A multi-criteria decision making approach for prioritising product-service systems implementation in smart cities

The latest economic and environmental changes together with the development of technology, fostered interest in 'smart cities' and smart city product-service system (SCPSS): bundle of products and services aimed at fuelling sustainable economic growth with a wise management of resources. Since budget constraint prevents a massive implementation of all the possible SCPSS, this paper expands the engineering value assessment (EVA) method and adopt it to assess and prioritise SCPSS from three perspectives: 1) the municipality; 2) the citizens; 3) other stakeholders. EVA method is based on two steps, and for each of them proposes a MCDM method. The contribution of this study is twofold: first, it complements the EVA method with the definition of specific evaluation criteria for external stakeholder that play a crucial role into the smart city paradigm; second, it describes the application of the method for the selection and prioritisation of SCPSS in Bergamo.

Adaptability evaluation of conceptual design for smart product-service system: An integrated rough DEMATEL and Bayesian network model

In recent years, the development of technology has contributed to the development of smart networks and cities. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are used in smart cities and grids, and the security weaknesses of these technologies on communication protocols gain importance in terms of cybersecurity. Bus stops, traffic lights, public vehicles, street lamps, and similar materials in smart cities are designed by following the developing technology. In addition, the use of smart grids in the field of energy, such as natural gas, electricity, and water, has been increasing all over the world in recent years. Also, the rise of IoT can create wide vulnerabilities that cybercriminals and other malicious individuals can exploit. Neglecting cyberattacks poses a serious risk, as smart cities and grids are designed to increase productivity and efficiency in terms of well-being. Today, smart city systems have a very serious potential cybersecurity vulnerability, and these cyber risks can be reduced or eliminated with a few measures. With the development of technology, the cybersecurity problems of the systems used in smart networks and cities have become important. In this study, 17 cyberattacks in smart cities, grids, and used IoT systems, security vulnerabilities that may be encountered in these systems, and security measures that can be taken against them are given in detail.KeywordsSmart CitiesSmart GridsCybersecurityCyberattacksIoT Security

Digitalization, sustainability, and servitization are transforming economy and society globally. Companies are increasingly changing their business model toward providing a data-driven Product Service System (PSS), namely bundles of products and services integrated with some digital technology. Different methods and tools have been proposed to design PSS and, more recently, smart PSS, but they still mainly focus on value propositions and do not address which kind of data can be collected from the operational stage. To overcome this gap, this paper proposes the Data-driven Service Engineering Methodology (D-SEEM) for the design and engineering of data-driven PSS, considering the tradeoff between customer satisfaction and internal efficiency and focusing on data and information. A case study in the professional appliances industry is then proposed to show the application of a part of the methodology in a real context.KeywordsData-driven product-service systemData-driven PSS design and engineeringOperational dataSustainability

ABSTRACTThis conceptual paper delves into the validity of product‐service systems (PSS) in driving smart city development. Existing research often treats smart cities as primarily technology‐driven constructs, overlooking how organisational measures and strategies such as PSS can contribute to their sustainability ambitions and, thus, smart city initiatives. Through an integrative literature review of selected 145 academic papers across smart cities, sustainability, innovation, digitalisation and product‐service systems, this paper introduces a framework that maps PSS onto six core dimensions of the Smart City concept—dimensions identified from the previous research, never before presented together. The findings reveal that PSS enables organisations to transcend beyond isolated organisation focused sustainability driven solutions into wider smart urban surroundings and capabilities. The framework emphasises how PSS can contribute to environmental goals, governance reforms, social inclusion, and economic resilience, thus, being able to provide value for both private and public actors, and citizens. The paper addresses a key research gap and calls for empirical validation to further study how PSS can contribute as a scalable and designable enabler of smart city development.

This paper examines how to outline and adopt innovative business models for the Smart Cities of the future. Smart Cities are intelligent and efficient communities and ecosystems employing digital technologies to respond a growing waste of resources, unsustainable environmental impact, and inefficiency in traditional processes. Considering the greatest benefits of Smart Cities on economies, societies, and environment, many countries have now introduced national Smart City projects in order to transform life, improve business operations and market competitiveness. However, despite growing interests towards Smart Cities, it remains still difficult to adopt this paradigm due to digital transformation, interaction strategies, social and cultural problems. Therefore, this paper aims to break down the barriers to these problems and support the literature and management to understand how to implement profitable business models for Smart Cities of the future. Specifically, we identify four main areas characterizing Smart Cities (i.e., Smart Mobility, Smart Living, Smart Energy, and Smart Public Ecosystems) where digital technologies have shown greater progress with large savings. For each area, multiple case studies have been discussed and Business Model Canvases have been developed for generalizing effective methodological approaches toward efficient implementation of Smart City paradigm. Results are threefold. As for digital transformation problems, we show how digital technologies (e.g., Cloud, IoT, Big Data and AI) are applied profitably through innovative business models; as for interaction strategies problems we indicate how to organize innovative ecosystems involving public and private actors to promote Smart Cities; as for social and cultural problems we delineate change management and communication practices useful to instill in all stakeholders a culture towards the Smart City. With these findings the paper aims at enriching scientific knowledge about the Smart City Paradigm by means of a business model perspective and to offer public administrations insightful guidelines for the transition toward Smart Cities.

