City Initiatives Research Articles

The Future of Smart Cities: Global Trends and Emerging Challenges in Urban Development

This article explores the evolving concept of "smart cities" and the global trends shaping their development. It examines the potential benefits of smart city initiatives, including improved resource efficiency, quality of life, and environmental sustainability. However, the article also acknowledges the challenges associated with smart city development, such as digital inequality, privacy concerns, and potential security risks.

Is smart city low-carbon? Evidence from China

Smart cities were originally conceived to address a myriad of urban challenges arising from rapid urbanization, including energy scarcity, congestion, and environmental degradation. The Chinese government has made substantial efforts to advance smart city initiatives. However, the extent to which the integration of smart technologies contributes to urban sustainability, especially within a high-carbon urbanization paradigm, poses a critical question in light of escalating extreme weather events and worsening global challenges. Urgency is underscored in prioritizing low-carbon strategies within smart city frameworks. This paper presents a Multicriteria Decision Making Network (MCDN) approach to assess and rank the low-carbon levels (LCL) of 36 pilot smart cities in China. Findings reveal that overall LCL among these cities remains relatively modest, with significant disparities attributed to varying economic, social, institutional, cultural, and environmental contexts. The study also delves into the nexus between urban intelligence and LCL, highlighting a discernible positive correlation between a city's smartness and its low-carbon profile. Moreover, empirical evidence suggests that advancements in smart technologies are conducive, albeit to varying degrees, to enhancing urban LCL. In light of these findings, recommendations are made to fortify economic and social advancement, bolster management practices, and foster multi-stakeholder collaboration to propel the coordinated development of smart and low-carbon initiatives in China.

Solutions to enhance the accuracy of UAV’s images for creating extremely large-scale maps in urban area

Abstract Ho Chi Minh City, the largest urban agglomeration in Vietnam, is at the forefront of enabling the government’s efforts and advocating for smart city initiatives in the coming decades. To facilitate this advancement, the implementation of solutions to support the collection, construction, and updating of spatial databases is crucial. These databases serve as the foundational platform for effective urban management practices. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have witnessed significant growth across various domains, particularly in spatial data collection. However, challenges arise when acquiring and processing UAV images in urban areas. These challenges include orthomosaic distortion in certain regions, insufficient accuracy for creating extremely large-scale maps (e.g., 1:200 or 1:500), and unclear boundaries between adjacent objects. The objective of this paper is to present flight tests conducted at varying altitudes, with different shooting angles, and varying layouts of Ground Control Points (GCPs), both with and without the UAV’s RTK receiver mode. In order to improve the accuracy of UAV’s images, the results suggest that the precision of orthomosaic, Digital Surface Model (DSM) and point clouds in the context of 3D mapping depends on various factors, including: the determination of the optimal flight altitude, optimizing number of GCPs, selecting an appropriate level of image processing, capturing images from varied angles, and using UAVs with RTK or PPK data acquisition modes to mitigate image distortion.

New media surveillance, environmental information uncertainty and corporate environmental information disclosure

This paper selects A-share heavy polluting enterprises in China's Shanghai and Shenzhen cities from 2009 to 2022. The following conclusions are obtained from the empirical evidence: new media monitoring can encourage enterprises to disclose information. Environmental information uncertainty can encourage enterprises to disclose information. The positive effect of environmental information uncertainty on environmental information disclosure is more significant for firms with poorer environmental performance than those with better environmental performance. The effect of the new media monitoring on environmental information disclosure of non-state-owned enterprises is more significant when other information is held constant.

Factors affecting the intention to adopt cloud accounting software in small and medium enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City

In the trend of the digital economy along with the widespread Industrial Revolution 4.0, accounting work organization needs to innovate in applying information technology (IT) in the implementation and management of accounting tasks. Cloud accounting software is built based on the development achievements of Cloud Computing, data is stored on data center servers, helping to process data and accounting work anytime, anywhere. and on every device. This article aims to identify factors influencing the intention of the adoption of cloud accounting software in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Ho Chi Minh City. Through data collection using questionnaires from 210 SMEs and using SPSS analysis tools, the research results show that there is an impact of factors such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, manager support, social influences, and application risks that affect the intention to apply cloud accounting software of these businesses. These results provide useful information to help business managers better understand the benefits of the application, the role and importance of IT application in general, and cloud accounting software in particular in business operations, contributing to improving accounting work at the business.

