Context Of Smart Cities Research Articles

Multilevel Annoyance Modelling of Short Environmental Sound Recordings

The recent development and deployment of Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASN) present new ways to address urban acoustic challenges in a smart city context. A focus on improving quality of life forms the core of smart-city design paradigms and cannot be limited to simply measuring objective environmental factors, but should also consider the perceptual, psychological and health impacts on citizens. This study therefore makes use of short (1–2.7 s) recordings sourced from a WASN in Milan which were grouped into various environmental sound source types and given an annoyance rating via an online survey with N=100 participants. A multilevel psychoacoustic model was found to achieve an overall R2=0.64 which incorporates Sharpness as a fixed effect regardless of the sound source type and Roughness, Impulsiveness and Tonality as random effects whose coefficients vary depending on the sound source. These results present a promising step toward implementing an on-sensor annoyance model which incorporates psychoacoustic features and sound source type, and is ultimately not dependent on sound level.

Overview of MPC Applications in Smart Cities

: Starting from the early 2000s, the concept of Smart City emerged as a new paradigm for urban development, driven by the exponential progress in communication and information technology as well as by the needs of a constant growing population. The Smart City context requires flexible infrastructures and processes, capable of reacting proactively depending on the situation. In this paper, we seek to explore the role of model-based predictive control (MPC) in the development of Smart Cities. The applications of MPC in different scenarios proves that this optimal control strategy is well suited for the dynamic environment in which it operates. Nevertheless, the literature review reveals that real life implementation of MPC as a control strategy within urban setting is still limited and further work is needed to facilitate its adoption in a wider context

Blockchain technologies to address smart city and society challenges

New Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are changing the way in which the world works. These technologies provide new tools to face the issues of contemporary society (poverty, migrations, sustainable development challenges, governance, etc.). Among them, blockchain emerge as a disruptive technology able to make things in a completely different and innovative way. They can provide solutions where before there were none. Recently, these technologies have become subject of intense research and development by industry and academia. In consequence, a large amount of interesting works is published in many areas, proposing solutions, services, frameworks and applications based on these technologies. The research focusing on the previous challenges are especially interesting in current society. However, the proposals arrive at higher speed than society can assimilate them, and sometimes they are not properly exploited. Thus, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the blockchain technology to identify what are its key attributes that enable to successfully address the social challenges. The review has been conducted from three point of views: service-delivery, resource-management and city-administration, and has been focused on the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, in order to cover the full agenda of current social issues. The contributions of this work are an exhaustive compilation of the existing research on blockchain technology to tackle the social challenges from several angles, and the identification of the key features and the conditioning factors of the practical applicability of the technology. • This works describes the main SDGs challenges addressed by means cryptocurrencies and blockchain tecnologies. • The main proposals and solutions based on blockchain and cryptocurrencies are described. • A classification is made of the proposals according the SDGs on which are focused. • A review of the main solutions for smart city contexts are discussed.

Using GIS-based intelligent transportation systems in the enhancement of university campus commuting in a smart city context

This study investigated the possibility of using an intelligent transport system (ITS) and geographic information system (GIS) to increase the efficiency of the campus transportation at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The study yielded several findings, prior to the implementation of the GIS-based ITS, the time spent waiting for the university bus amounted to less than 5 min (19% of responses), 5–10 min (48%), 10–20 min (30%), and more than 30 min (3%). Regarding the bus arrival time at home, 62% of the female students did not know the bus arrival time, and 38% knew the bus arrival time. However, after the creation of an intelligent transportation system that sent an alert prior to the arrival of the bus in front of their houses, the time the female students spent waiting for the bus decreased significantly, reaching 14 min, in addition to the 10 min spent for the bus to move between houses. The constant factor before and after the ITS intervention was the total time required to pick up the female students, reaching 24 min, and the new system saved 43 min of daily trip time.