Applications of ML/DL in the management of smart cities and societies based on new trends in information technologies: A systematic literature review

Chapter 26 - Urban design strategies and the smart city paradigm

The concept of smart cities is not a new one, but it appeared by the latest innovations and developments of new smart technologies. Smart cities of the future, digitized cities and augmented cities are new theories and ideas that represent new norms based on the implementation of innovative technologies in cities’ planning and design. The COVID-19 crisis has forced all governments and people worldwide to work from home. These contingency measures forced government, organizations and citizens to get deeply involved in exploiting smart and digital technologies to pursue their daily businesses (higher education institutions, schools, hospitals, banks, companies and government entities). Due to such emergency of lockdown actions in cities resulted from the wide and rapid spread of such pandemic globally, a need for less polluted, cleaner and sustainable urban spaces is highly vital to limit the coronavirus spreading. This research focuses on the dimensions, characteristics and indicators of smart and sustainable cities that engaged with sustainability by highlighting its contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and discusses its role in creating healthier cities in the age of COVID-19. The paper aims at developing smart and sustainable cities’ solutions in urban areas to confront COVID-19 impacts. The research methodology is based on two approaches: a critical literature review of the main concepts and definitions of smart cities, the integration between smart cities’ concept and SDGs in addition to highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on the urban environment with emphasis on the lessons learned and actions needed to be adopted; and an analytical approach that proposes a matrix combining both smart and sustainability indicators to achieve greener and healthier cities, yet to control the spread of coronavirus; a raising need for urban life amidst/after the pandemic and its crisis. The matrix couples both the goals of smart cities and sustainable cities in order to map the contribution to SDGs in attaining a better and sustainable future. Results indicate that newly developed measures, in planning smart sustainable urban areas in cities, can assist in the adaptation of and achieving SDGs in the time of COVID-19.KeywordsSmart and sustainable citiesliveabilitydigital technologyCOVID-19SDGs’ Mapping and indicators

This paper deals with the modeling of a regional energy system, based on the example of Qatar, over a time horizon of 35 years or more, taking into account the possible transition toward a smart city paradigm of the Doha region and the probable climate regime that could result from COP21 and the coming rounds of international climate negotiations. The impact on the energy system of a transition toward smart city could take many forms: (i) by providing two-way communications between consumers and electricity producers, the smart city will foster demand response and distributed energy resource management; (ii) new forms of demand for energy services will materialize in the transport, housing and service sectors that could contribute to lower the environmental footprint of the energy sector; (iii) the smart-grid connection of distributed energy resources and the possibility to provide secondary reserve through grid storage and distributed system service, like e.g. reactive power compensation, will facilitate the penetration of variable renewable energy in the energy system. Qatar is the world-class leader in the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG). It has also access to crude oil reserves. As the economy of Qatar developed, as in other Gulf countries, the energy system expanded assuming an unlimited supply of very low cost fossil fuels. However, the very economic success of the gas and oil exporting countries in the Gulf region is starting to impose a limit on this form of development of the energy system. The share of gas that is used in the region and thus not available for export is increasing sharply. The local pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels in transport, residential, service and industry sectors, has to be curbed. Finally, at COP21 in Paris, more than 160 nations, including Qatar, have agreed to reduce GHG emissions in order to reach a goal of limiting the temperature change at the end of 21st century at 1.5oC. At COP21 Qatar has made a commitment to reduce its per-capita emission level, which is one of the highest in the world. To deal with these challenges, the Gulf countries count on a substitution from fossil fuel source to variable renewable ones (as well as some extent to nuclear power generation in UAE, KSA and Iran). This is exemplified by the location of IRENA headquarters[1] in Abu Dhabi, inaugurated in May 2015. Indeed, harnessing wind and solar energy sources seems promising in the region, with some caveats due to intermittency of wind blowing and sand storms reducing the efficiency of solar panels. There is another game changing phenomenon represented by the drive toward smart cities. The cities in Gulf countries are very modern and they are ready to embrace the smart city paradigm and concept. Abu Dhabi and more generally the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have announced pilot projects for fully integrated “smart-city” districts. The development of the “internet of things”, which characterizes smart cities, will translate for the energy system into a development of smart-grid connected, distributed energy resources and this should help tremendously the penetration of variable renewable energy sources. The model ETEM-SC[2] used in this research has been designed to help in assessing the policies that could be used to define, up to the horizon 2050, an environmentally friendly energy system in Qatar. ETEM-SC is a technology rich cost-efficiency model, which permits an exploration of the future of the regional energy system under different environmental and economic constraints. The model is derived from the shell-model ETEM (Energy-Technology-Environment-Model), developed at ORDECSYS[3]. This shell has a structure of a linear program, as in MARKAL, MESSAGE or TIMES, with an extensive description of technology and energy choices in the region into consideration. The new additions that have been made for our purpose (SC for Smart Cities) concern: (i) the modeling of constraints and options at the power distribution level, due to the introduction of smart grids, distributed energy resource and demand response; (ii) the consideration of the impact on demand for energy services of the development of a smart city environment, and (iii) the explicit consideration of uncertainty in the scenario building, through the use of stochastic programming and robust optimization techniques. Some technical aspects of these modeling advances have been described in two parent papers (Babonneau et al. (2016a) and (2016b)). The present research will focus on the description of the scenarios for Qatar that result from the use of this model. These scenarios are based on publicly available data and should not be considered as a representation of the energy policy of the state of Qatar. The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate the potential offered by ETEM-SC to assess the possible penetration of variable renewable energy in regional energy systems with smart-city development, in order to reduce drastically the GHG emissions. [1] The International Renewable Energy Agency. www.irena.org [2] Energy Technology Environment Model-Smart-Cities. [3] See www.ordecsys.com for details.

