities mentioned above.