Blockchain and Building Information Management (BIM) for Sustainable Building Development within the Context of Smart Cities

‘Smart cities’ are a new type of city where stakeholders are jointly responsible for urban management. City Information Management (CIM) is an output tool for smart city planning and management, which assists in achieving the sustainable development of urban infrastructure, and promotes smart cities to achieve the goals of stable global economic development, sustainable environmental development, and improvement of people’s quality of life. Existing research has so far established that blockchain and BIM have great potential to enhance construction project performance. However, there is little research on how blockchain and BIM can support sustainable building design and construction. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to explore the potential impact of the integration of blockchain and BIM in a smart city environment on making buildings more sustainable within the context of CIM/Smart Cities. The paper explores the relationships between blockchain, BIM and sustainable building across the life cycle stage of a construction project. This paper queries the Web of Science (WoS) database with keywords to obtain relevant publication, and then uses the VOSviewer to visually analyze the relationships between blockchain, BIM, and sustainable building within the context of smart cities and CIM, which is conducted in bibliometric analysis followed by micro scheme analysis. The results demonstrate the value of this method in gauging the importance of these three topics, highlighting their interrelationships and identifying trends, giving researchers an objective research direction. Those aspects reported in the paper constitute an original contribution.

Dynamic capabilities for ecosystem orchestrationA capability-based framework for smart city innovation initiatives

Firms are faced with increased dynamism due to rapid technological development, digitalization, and sustainability requirements, creating novel opportunities for ecosystem innovation. This is particularly prevalent in smart city contexts where initiatives concerning, for example, energy efficient buildings and smart energy grids drive new kinds of ecosystem formation. Orchestrating emerging innovation ecosystems can offer a path to sustained competitive advantage for ecosystem leaders. Yet, it calls for the development of new capabilities to sense, seize, and reconfigure digitalization opportunities in a highly dynamic ecosystem environment. Yet, prior research lacks insights into the dynamic capabilities and routines required for ecosystem innovation. Therefore, this study investigates how firms can develop dynamic capabilities to orchestrate ecosystem innovation and, thus, gain from it. Through a multiple case study of smart city initiatives, we offer insights into the specific micro-foundations or sub-routines underlying the ecosystem leader's sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring capabilities, which are necessary to orchestrate ecosystem innovation. We develop a capability-based framework demonstrating three orchestration mechanisms – namely, configuring ecosystem partnerships, value proposition deployment, and governing ecosystem alignment. Our findings carry implications for the literature on innovation ecosystems and dynamic capabilities, as well as for managers.

Framework for Prioritization of Open Data Publication: An Application to Smart Cities

Public Sector Information is considered to play a fundamental role in the growth of the knowledge economy and improvements in society. Given the difficulty in publishing and maintaining all available data, due to budget constraints, institutions need to select which data to publish, giving priority to data most likely to generate social and economic impact. Priority of publication could become an even more significant problem in Smart Cities: as huge amounts of information are generated from different domains, the way data is prioritized and thus reused, could be a determining factor in promoting, among others, new and sustainable business opportunities for local entrepreneurs, and to improve citizen quality of life. However, people in charge of prioritizing which data to publish through open data portals (such as Chief Data Officers, or CDOs) do not have available any specific support in their decision-making process. In this work, a proposal of a framework for prioritization of open data publication as well as its application to Smart Cities is presented. This specific application of the framework relies on OSS (Open Source Software) indicators to help making decisions on the most relevant data to publish focused on developers and businesses operating within the Smart City context.

