Special issue on smart city technologies and services based on AI for digital twin applications

PurposeBecause of the use of digital technologies in smart cities, municipalities are increasingly facing issues related to urban data management and are seeking ways to exploit these huge amounts of data for the actualization of data driven services. However, only few studies discuss challenges related to data driven strategies in smart cities. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to present data driven approaches (architecture and model), for urban data management needed to improve smart city planning and design. The developed approaches depict how data can underpin sustainable urban development.Design/methodology/approachDesign science research is adopted following a qualitative method to evaluate the architecture developed based on top-level design using a case data from workshops and interviews with experts involved in a smart city project.FindingsThe findings of this study from the evaluations indicate that the identified enablers are useful to support data driven services in smart cities and the developed architecture can be used to promote urban data management. More importantly, findings from this study provide guidelines to municipalities to improve data driven services for smart city planning and design.Research limitations/implicationsFeedback as qualitative data from practitioners provided evidence on how data driven strategies can be achieved in smart cities. However, the model is not validated. Hence, quantitative data is needed to further validate the enablers that influence data driven services in smart city planning and design.Practical implicationsFindings from this study offer practical insights and real-life evidence to define data driven enablers in smart cities and suggest research propositions for future studies. Additionally, this study develops a real conceptualization of data driven method for municipalities to foster open data and digital service innovation for smart city development.Social implicationsThe main findings of this study suggest that data governance, interoperability, data security and risk assessment influence data driven services in smart cities. This study derives propositions based on the developed model that identifies enablers for actualization of data driven services for smart cities planning and design.Originality/valueThis study explores the enablers of data driven strategies in smart city and further developed an architecture and model that can be adopted by municipalities to structure their urban data initiatives for improving data driven services to make cities smarter. The developed model supports municipalities to manage data used from different sources to support the design of data driven services provided by different enterprises that collaborate in urban environment.

Smart city applications and services are increasingly considered as strategic means to cope with emerging global challenges such as climate change, pollution, the ageing population, and energy shortage. In particular, smart parking is a type of smart services used to improve traffic congestion and pollution within cities. Nevertheless, although smart city services are driven by advanced information technologies, their success is highly dependent on user engagement, which is historically problematic. This paper presents and discusses the results of a case study on the smart parking service in London. A questionnaire (involved a total of 212 local drivers) was adopted as the main data collection method. This was complemented by the collection and analysis of 470 online user comments left for the service. The results showed that London’s smart parking service may potentially help each driver to save an average of £68 (62.2 l) on petrol annually and reduce CO2 emissions by 238.14 kg per car per year. At city level, a smart parking system could help London save £183.6 million worth of petrol per year and reduce its annual CO2 emissions by 642,978 tons. However, public awareness, actual usage, and user satisfaction of this smart service are currently very low. These present substantial barriers to realise the potential economic and environmental benefits of the service. This paper concluded that further to the very technological efforts, local authorities and service providers need to make a stronger endeavour to enhance public engagement and user satisfaction towards smart services, in order to realise the promises of such solutions.

A smart city is a global trend, and international cooperation for the development of smart cities is also expanding. This study aims to grasp smart city from the perspective of international development cooperation and to prioritize important criteria for selecting key smart city technologies and services, along with the priorities in each area based on priority determination theory. This study conducted an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis and the sensitivity analysis from an online survey involving experts in charge of the smart city sector in Indonesia. According to the analysis, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability were shown as important criteria, and security and privacy (Tech 4) was the first priority of technology for smart city cooperation. Also, environment (Service 1) was the first priorities of application services. These results can increase their understanding of smart city development and contribute to successful international development cooperation.