Data-Driven Net-Zero Carbon Monitoring: Applications of Geographic Information Systems, Building Information Modelling, Remote Sensing, and Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable and Resilient Cities

NZCCs aim to minimise urban carbon emissions for healthier cities in line with national and international low-carbon targets and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many countries have recently adopted Net-Zero Carbon City (NZCC) policies and strategies. While there are many studies available on NZCC cities’ definitions and policymaking, currently, research is rare on understanding the role of urban data-driven technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), as well as AI, for achieving the goals of NZCCs in relation to sustainable development goals (SDGs), e.g., SDGs 3, 7,11, 13, and 17. This paper aims to fill this gap by establishing a systematic review and ascertaining the opportunities and barriers of data-driven approaches, analytics, digital technologies, and AI for supporting decision-making and monitoring progress toward achieving NZCC development and policy/strategy development. Two scholarly databases, i.e., Web of Science and Scopus databases, were used to find papers based on our selected relevant keywords. We also conducted a desktop review to explore policies, strategies, and visualisation technologies that are already being used. Our inclusion/exclusion criteria refined our selection to 55 papers, focusing on conceptual and theoretical research. While digital technologies and data analytics are improving and can help in the move from net-zero carbon concepts and theories to practical analysis and the evaluation of cities’ emission levels and in monitoring progress toward reducing carbon, our research shows that these capabilities of digital technologies are not used thoroughly yet to bridge theory and practice. These studies ignore advanced tools like city digital twins and GIS-based spatial analyses. No data, technologies, or platforms are available to track progress towards a NZCC. Artificial Intelligence, big data collection, and analytics are required to predict and monitor the time it takes for each city to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. GIS and BIM can be used to estimate embodied carbon and predict urban development emissions. We found that smart city initiatives and data-driven decision-making approaches are crucial for achieving NZCCs.

The artistic image processing for visual healing in smart city

This study investigates the processing methods of artistic images within the context of Smart city (SC) initiatives, focusing on the visual healing effects of artistic image processing to enhance urban residents’ mental health and quality of life. Firstly, it examines the role of artistic image processing techniques in visual healing. Secondly, deep learning technology is introduced and improved, proposing the overlapping segmentation vision transformer (OSViT) for image blocks, and further integrating the bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) algorithm. An innovative artistic image processing and classification recognition model based on OSViT-BiLSTM is then constructed. Finally, the visual healing effect of the processed art images in different scenes is analyzed. The results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves a classification recognition accuracy of 92.9% for art images, which is at least 6.9% higher than that of other existing model algorithms. Additionally, over 90% of users report satisfaction with the visual healing effects of the artistic images. Therefore, it is found that the proposed model can accurately identify artistic images, enhance their beauty and artistry, and improve the visual healing effect. This study provides an experimental reference for incorporating visual healing into SC initiatives.

Road traffic noise pollution and prevalence of ischemic heart disease: modelling potential association and abatement strategies in noise-exposed areas.

In many developing countries with surging vehicular traffic and inadequate traffic management, excessive road traffic noise exposure poses substantial health concerns, linked to increased stress, insomnia and other metabolic disorders. This study aims to assess the linkage between sociodemographic factors, traffic noise levels in residential areas and health effects using a cross-sectional study analyzing respondents' perceptions and reports. Noise levels were measured at 57 locations in Srinagar, India, using noise level meter. Sound PLAN software was employed to generate noise contour maps, enabling the visualization of noise monitoring locations and facilitating the assessment of noise levels along routes in proximity to residential areas. Correlation analysis showed a strong linear relationship between field-measured and modelled noise (r2 = 0.88). Further, a questionnaire-based survey was carried out near the sampling points to evaluate the association of ischemic heart disease with traffic noise. Residents exposed to noise levels (Lden > 60dB(A)) were found to have a 2.24 times higher odds ratio. Compared to females, males reported a 16% higher prevalence of the disease. Multi-faceted policy strategies involving noise mapping initiatives, source noise standards, traffic flow urban mobility optimization, smart city initiatives and stringent litigatory measures could significantly reduce its detrimental impact on public health. Finally, this study envisions a region-specific strong regulatory framework for integrating noise pollution mitigation strategies into the public health action plans of developing nations.