Urban facility management

PurposeThis paper aims to illustrate where facility management (FM) is having an impact on the urban environment and what other work needs to be done to easier facilitate achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This is important for practices as it highlights opportunities where the FM discipline can develop and to research to illustrate where the discipline is going. The societal benefit is that we see Urban FM as an intermediator between citizens, public and private practices providing the platform of how they can work together for mutual benefit.Design/methodology/approachThe method used is a literature review, looking latest state-of-art in the mentioned field has been assessed and the developments along with potential future research focuses, have been identified. The current scope to expand FM role were also taken into consideration from a recent workshop at the EuroFM conferences 2019 and 2020, several presentations at the CIB World Congress Hong Kong 2019, CIRRE 2018 and 2019, and special Facilities’ issue, illustrating how FM works within Urban environments and the potential contribution the discipline makes on neighbourhoods, communities and broader city-scale.FindingsThe authors present how FM fits in with a Smart and Sustainable City context by positioning communities as core for meeting SDGs, but they often fall out of needs perspective for hard and soft services. Since 2018, the authors have intensely worked on this topic developing conference papers at both a European and international level. The topic of Urban FM is growing in importance based on out interactions at these conferences and interactions with FM network groups. In addition, the authors have been identifying gaps, with communities that are currently not being met by current urban practice perspectives but could be met through an Urban FM practice perspective. They have engaged an educational perspective of Urban FM by developing workshops, summer schools with students from around Europe and new courses. With a specific focus on this concept, it is important to branch out ideas and disseminate of what a more structured urban FM is.Research limitations/implicationsSmart and Sustainable Cities has been a focus for many years now from various perspectives such as urban planning and technology providing solutions and frameworks on how to manage increasing populations in cities. What these studies neglect is a service-oriented perspective supporting the livability requirements and social values of future and current communities living in cities which goes beyond operating and maintaining infrastructure of cities. This neglect which highlights the need to develop an understanding where FM expands its role in the urban environment.Originality/valueThe aim is to highlight solidify research that is happening in this area where FM links to the urban environment and the benefit it has in terms of sustainability. It illustrates to practice and teaching that the concept of FM is relevant within an urban environment, creates stronger connections within and between citizens and cities and illustrate how Urban FM is necessary in facilitating community facilities.

Customer Value of Smart Grid Application

The authors investigate customer value of smart grid application in smart city from the perspective of main research paradigms of customer value. Data is based on questionnaire for customers (N=131), deep interviews among specialists (7=N), and two months of observation. The results show that the typical user of smart grid technology is a male aged between 30 and 69 who considers that using the application is interesting because of the perceived benefits. Developing strong customer relationship is formed through the provision of e-service quality that has a key role in maintaining customer trust, satisfaction, and loyalty. End-product and service process paradigms to measure customer value do not fully take the complex context of smart cities into consideration, and the ecosystem paradigm must be developed to analyze customer value in smart cities in interactive dynamic decentralized environment where cumulative big data is used to match the customer needs with new digital services.

PADL: A Modeling and Deployment Language for Advanced Analytical Services.

In the smart city context, Big Data analytics plays an important role in processing the data collected through IoT devices. The analysis of the information gathered by sensors favors the generation of specific services and systems that not only improve the quality of life of the citizens, but also optimize the city resources. However, the difficulties of implementing this entire process in real scenarios are manifold, including the huge amount and heterogeneity of the devices, their geographical distribution, and the complexity of the necessary IT infrastructures. For this reason, the main contribution of this paper is the PADL description language, which has been specifically tailored to assist in the definition and operationalization phases of the machine learning life cycle. It provides annotations that serve as an abstraction layer from the underlying infrastructure and technologies, hence facilitating the work of data scientists and engineers. Due to its proficiency in the operationalization of distributed pipelines over edge, fog, and cloud layers, it is particularly useful in the complex and heterogeneous environments of smart cities. For this purpose, PADL contains functionalities for the specification of monitoring, notifications, and actuation capabilities. In addition, we provide tools that facilitate its adoption in production environments. Finally, we showcase the usefulness of the language by showing the definition of PADL-compliant analytical pipelines over two uses cases in a smart city context (flood control and waste management), demonstrating that its adoption is simple and beneficial for the definition of information and process flows in such environments.

Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in Sustainable Urban Innovation: An Ambidexterity Perspective toward Smart Cities

ABSTRACT The potential of technological innovation to address urban sustainability has been widely acknowledged over the last decade. Across cities globally, local governments have engaged in partnership arrangements with the private sector to initiate pilot projects for urban innovation, typically co-funded by innovation subsidies. A recurring challenge however is how to scale up successful projects and generate more impact. Drawing on the business and management literature, we introduce the concept of organizational ambidexterity to provide a novel theoretical perspective on sustainable urban innovations. We examine how to align exploration (i.e., test and experiment with digital technologies, products, platforms, and services) with exploitation (i.e., reaping the financial benefits from digital technologies by bringing products, platforms, and services to the market), rooted in the literature on smart cities. We conclude that the concept of ambidexterity, as elaborated in the business and management literature and practiced by firms, can be translated to the city policy domain, provided that upscaling or exploitation in a smart city context also includes the translation of insights from urban experiments, successful or not, into new routines, regulations, protocols, and stakeholder/citizen engagement methods.

A LoRaWAN Carbon Monoxide Measurement System With Low-Power Sensor Triggering for the Monitoring of Domestic and Industrial Boilers

Gases emitted by domestic and industrial boilers significantly contribute to the overall pollution levels of urban environments. Among these gases, carbon monoxide (CO) represents a marker of the efficiency of the combustion processes, and the monitoring of its emissions, even if often neglected, is crucial to improve energy efficiency and environmental safety within a smart city context. This article aims at describing a real-time, remote system for the monitoring of CO emissions of domestic and industrial boilers based on the use of a low-power long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) sensor node. In particular, the proposed solution is based on an ad hoc front-end circuit acting as a power-gating system for the rest of the sensor node, exploiting the output of the CO sensor as a trigger to activate the data acquisition and transmission module. Such a solution allows to notably increase the lifetime of the node, allowing its powering using rechargeable Li-ion batteries. Tests were performed on a real boiler in order to demonstrate the validity of the proposed solution. Power consumption of the sensor node was experimentally measured: theoretical analysis demonstrated an ideal lifetime for the sensor node up to two and half years.

A Compact and Flexible UHF RFID Tag Antenna for Massive IoT Devices in 5G System.

Upcoming 5th-generation (5G) systems incorporate physical objects (referred to as things), which sense the presence of components such as gears, gadgets, and sensors. They may transmit many kinds of states in the smart city context, such as new deals at malls, safe distances on roads, patient heart rhythms (especially in hospitals), and logistic control at aerodromes and seaports around the world. These serve to form the so-called future internet of things (IoT). From this futuristic perspective, everything should have its own identity. In this context, radio frequency identification (RFID) plays a specific role, which provides wireless communications in a secure manner. Passive RFID tags carry out work using the energy harvested among massive systems. RFID has been habitually realized as a prerequisite for IoT, the combination of which is called IoT RFID (I-RFID). For the current scenario, such tags should be productive, low-profile, compact, easily mountable, and have eco-friendly features. The presently available tags are not cost-effective and have not been proven as green tags for environmentally friendly IoT in 5G systems nor are they suitable for long-range communications in 5G systems. The proposed I-RFID tag uses the meandering angle technique (MAT) to construct a design that satisfies the features of a lower-cost printed antenna over the worldwide UHF RFID band standard (860–960 MHz). In our research, tag MAT antennas are fabricated on paper-based Korsnäs by screen- and flexo-printing, which have lowest simulated effective outcomes with dielectric variation due to humidity and have a plausible read range (RR) for European (EU; 866–868 MHz) and North American (NA; 902–928 MHz) UHF band standards. The I-RFID tag size is reduced by 36% to 38% w.r.t. a previously published case, the tag gain has been improved by 23.6% to 33.12%, and its read range has been enhanced by 50.9% and 59.6% for EU and NA UHF bands, respectively. It provides impressive performance on some platforms (e.g., plastic, paper, and glass), thereby providing a new state-of-the-art I-RFID tag with better qualities in 5G systems.

