A NOVEL SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE (SOA) TO SECURE SERVICES IN E-CITY

International Journal of Security, Privacy and Trust Management (IJSPTM) Vol 2, No 6, December 2013

A NOVEL SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE
(SOA) TO SECURE SERVICES IN E-CITY
Sajjad Hashemi1, Seyyed Yasser Hashemi2 and Khalil Monfaredi3
1

Department of Computer Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad
University, West Azarbayjan, Iran
2
Department of Computer Engineering, miyandoab Branch, Islamic Azad University,
miyandoab, Iran
3
Engineering Faculty, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Azarbaijan
Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Islamic Republic of Iran

ABSTRACT
Many cities in the world have moved toward being e-city using IT and there are some who have
implemented it and or seeking out to make it operational. However, experience shows that implementation
of e-city faces Challenges which the effectiveness of e-city, improvement of provided services and security
are the most important part of these challenges. Today, for realization of a perfect e-city, to overcome
faced challenges Such as security issues is an urgent need. Considering that e-city consists of multiple
information systems, it’s the most important challenge to create integration between these systems and
provide its security which service oriented architecture as a computational model and an approach for data
integration could largely overcome these problems. In this paper through studying challenges of
information systems in e-city layers and with concentrating on advantages of service oriented architecture,
a new architecture to improve the security of e-city’s systems and their provided services and also
overcoming the challenges of information systems has been proposed.

KEYWORDS
E-city, service-oriented architecture, information systems, integration, security as a service, Participation
strategies

1. INTRODUCTION
In today's world, the rapid growth of cities and it‘s outpacing from managerial abilities and
sources have hugely challenged them in providing adequate city services. According to the
development of information and communication technology (ICT), governments are obliged to
use of these technologies properly to remain in global competitiveness board and reduce costs and
unemployment in their communities [1, 2].
There is no comprehensive and complete definition for e-city. Dr. Jalali One of the renowned
experts in the field of IT. His definition of an e-city: "a city which can provide different city
services, including government services, municipality services and the private sector in the areas
of economic, social and cultural in 24 hours of a day and 7 days a week with appropriate quality
by using information and communication technology"[1]. In other words, e-city is a project that
focuses on improvement and updating of the engineering networks to create an information public
space at a particular area [2, 3, and 4]. For maximum use and development of e-city, offer a
DOI : 10.5121/ijsptm.2013.2602

23


framework for the architecture of e-city is one of the most fundamental and most basic tasks [3]
and includes of important sectors such as transforming from present state to an appropriate state
that are general polices and lines of e-city development [5].
The most important stages in e-city development are safety and integration that makes the setting
up effective communication with users to respond to questions and their needs possible. Different
methods have been suggested to integrate of information systems in e-city [2, 3]. SOA is the most
important approach used in this field and is a standard framework which in it, the services are
creation, development and managed. Also, service-oriented architecture aim is the create an
integrated and safety interface for city users and increase of agility of IT in order to rapid
reaction to business changes [2, 6, 7]. Using this architecture, we can reduce the development
costs of new elements and expansion of existing components. So, will increase speed, security
and reliability of services and will recover integrated management of city network [4].
Continue on with this paper studying information systems, e-city architecture and challenges of
information systems in e-city layers and with focuses on the benefits of SOA, a new architecture
for improvement the security of e-city’s systems, their provided services and increase the
participation and also overcoming the challenges related to information systems has been
proposed.

2. INFORMATION SYSTEMS
The IT architecture is an integrated framework for the pro-motion or maintenance of existing
technology and acquiring new information technology to achieve the organization’s strategic
goals and management of its resources [2, 8]. The IT architecture which is also known as
enterprise architecture is looking to provide an organizational framework for the coordination and
alignment of all activities and elements of information technology within an organization. NIST
Institute for IT architecture has introduced a 5-layer model which includes: Business architecture
layer, information architecture layer, application or information systems architecture layer, data
architecture layer and Technology architectures layer [2, 9]
•

•

•

•
•

Business architecture layer: The order of this layer in an organization is missions,
goals, perspective and its long-term strategies which in fact express existential cause of
organization and the way that achieves its goals.
Information architecture layer: Organization needs information and information
functions to achieve their goals. In this layer, elements and information resources of an
organization is being discussed. In other words, in this layer map of organization’s proper
information flow, is determined to achieve goals and strategies formulated in the previous
layer.
Application or information systems architecture layer: This layer will determine the
number and types of proper applications which makes possible producing and accessing
to information, to achieve the previous layer’s information architecture.
Data architecture layer: In this layer content and form of organization database,
patterns of storage and their ex-change will be discussed.
Technology architectures layer: In lowest layer necessary hardware, software and
communication environment for the information systems implementation and information
flow will be determined. Elements of this layer are exposed to the most rapid changes and
transformation.

