A Framework for the Development of Sustainable Smart Services for the Countryside

The recent spread of smart city technologies has enabled the development of smart services and applications for citizens living in urban areas. However, deploying similar services sustainably in decentralized zones is challenging, primarily due to the lack of a stable communication infrastructure. Toward this goal, the use of secure and low-cost opportunistic networking technologies may play a key role in supporting the development of services based on cooperative (incentivized) communication models. We propose SUSY (SUstainable smart Services for the countrYside), a general architecture for the development of sustainable smart services. SUSY defines a set of high-level functionalities as building blocks for creating smart services in rural environments. Environmental sustainability is promoted through energy-efficient communication, decentralized processing, and incentive-driven ecological monitoring. We will refer to this vision of developing smart services in decentralized rural areas using the term ``smart shires''.