Future Smart Connected Communities to Fight COVID-19 Outbreak

Internet of Things (IoT) has grown rapidly in the last decade and continues to develop in terms of dimension and complexity, offering a wide range of devices to support a diverse set of applications. With ubiquitous Internet, connected sensors and actuators, networking and communication technology along with artificial intelligence (AI), smart cyber-physical systems (CPS) provide services rendering assistance and convenience to humans in their daily lives. However, the recent outbreak of COVID-19 (also known as coronavirus) pandemic has exposed and highlighted the limitations of contemporary technological deployments especially to contain the widespread of this disease. IoT and smart connected technologies together with data-driven applications can play a crucial role not only in the prevention, mitigation, or continuous remote monitoring of patients, but also enable prompt enforcement of guidelines, rules, and administrative orders to contain such future outbreaks. In this paper, we envision an IoT and data-supported connected ecosystem designed for intelligent monitoring, pro-active prevention and control, and mitigation of COVID-19 and similar epidemics. We propose a gamut of synergistic applications and technology systems for various smart infrastructures including E-Health, smart home, supply chain management, transportation, and city, which will work in convergence to develop ‘pandemic-proof’ future smart communities. We also present a generalized cloud-enabled IoT implementation framework along with scientific solutions, which can be adapted and extended to deploy smart connected ecosystem scenarios using widely used Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructures. In addition, we also implement an E-Health RPM use case scenario to demonstrate the need and practicality for smart connected communities. Finally, we highlight challenges and research directions that need thoughtful consideration and across the board cooperation among stakeholders to build resilient communities against future pandemics.