According to the model proposed by NIST, information systems fit in application architecture
layer [2]. These systems are responsible for tasks such as information gathering, pro-cessing,
24


storage, analysis and distribution of information. Such systems make the effective use of IT in an
organization possible [10, 11].

2.1 Benefits of information systems
TABLE1. BENEFITS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS [2, 10, 11]:
Greater participation in decision-making
Increase the speed and quality of decision-making
Increasing speed in identifying issues
Establishing effective communication between the organization units as well as other organizations
Increasing the speed, accuracy and functionality
Improving the effectiveness and efficiency
Get used for various applications in the enterprise
Storage capability, recovery, analysis and information re-sources share

3. E-CITY
Electronics City (e-city) is a definition for expressing kind of services that can be offered to
citizens of a community with modern e-services [1]. E-city is known as a structure for the
provision of e-services to citizens. Which are consists of layers; Stakeholders, service providing
channels, e-services and technology platforms [12]. The highest layer consists of industries,
citizens and even governmental institutions. The next layer that acts as a channel of
communication can also include a variety of browsers and types of telecom equipment. The
electronic services layer consists of set of e-services such as electronic learning, electronic
shop, electronic banking, electronic insurance. Platforms which provider e-services are located
in last layer. These platforms are distributed in different organizations and locations, and each
one is designed with specific technology on the other hand they are capable of interaction and
incorporation with other platforms [2, 3, 12].
Another of major issue in implementing e-city is type of services. Type of service must be
appropriate to the circumstances of a city, because each city has different characteristics. Its need
to establish basic policies on the basis of policies conducted by other organs, to avoid wasting
resources and systems should be implemented with high integrity [13]. This issue causes that
government to develop their services with detailed plan and according to actual needs of cities.
The introduced service will be integrated and the lifetime of the projects will be increased [2, 3].

3.1 Reasons of E-city implementation
The main reason for the investment and use of various technologies in the delivery of services to
citizens is believe that city and managerial problems have inverse relation with citizens'
awareness increase [1]. In Table 2 we can point to E-city achievements based on this important
topic [1].

25

TABLE2. REASONS OF E-CITY IMPLEMENTATION
Improve in management sight
Integrated information system

Optimizing information flow
Suppliers’ support and relations
Change in organizational culture

Decrease of fuel consumption
Flexibility of organizational processes

Increasing customers bargaining power
Correct perception about customer's demand

Decrease of necessary traffic, number of car accidents and their casualties

E-city is comprised of multiple information systems and one of the main challenges is the
providing architecture for the interaction between information systems, increase security and
integration of these systems to provide appropriate quality services to the users [2]. Therefore,
according to service-oriented architecture capabilities as a computational model and an approach
for integrating information systems and the interaction between them continue on with overview
of service-oriented architecture, we propose a new service-oriented architecture to overcome the
challenges of the security of information systems.

4. SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE
SOA is lightness of design, which focuses on all aspects of implementation and using business
services during their life cycle. It also is a way to prepare the required infrastructure for the
exchange of information among different applications on any OS and programming language
they’ve been created [2, 14]. SOA is a standard framework and its goal is increase of IT agility to
rapidly respond to business changes and create an integrated interface for city users [6, 7]. Using
this architecture can decrease the cost of developing new elements as well as the existing
elements development and also speed, reliability and security will be increased and will improve
the integrated management of city network [4].
The main goal of the provide a SOA is to cope with challenges such as the lack of integration and
interaction of information systems in organizations and lack of the IT’s ability to adapt the
business’s changes speed according to the organizations constant need to changing of processes
and services, difference among experts of IT and experts of business in views [2, 3].
TABLE3: THE MOST IMPORTANT GOALS OF OFFERING A SOA [2, 3, 15]

Upgrade IT coordinated with business
Improvement of the interaction between organizations
Flexibility of IT to respond to on-going changes in business
Standardization and integration of platforms and IT substructures
Flexibility of software components and improvement of the level of reuse
26


5. THE PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
As we noticed, service oriented architecture is a good approach to create interaction and
integration in e-city. But some challenges are hindering the implementation of e-city that the most
important was stated security issues. Now we will propose an architecture which through
implementation of e-city with it, large extent of security issues and challenges associated with it
can be solved and with the notion fairly comfortable benefit from the services offered by e-city.