Who Exactly Has China's Pilot Free Trade Zone Attracted？ —— Evidence from Quasi Natural Experiments Based on 282 Cities

The pilot free trade zone is an institutional attempt under China's opening-up pattern, and its policy effects have played an important role in the high-quality development of the Chinese economy. Based on the balanced panel data of 282 cities in China from 2008 to 2021, this article adopts a multi-stage difference method and takes the establishment of free trade zones as a quasi-natural experiment to explore the role of free trade experiments in attracting enterprises from different sources. The main conclusion of the study is that the establishment of the free trade zone has significantly increased the proportion of enterprises in Chinese Mainland in the city, but also significantly squeezed out foreign-funded enterprises and Chinese Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan funded enterprises. This conclusion has passed a series of robustness tests; The study also found that foreign-funded enterprises exhibit higher resilience when facing pressure than enterprises from Chinese Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan in China. Heterogeneity analysis found that the crowding out effect only works in cities in China's coastal provinces. The study suggests that in order to attract foreign-funded enterprises and more effectively promote the operation of enterprises from Chinese Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in cities of Chinese Mainland, policy makers need to enhance the competitive advantages of foreign-funded enterprises and enterprises from Chinese Mainland, Macao and Taiwan compared with enterprises in mainland China, so as to diversify the source of enterprises in cities and expand the level of opening up.

Descriptive Analysis and Evaluation of Age-Friendly Environment Studies in Turkiye

The need to create inclusive and sustainable environments that enhance the well-being of the older people and compensate for social and physical barriers in order to adapt to the effects of demographic transformation and rapid urban aging has emerged. This need gained momentum with the guidance of the WHO's Age-Friendly Cities initiative in the early 2000s. These global developments have also influenced studies in Turkey. This study examines the perspectives and approaches to the topic of 'age-friendly environment’ in scientific circles and academia in Turkey in order to answer the question: How is the concept of 'age-friendly environment’ studied in Turkey? Scientific studies related to age-friendly environments in Turkey conducted between 2014 and 2023 were analyzed using descriptive content analysis method. The findings of the study indicate that the majority of studies in Turkey consist of articles (54.3%) and theses (30.9%), with methodological distribution being mostly limited to qualitative studies (38.2%) and review studies (32.2%). Furthermore, thematically, concepts such as 'age-friendly city, aging in place, age-friendly environment, age-friendly design, active aging’ are frequently studied, while themes commonly discussed in the international agenda such as inclusivity, accessibility, sustainability, and the right to the city are relatively underrepresented. On the other hand, it is observed that the majority of studies lack an environmental gerontology perspective.

Analisis Kebijakan Kota Layak Anak Dalam Perspektif Hak Sipil Dan Kebebasan Anak Di Kota Surabaya

Children are the future leaders of a nation's development, thus they have the right to special treatment in the form of protection and child rights. Accelerating the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Child-Friendly City (CFC) policy was initiated in 2006. In its implementation, CFC is divided into 5 clusters of children's rights that must be fulfilled, one of which is civil rights and freedoms. Surabaya City is recognized as a Child-Friendly City and has maintained this status for the past six years. Given this achievement, it is interesting to analyze the implementation of the CFC in Surabaya concerning the cluster of Civil Rights and Freedoms. This study employs a descriptive qualitative research method, gathering both primary and secondary data, which are comprehensively analyzed through data reduction, presentation, and conclusion drawing. The research findings reveal strong commitment demonstrated by Surabaya City in its Child-Friendly City policy to fulfill children's civil rights and freedoms, evidenced by easy access to birth certificates and identity cards for children, as well as the establishment of the Child Friendly Information Center (Pusat Informasi Sahabat Anak - PISA) enabling children to access information and exchange ideas freely. There is a need for enhanced collaboration among government, NGOs, and the community to ensure the equitable implementation of the Child-Friendly City initiative, extending to suburban areas. Keywords: Public Policy, Child-Friendly City, Children's Civil Rights and Freedoms

Government ESG reporting in smart cities

Governments shoulder the responsibility of pursuing a variety of sustainability objectives, the consequences of which may not be discernable in traditional reporting frameworks. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting would be a valuable addition to the existing financial, service, and infrastructure aspects of government reporting. While reportable data may be difficult to measure, smart city development strategies dovetail with technologies that facilitate sustainability reporting. Smart city strategies utilize technologies to support and inform municipal governance. This paper proposes a framework of government ESG reporting based on smart city initiatives, details potential steps in the process of government ESG reporting, discusses how smart cities could facilitate ESG reporting, and illustrates potential avenues of analysis using New York City vehicular mobility data as an example. This research sheds light on an under-examined topic, offers a perspective on adding ESG to government reporting, explores how sustainability data can inform government ESG reporting, and demonstrates the utility of smart city data for reporting, assurance, and monitoring.

