Smart cities employ advanced technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to resolve urban challenges and improve the quality of life. However, the literature lacks one comprehensive synthesis of AI and IoT's joint contribution to building smart city literature and beyond. The study wanted to take a systematic review to find the role and combined roles of AI and IoT.Researchers conducted research by following PRIMA guidelines, mostly on applications of AI and IoT in building smarter cities by taking many research papers as their sources. A total of 30 relevant peer-reviewed studies were identified from an initial pool of about 16,600 records generated primarily from four biggest databases: Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Explore, and ProQuest, including related articles of the identified papers AI and IoT together play a vital role in six significant domains. AI, especially the Internet of Things (IoT), helps provide a broader data set in real-time. Whenever the AI techniques are set, it collects data and finds results in it to optimize and automate the city operations to improve the city's sustainability and public services. The most common domains of the application of Riot are: Data-driven urban service efficiency Energy efficiency and environmental sustainability Efficacy in smart transportation and traffic management to provide smart surveillance and avoid future cybersecurity threats. Urban planning also requires decision support.
hamzah et al. (2026) studied this question.