# Continual Learning for Smart City: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.00983 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00983/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 140 of its 251 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 140)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation of Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.03400/) (2017)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [Prefix-Tuning: Optimizing Continuous Prompts for Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00190/) (2021)
- [The Power of Scale for Parameter-Efficient Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08691/) (2021)
- [VQA: Visual Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.00468/) (2015)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [iCaRL: Incremental Classifier and Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07725/) (2016)
- [Informer: Beyond Efficient Transformer for Long Sequence Time-Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07436/) (2020)
- [Gradient Episodic Memory for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08840/) (2017)
- [Federated Learning: Strategies for Improving Communication Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05492/) (2016)
- [Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07569/) (2018)
- [HuggingGPT: Solving AI Tasks with ChatGPT and its Friends in Hugging Face](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17580/) (2023)
- [Fine-tuning Aligned Language Models Compromises Safety, Even When Users Do Not Intend To!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03693/) (2023)
- [Spatio-Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks: A Deep Learning Framework for Traffic Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.04875/) (2017)
- [Memory Aware Synapses: Learning what (not) to forget](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09601/) (2017)
- [Multimodal Machine Learning: A Survey and Taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09406/) (2017)
- [iTransformer: Inverted Transformers Are Effective for Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06625/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13549/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Continual Learning: Theory, Method and Application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00487/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Towards Lifelong Learning of Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06391/) (2024)
- [Out-of-Distribution Generalization in Time Series: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13868/) (2025)
- [Edge-Cloud Collaborative Computing on Distributed Intelligence and Model Optimization: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01821/) (2025)
- [Modeling Temporal Dependencies within the Target for Long-Term Time Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04777/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Cloud-Edge-Terminal Collaborative Intelligence in AIoT Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18803/) (2025)
- [Fed-ADE: Adaptive Learning Rate for Federated Post-adaptation under Distribution Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01040/) (2026)
- [UrbanMind: Towards Urban General Intelligence via Tool-Enhanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Multilevel Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04706/) (2025)
- [Swarm-Driven Multi-Agent Reasoning for Smart City Security](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.03628/) (2026)
- [DSETA: A Dual-Stage Continual Learning Framework for Travel Time Prediction in Dynamic Traffic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00402/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the digitization of modern cities, large data volumes and powerful computational resources facilitate the rapid update of intelligent models deployed in smart cities. Continual learning (CL) is a novel machine learning paradigm that constantly updates models to adapt to changing environments, where the learning tasks, data, and distributions can vary over time. Our survey provides a comprehensive review of continual learning methods that are widely used in smart city development. The content consists of three parts: 1) Methodology-wise. We categorize a large number of basic CL methods and advanced CL frameworks in combination with other learning paradigms including graph learning, spatial-temporal learning, multi-modal learning, and federated learning. 2) Application-wise. We present numerous CL applications covering transportation, environment, public health, safety, networks, and associated datasets related to urban computing. 3) Challenges. We discuss current problems and challenges and envision several promising research directions. We believe this survey can help relevant researchers quickly familiarize themselves with the current state of continual learning research used in smart city development and direct them to future research trends.