Digital Innovations in the Fiscal Policy of Ukraine: Promoting Sustainable Economic Development

This study critically examines the nexus between tax legislation and digital innovation in Ukraine, focusing on the alignment of fiscal policy with the digital economy's growth. It analyzes the implications of Ukraine's tax reforms, including the Law "On Stimulating the Development of the Digital Economy in Ukraine," commonly referred to as the Diia City initiative, for promoting a robust digital economy. This research evaluates the effectiveness of these reforms in fostering digital advancements and their impact on sustainable economic development. Employing a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach, it researches into the theoretical and practical aspects of tax policies, particularly those targeting the digital sector. The findings suggest Ukraine's strategic positioning for leveraging digital innovation, underpinned by legislative reforms such as amendments to the Tax Code of Ukraine that cater to the IT industry through specific tax regulations through a conducive fiscal environment. This paper highlights the transformative potential of digital innovations and the critical need for tax legislation to evolve in tandem with technological advancements. Recommendations for ensuring the sustained success of Ukraine's digital and economic reform efforts emphasize the importance of addressing existing obstacles and perpetually refining fiscal policies.

Human‐centered Smart Cities: An evaluation of a small community using the Smart Cities Initiative framework

AbstractIn September 2023, the INCOSE Smart Cities Initiative released a framework to evaluate and define smart city systems. The framework includes a human‐centered definition of a smart city and offers metrics of a smart city. The definition, metrics, and framework are based on a systematic process that allows consistent evaluation of city that focuses on providing for fundamental human needs.Many smart city applications still focus on technology, regardless of whether that technology provides a clear benefit to the stakeholders of the city. Systems engineering tools and practices offer potential for improving smart city implementations by improving the alignment of needs and solutions. Unfortunately, in new domains, such as the plethora domains involved with smart cities, systems engineering can be viewed as unnecessary overhead. Therefore, the usefulness of the systems engineering concepts that underlie the INCOSE Smart Cities framework could be overlooked unless it can provide immediate value. As a demonstration of how the new framework could be used by someone interested in engaging INCOSE Smart Cities concepts, a high‐level application of the definitions and framework was performed.The analysis demonstrated that a simple review of the city system, using the perspectives of the INCOSE Smart Cities initiative, could reveal strengths and weaknesses of a smart city and identify potential next steps for improvement. This paper is a case study of how to use qualitative analysis to apply the human‐centered definition and framework to evaluate a Smart City. The case study provides an opportunity to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the new INCOSE framework.

Implementing AI on low-power embedded devices for digital water meter identification and data transfer via lora network

This study introduces an artificial intelligence system implemented on the ESP32-CAM platform, aimed at conducting optical character recognition (OCR) on water meters. Leveraging LoRa technology for data transmission ensures efficient energy utilization and convenient long-range communication capabilities. The system achieves an impressive accuracy rate of 98.2% in identifying water meter readings, showcasing its reliability. Proposed as a feasible solution, it offers the advantages of low energy consumption, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility in widespread deployment, particularly leveraging existing water meter infrastructure. Thus, this research presents a promising choice for various applications beyond merely reading water meter readings. Its efficient and accurate OCR functionality makes it suitable for diverse scenarios, ranging from smart city initiatives to industrial automation processes. With its ability to integrate seamlessly into existing infrastructure and deliver reliable results, this system stands poised to revolutionize OCR applications in various domains, contributing to enhanced efficiency and productivity.

Unlocking Artificial Intelligence Adoption in Local Governments: Best Practice Lessons from Real-World Implementations

In an era marked by rapid technological progress, the pivotal role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly evident across various sectors, including local governments. These governmental bodies are progressively leveraging AI technologies to enhance service delivery to their communities, ranging from simple task automation to more complex engineering endeavours. As more local governments adopt AI, it is imperative to understand the functions, implications, and consequences of these advanced technologies. Despite the growing importance of this domain, a significant gap persists within the scholarly discourse. This study aims to bridge this void by exploring the applications of AI technologies within the context of local government service provision. Through this inquiry, it seeks to generate best practice lessons for local government and smart city initiatives. By conducting a comprehensive review of grey literature, we analysed 262 real-world AI implementations across 170 local governments worldwide. The findings underscore several key points: (a) there has been a consistent upward trajectory in the adoption of AI by local governments over the last decade; (b) local governments from China, the US, and the UK are at the forefront of AI adoption; (c) among local government AI technologies, natural language processing and robotic process automation emerge as the most prevalent ones; (d) local governments primarily deploy AI across 28 distinct services; and (e) information management, back-office work, and transportation and traffic management are leading domains in terms of AI adoption. This study enriches the existing body of knowledge by providing an overview of current AI applications within the sphere of local governance. It offers valuable insights for local government and smart city policymakers and decision-makers considering the adoption, expansion, or refinement of AI technologies in urban service provision. Additionally, it highlights the importance of using these insights to guide the successful integration and optimisation of AI in future local government and smart city projects, ensuring they meet the evolving needs of communities.