FIGURE 1. THE PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE TO SECURE SERVICES IN E-CITY

According to the architecture needs, each of the layers is responsible to the following tasks:
1) Stakeholder layer: provides APP services for users, organizations, citizens, etc.
2) Participation strategies Layer: This layer has been placed for strategies to get
maximum attraction of citizens and explaining policies to participate in E-city.
3) Communication channels layer: this layer is placed to create a connecting bridge for
accessing provided services by e-city, that can includes variety browsers and or
telecommunication equipment connectable to the internet.

27


4) Electronic data services layer: this layer provides a broad collection of e-services such
as e-banking, e-learning, e-insurance, integration of necessary infrastructure for
application and data transfer to ultimate goal in network.
5) Security as a Service layer: this layer is to establish a secure and provide secure and
reliable services to the users, in fact security as a service means that service applicant depending on the type of service and Concurrent with the re-quested service will request
required Level security as a separate service. In simple words, based on real-world
systems where necessary security is provided in accordance with the individual or
organization position, here also depending on how important the requested service is,
naturally it will need higher security to protect data. For example, a service requested by
the user for banking needs stronger security compared to a service requested to perform
simple administrative matters.
6) Systems and Servers layer: this layer is used to organize and process information,
management of information flow and Services of data systems, City data and allocate
them to knowledge base.
7) Information and network infrastructure layer: this layer is used to provide
information and city systems. In fact, raw data will be given to upper layer by this layer
to process and allocate them to knowledge base

6. CONCLUSIONS
Most of the activities are conducted over the Internet and electronic systems in e-cities and its
purpose is citizens' access to all required information in entire week and at all hours and in a
stable, reliable and confidential manner. The main challenge in architecture presentation for ecities is to create interaction between information systems and create a trusted and secure
environment. On this basis, and to overcome outlined challenges, we presented a 7 layered
architecture, including
stakeholders layer, participation strategies layer, channels of
communication layer, electronic data services layer, security as a service layer, systems and
servers layer and information and network infrastructure layer. The proposed architecture can
partially overcome the problems mentioned and provides a secure and interoperable environment
for e-city information systems. Also, the success of any system depends the number of users and
the efficiency of the system. To increase participation in a system, elements of satisfying of users
should be provided. Therefore, in the architecture that we proposed in a discrete layer we put
elements such as the independency of the services during calls by various stakeholders, reuse of
municipal services and service composition, transparency of inputs and outputs, easy
identification of services possibility, stakeholders’ emphasis on quality control instead of the
process control, hide the internal complexity from stakeholders, collaboration of a city’s different
information systems to increase the participation and satisfaction of users of the system.

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Authors
Sajjad Hashemi is a M.Sc. student in Computer Engineering Department, Science and
Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, West Azerbaijan, Iran. His interested research
areas are in the cloud computing, e-government.

Seyyed Yasser Hashemi is Faculty member of the Department of Computer Engineering,
miyandoab Branch, Islamic Azad University, miyandoab, Iran. His interested research areas
are in the image processing, cloud computing, e-government.

Dr. Khalil Monfaredi received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and PhD degrees from Tabriz University
in 2001 and Iran University of Science and Technology in 2003 and 2011, respectively. He
was with Electronic Research Center Group, during 2001 to 2011 and was also an academic
staff with Islamic Azad University, Miyandoab Branch from 2006 to 2012. He served as the
Research and Educational Assistant of Miyandoab Sama College from 2009 to 2011 and
vice chancellor during 2011 to 2012. He is currently with Electrical and Electronics
Engineering Faculty, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz 5375171379, Islamic Republic of Iran.
He is the author or coauthor of more than thirty national and international papers and also collaborated in
several research projects. He is also the founder of electronic department in Islamic Azad UniversityMiyandoab Branch and was the chairman of 2010 electronic and computer scientific conference
(ECSC2010) held in Islamic Azad University, Miyandoab Branch. His current research interests include
current mode integrated circuit design, low voltage, low power circuit and systems and analog
microelectronics, data converters, image processing, cloud computing, e-government.

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A NOVEL SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE (SOA) TO SECURE SERVICES IN E-CITY

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