Massive data generation with the introduction of IoT devices and new technologies in smart cities require a flexible network management architecture to meet the dynamic demands of smart city services. In project ISCO (Intelligent Framework for Service Discovery and Composition), we envision a smart city network operator that is tenant to multiple smart city services, and it can provide network resources and network functions on-demand to satisfy the connectivity requirements of these services. To explain this structure, we present an augmented sightseeing scenario that reflects various smart city service requirements. Then, we give an insight into the technological enablers of ISCO network management platform and explain how these technologies can satisfy the needs of the smart city scenario. Finally, we briefly present our ISCO network architecture and network resource management approach, which uses a distributed game-theory based learning algorithm to solve a multi-agent decision problem, and discuss how autonomous network management concept can be used to optimize resource allocation in our smart city communication platform.

Advances in technology are quickly paving the way for smart cities. The Government of Mauritius has set up the Smart City Scheme to provide an enabling framework and a package of attractive fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to investors for the development of smart cities across the island. However, prior to the design and implementation of such technologies, it is important to predict the behavioural intention to use such technology so that smart city technologies effectively empower citizens and improve the quality of life of citizens. In this research work, it is proposed to use the TAM to effectively assess the perception and readiness and the perceived usefulness of certain smart city technologies such as for transportation as well as identifying key smart city applications for Mauritius. The aim of this research project is to evaluate and assess the different factors and condition that can have an impact on the perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived usefulness (PU), behavioural intention (BI) to use and actual use (AU) of smart city technologies. For smart cities to become a reality in Mauritius, smart city applications and services should be citizen-centred and relevant for ordinary citizens in their everyday life. This research work allows assessing the readiness of Mauritian citizens for Smart city applications, as well as identifying applications which can empower citizen.

The goal of providing smart city services is not only simply building smart technology and infrastructure but also improving the quality of life of citizens who use smart city services and have positive experiences. This requires establishing service supply strategies considering citizens’ satisfaction levels by identifying the factors that affect the will or behavior of citizens who use smart city services. However, decision making regarding smart city policies and service supply in Korea is conducted through the central government-centered top-down mode, which lacks the consideration of how to improve citizens’ satisfaction levels or their intention to use technology. Thus, we proposed an acceptance model for smart city services, which is a theoretical model that offers a foundation for a model to evaluate the interaction levels of citizens toward smart city services based on the technology acceptance model, which is the most widely used tool to evaluate what factors affect the acceptance and use of information technology and system-based services. In addition, we defined research models by discussing previous studies that proposed factors that affect the acceptance of smart city and U-City services and urban public services. To empirically verify the research models proposed herein, we surveyed citizens in Seoul and conducted structural equation modeling using AMOS 28. As a result, we derived a total of eight factors (Quality, User Characteristics, Positive Attitude, Perceived Risk, Social Influence, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, and Acceptance Intention) that affected the acceptance of smart city services and 42 assessment items from these factors. The results of this study are expected to be foundational data for establishing policies and systems for the improvement of citizens’ interaction level and continuous use of smart city services.

5G technology is a new type of wireless communication technology with the characteristics of high speed, low delay, large connection, etc. It brings new opportunities and challenges to economic, social and industrial development. This article focuses on the application and value of 5G technology in smart cities, as well as the opportunities and challenges faced by 5G technology in smart cities. This article uses the method of literature reading and analysis to explore the role and functions of 5G technology in smart cities from the fields of smart homes, smart transportation, smart grids, smart security, etc. and analyzes the application scenarios and cases of 5G technology in smart cities, demonstrating the practical effects and social benefits of 5G technology in smart cities. This article evaluates the opportunities and challenges faced by 5G technology in smart cities, such as policy support, network construction, security, user needs, etc., and provides strategic suggestions for the promotion and application of 5G technology in smart cities. This article aims to improve the knowledge and understanding of 5G technology and smart cities, promote the coordinated development of 5G technology and smart cities, and provide technical support and innovation power for building a new digital, networked, and intelligent city.

