AIoT at the Frontline of Climate Change Management: Enabling Resilient, Adaptive, and Sustainable Smart Cities

The convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), known as Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), has emerged as a transformative paradigm for enabling intelligent, data-driven, and context-aware decision-making in urban environments to reduce the carbon footprint of mobility and industry. This review examines the conceptual foundations, and state-of-the-art developments of AIoT, with a particular emphasis on its applications in smart cities and its relevance to climate change management. AIoT integrates sensing, connectivity, and intelligent analytics to provide optimized solutions in transportation systems, energy management, waste collection, and environmental monitoring, directly influencing urban sustainability. Beyond urban efficiency, AIoT can play a critical role in addressing the global challenges and management of climate change by (a) precise measurements and autonomously remote monitoring; (b) real-time optimization in renewable energy distribution; and (c) developing prediction models for early warning of climate disasters. This paper performs a literature review and bibliometric analysis to identify the current landscape of AIoT research in smart city contexts. Over 1885 articles from Web of Sciences and over 1854 from Scopus databases, published between 1993 and January 2026, were analyzed. The results reveal a strong and accelerating growth in research activity, with publication output doubling in the most recent two years compared to 2023. Waste management and air quality monitoring have emerged as leading application domains, where AIoT-based optimization and predictive models demonstrate measurable improvements in operational efficiency and environmental impact. Altogether, these support faster and more effective decisions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ensuring the sustainable use of resources. The reviewed studies reveal rapid advancements in edge intelligence, federated learning, and secure data sharing through the integration of AIoT with blockchain technologies. However, significant challenges remain regarding scalability, interoperability, privacy, ethical governance, and the effective translation of research outcomes into policy and citizen-oriented tools such as climate applications, insurance models, and disaster alert systems. By synthesizing current research trends, this article highlights the potential of AIoT to support sustainable, resilient, and citizen-centric smart city ecosystems while identifying both critical gaps and promising directions for future investigations.