How does extreme heat affect carbon emission intensity? Evidence from county-level data in China

This study investigates the impact of increasingly frequent extreme heat events due to climate change on carbon emission intensities in China. Using spline regressions on county-level data from 2000 to 2019, we identify an asymmetric U-shaped relationship between daily mean temperatures and carbon intensities. Each additional day with temperatures above 33 °C in each location results in a 0.9% rise in the average annual carbon intensity, driven by higher energy consumption for cooling. We also explore the mitigating effects of China's low-carbon city initiatives and emissions trading scheme. By combining our estimation results with future temperature trajectories, we simulate that, in the long run, China's carbon intensity can increase by 8–13% under the SSP1-2.6 scenario and 24–51% under the SSP5-8.5 scenario. Our findings underscore the urgency for policymakers to thoroughly assess the socioeconomic impacts of heat waves and incorporate climate resilience into overall sustainable development plans.

How do academic smart city centres operate in complex environments? A business model perspective

In recent years, an increasing number of academic smart city centres have emerged globally. These centres play a crucial role in conducting cutting-edge research and proposing innovative solutions for cities; they often operate in a complex multi-purpose, multi-disciplinary, and multi-stakeholder environment, even as they struggle to secure enough resources for their core activities. Despite their important role in smart city projects and initiatives, we lack scientific understandings of how smart city centres generate and deliver value to city stakeholders. As a first step in addressing this gap, we studied seven smart city centres across Europe and North America through in-depth interviews. To complement those interviews, we conducted an online survey and collected responses from a larger sample of centres from several regions around the world. Consequently, we provide a fresh understanding of how these centres orchestrate their operations and capabilities to create and deliver value to smart city stakeholders. Inspired by recent research on business model innovation for non-profit organizations, we argue that academic centres can benefit from using business models to align their operations with their strategies to achieve their goals. Our study contributes to smart city and business model research while providing practical implications for smart city centres.

How does digitalization affect the green transformation of enterprises registered in China's resource-based cities? Further analysis on the mechanism and heterogeneity

Digitalization, as a crucial engine for promoting sustainable development, has created new prospects for enterprise green transformation. Utilizing panel data from enterprises registered in China's resource-based cities from 2010 to 2021, this study innovatively examines the role of digitalization in promoting green transformation across two key performance dimensions. The findings indicate that enterprise digitalization significantly enhances the green innovation performance, while its impact on environmental performance, although positive, is not statistically significant. Overall, enterprise digitalization greatly facilitates green transformation. Moreover, mechanism analysis reveals that enterprise digitalization promotes green transformation through the alleviation of financial mismatch and the increase of external market attention. In addition, heterogeneity analysis shows that the effectiveness of enterprise digitalization in promoting green transformation is significantly different in different opportunist risk scenarios, proving more effective in areas with low-marketization, high-competition industries, and high environmental regulation intensity. In terms of the policy level, the National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zone (NBDCPZ) and the Carbon Emission Trading Policy (CETP) played a positive stimulating role in the process of enterprise digitalization affecting green transformation. This paper broadens the scope of research on green transformation, offers new development philosophy for enterprises in resource-based cities, and provides new directions for the synergistic development of digitalization and greenization.

A Review of IoT-Based Smart City Development and Management

Smart city initiatives aim to enhance urban domains such as healthcare, transportation, energy, education, environment, and logistics by leveraging advanced information and communication technologies, particularly the Internet of Things (IoT). While IoT integration offers significant benefits, it also introduces unique challenges. This paper provides a comprehensive review of IoT-based management in smart cities. It includes a discussion of a generalized architecture for IoT in smart cities, evaluates various metrics to assess the success of smart city projects, explores standards pertinent to these initiatives, and delves into the challenges encountered in implementing smart cities. Furthermore, the paper examines real-world applications of IoT in urban management, highlighting their advantages, practical impacts, and associated challenges. The research methodology involves addressing six key questions to explore IoT architecture, impacts on efficiency and sustainability, insights from global examples, critical standards, success metrics, and major deployment challenges. These findings offer valuable guidance for practitioners and policymakers in developing effective and sustainable smart city initiatives. The study significantly contributes to academia by enhancing knowledge, offering practical insights, and highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary research for urban innovation and sustainability, guiding future initiatives towards more effective smart city solutions.