Smart cities use technological innovations to improve urban services and people’s livelihoods to develop sustainably. Different technology solutions and technologies like IoT sensors, big data analytics, communication networks, and applications are being used to collect and analyze data to boost various services in smart cities, including public services, transport, and various other utilities. The article intends to discuss the state-of-the-art technologies of smart cities and their roles and applications. It also seeks to analyze the current research trend in the smart city domain and its key enabling technologies. It also pursues to identify some of the open issues and challenges facing efficient use of energy, smart decision-making systems, privacy and security of data, and effective and secure communication technologies in smart cities.

Smart cities have rapidly become a hot topic within technology communities, and promise both improved delivery of services to end users and reduced environmental impact in an era of unprecedented urbanization. Both large hightech companies and grassroots citizen-led initiatives have begun exploring the potential of these technologies. Significant barriers remain to the successful rollout and deployment of business models outlined for smart city applications and services, however. Most of these barriers pertain to an ongoing battle between two main schools of thought for system architecture, ICT and telecommunications, proposed for data management and service creation. Both of these system architectures represent a certain type of value chain and the legacy perspective of the respective players that wish to enter the smart city arena. Smart cities services, however, utilize components of both the ICT industry and mobile telecommunications industries, and do not benefit from the current binary perspective of system architecture. The business models suggested for the development of smart cities require a longterm strategic view of system architecture evolution. This article discusses the architectural evolution required to ensure that the rollout and deployment of smart city technologies is smooth through acknowledging and integrating the strengths of both the system architectures proposed.

According to 2017 reports of the International Data Corporation (IDC), it is expected that by 2018 the global investment would cross more than $81 billion regarding investments in smart city initiatives, and $158 billion by 2022. The smart city basically leverages the cognitive intelligence by connecting various infrastructures like physical, social, business and information and communication technology (ICT) within the city. It is noted that the smart city technologies and services not only have to provide utilities, but also should be able to generate longer return investment and cash flow for future investments out of the deployed smart city projects. The technologies and services should provide data availability for the applications, standardization of AIS and interoperable platform for applications. Hence, the first part of this chapter is about technological and service aspects of the smart city. With this aspect, the Internet of things (IoT) has become a promising vision that can provide a unified large-scale ICT platform and unshackle the huge potential of the smart city. The IoT is a universal, dynamic self-organizing network of infrastructure in which physical things directly communicate based on standardized protocols and services for the smart city. Hence, the second part of this work focuses on the principle components for enabling the smart city through IoT.

Growing demand for enhanced features of urban living conditions influenced an outburst of Smart Cities all over the world. A Smart City adopts application of wide range of information and communication technologies and citizen-centric solutions with the goal of providing sustainable economic development and an increased quality of life. The increased quality of life is also found to be closely related with an increased customer satisfaction and overall well-being of the citizens residing in the Smart City. Although Smart City features and services may be analyzed from the perspectives of human, technology, and institutional factors, an issue of improving the quality of life may be designated as one of the most important topic in the area. The current study provides a comparative analysis of the impact of various Smart City services on the quality of life. The base for proposed Smart City services has been derived from the wide range of references ([8]; standard ISO 37120:2014; [7]). The study findings indicate that Smart Cities should continuously assess the performance of services in order to identify the ones that have the major impact on quality of life. The future research could explore in more details the relationships between Smart City services, quality of life and overall citizen satisfaction.

Analysis and assessment of a knowledge based smart city architecture providing service APIs

While the rapid progress in smart city technologies are changing cities and the lifestyle of the people, there are increasingly enormous challenges in terms of the safety and security of smart cities. The potential vulnerabilities of e-government products and imminent attacks on smart city infrastructure and services will have catastrophic consequences on the governments and can cause substantial economic and noneconomic losses, even chaos, to the cities and their residents. This paper aims to explore alternative economic solutions ranging from incentive mechanisms to market-based solutions to motivate smart city product vendors, governments, and vulnerability researchers and finders to improve the cybersecurity of smart cities.

Economic solutions to improve cybersecurity of governments and smart cities via vulnerability markets

The purpose of this article is to summarize the current state of understanding the smart city concept and to present a proposed communication platform for the development of city services.