Architecting and Designing Sustainable Smart City Services in a Living Lab Environment

Md Alam,Jari Porras

doi:10.3390/technologies6040099

Abstract

In terms of sustainability, cities become smart when they provide smart services to the inhabitants using information and communication technologies without threatening the future of the environment, economy, or society. However, the process of developing such sustainable smart services has certain challenges, especially in understanding the real needs of the people living in the city. Citizens or, in a wider perspective, the inhabitants of the city are the key stakeholders in the case of smart services in a city. Active involvement of the people throughout the development process is a way of successfully designing such services. On the other hand, integrating sustainability, for example, including environmental data, into smart city services is challenging. Therefore, this research aims to combine environmental data with regular smart city services, while engaging city inhabitants in the development process. This approach was adapted from the concept of living lab methodology. Finally, an application developed following this method is presented and evaluated.

Highlights

It was reported by the United Nations (UN), that, in 2016, around 54.5% of the world’s population lived in the cities
As the timeframe of the research did not allow evaluation of the impacts of the smart city service on the sustainability of a city, we focused more on the short-term impression that the smart city service had on citizens
Application.InInorder ordertotoestablish establish a connection with users, there should be to be a connection with users, there should be an an understandable relationship with the results provided in the regular smart city service and the understandable relationship with the results provided in the regular smart city service and the environmental

Summary

Introduction

It was reported by the United Nations (UN), that, in 2016, around 54.5% of the world’s population lived in the cities. The UN projects that, by 2030, 60% of the global population will live in urban areas [1]. It can be seen that cities are growing in an extensive manner. To scale basic services to the extent of increasing demand forms a challenge for the cities. A “smart city” that connects its physical infrastructure, social system, and economic framework with information technology (IT) systems to increase the overall efficiency of operations can be seen as one approach. Increasing the operational efficiency can be achieved by making better operational choices combining analytics and modeling [2]

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Conclusion