Connecting the indispensable roles of IoT and artificial intelligence in smart cities: A survey

The combination of servitization and digitalization is increasingly changing the economy and society at the global level towards sustainability goals. Companies are shifting their business models, typically oriented to selling products, towards providing bundles of products and services and integrating them with technologies enabling data collection and analysis, resulting in the so-called smart Product Service Systems (PSS). Different approaches and techniques have been put forth to design PSS and, more recently, smart PSS, but they continue to primarily concentrate on establishing value propositions and ignore the question of what sort of operational data can be gathered and used to deliver the PSS solution. Therefore, manufacturing companies willing to expand their portfolio with new advanced services nowadays still face multiple challenges. To address this gap, this study proposes the Service Engineering Methodology for the engineering of smart PSS (SEEM-Smart), which takes into account the trade-off between customer satisfaction and internal efficiency with a focus on data gathering and information flow. The methodology is then applied in a real-world setting. The case study shows the application of the SEEM-Smart for engineering a new data-driven service offering enabled by a cloud-based platform supporting the service provision.

The 100th anniversary of Geddes’ book “Cities in Evolution” has just passed, and the authors of this paper present a contribution towards understanding “how” Geddes might address the paradigm of the “smart city”. Geddesian concepts have greatly revolutionized the design and building of modern cities around the world. As a botanist and a scientist, Geddes incorporated the concept of the appearance of gardens when designing towns. His success in pioneering the planning of his city of residence in Scotland inspired further involvement in designing towns and the renovation of old structures and buildings. His concepts regarding the planning and development of towns and cities have created a foundation of interest in research, professionalism, and educational development. This study analyses the concepts of space, communities, and smart cities, and repositions Geddesian ideas in contemporary learning strategies in relation to the wider political spectrum associated with the paradigm of smart cities. The authors explore the relevance of his thoughts and perspectives in the current design environment geared towards the creation of smart cities. The study also evaluates the challenges of developing smart cities in relation to Patrick Geddes’s ideas.

How sustainable is smart PSS? An integrated evaluation approach based on rough BWM and TODIM

The growth of city population has consequences on the sustainability and development of smart regions. International standards can provide good practices in wide areas related to environmental, security and social aspects that contribute to the achievement of economic and sustainable growth, well-being, and safe environment. The aim of this study is to explore if there is an association between the level of smart cities in different regions and the number of certificates that could initiate further development of smart and sustainable cities. We analysed standards that support the development of sustainable and smart cities from different countries and explored their influence on the level of smart and sustainable cities. To measure the performance of cities we used the UN-habitat City Prosperity Initiative (CPI) and its six dimensions: Productivity, Infrastructure Development, Quality of Life, Equity and Social Inclusion, Environmental Sustainability, and Urban Governance and Legislation. To analyse the influence of international standards on smart regions and cities initiative we conducted SEM analysis. The results of the research have proved that there is a significant difference between the level of smart cities in different regions and the number of certificates that could initiate further development of smart and sustainable cities. Additionally, a positive impact of international standards on the development of smart regions and cities is confirmed. We believe that the presented approach might provide additional insights into the factors which impact the development of smart regions and cities and initiate further studies on the topic.