Towards a Frame of Reference for Smart City Strategy Development and Governance

Despite the importance of the smart city concept, few works address how to define and implement smart cities in a clear manner. Furthermore, the smart city literature provides heterogeneous studies and solutions; this heterogeneity creates misunderstanding regarding the smart city definition and strategy. Moreover, stakeholders have multiple and conflicting interests and concerns, which also increase the ambiguity regarding the smart city concept and approach. To meet this challenge and fill this gap, a smart city frame of reference is needed to frame and guide smart city strategy formulation and implementation. In this perspective, the current research conducts a quantitative analysis of various smart city frameworks and strategies, in order to find and demonstrate the common building blocks of a smart city framework. Based on the quantitative analysis, this work proposes a clear and integrative smart city framework. This framework aims to reduce the misunderstanding and ambiguity regarding smart city definitions and strategies by providing a standard smart city approach that fits all smart city contexts. To this effect, the proposed framework considers all smart city concerns and it is composed of the following blocks: Strategic awareness, business strategic planning, IT investment decisions, IT organizational structure, steering committee, IT prioritization process, IT strategic planning, IT budgeting, marketing plan, IT reaction capacity, IT reporting and management strategy.

Smart cities education: An insight into existing drawbacks

Smart cities aim to increase citizens’ quality of life by employing technology. Education is one of the areas of focus in smart cities and in this context, smart education is a term used to refer to education provided by smart cities. As research in this area has expanded recently as shown by the number of literature reviews in a smart city context, a review could help summarize existing directions focusing in this case on education in the smart cities context. As our understanding on negative consequences is limited, this research will address this knowledge gap by concentrating on challenges and difficulties when it comes to education in smart cities. The articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Science were review and a qualitative analysis of the articles fitting our research criteria was done. Three themes were identified: shortcomings on the existing educational initiatives to address the needs of smart cities, negative consequences of smart city education in other areas and problems that arise as a result of employing technology in education.

A VISUAL ANALYTICS OF MOVEMENT DATA OF A WASTE COLLECTION SERVICE: A TOOL FOR SMART CITIES

Abstract. Solid waste management is an important urban issue to be addressed in every city. In the smart city context, waste collection allows massive collection of data representing movements, provided by satellite tracking technologies and sensors on waste collection equipment. For decision makers to take advantage of this opportunity, an analytical tool suitable for the waste management context, able to visualize the complexity of the data and to deal with different types of formats in which the data is stored is required.The aim of this paper is to evaluate the potential of an interactive data analysis tool, based on R and R-Shiny, to better understand the particularities of a waste collection service and how it relates to the local city context. The User-centered Analysis-Task driven model (AVIMEU) is presented. The model is organized into seven components: database load, classification panel, multivariate analysis, concurrency, origin-destination, points of interest and itinerary. The model was implemented as a test case for the waste collection service of the city of Pasto in the southwest of Colombia. It is shown that the model based on visual analysis is a promising approach that should be further enhanced. The analyses are oriented in such a way that they provide practical information to the agents or experts of the service. The model is available on the site https://github.com/MerariFonseca/AVIMEU-visual-analytics-for-movement-data-in-R .

The impacts of open data initiatives on smart cities: A framework for evaluation and monitoring

As the world's population is becoming progressively urban-dwelling, sustainable development challenges are increasingly concentrated in cities, placing tremendous pressure on society to build more sustainable, innovative, and equitable urban environments. Consequently, today's cities require integrated policies and new innovative ways to manage and improve the complexity of urban living conditions. The growing volume and variety of data produced in the urban ecosystem are crucial for obtaining the city's insights and building knowledge-based solutions for a smarter and more sustainable urban development. In this paper, we look at the open data impacts on these complex ecosystems and its crucial enabler role for the generation and analysis of contextual and actionable data aimed at understanding, managing, and planning the city. Despite the importance of open data, the literature is scarce in systematic and structured research that evaluates its impacts on the smart city context. This paper explores this gap by proposing a theoretical framework, composed of a model and an experiment grounded on the use of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT), designed to give a more detailed view concerning the context and characteristics of the impacts of open data initiatives on smart cities' sustainable development. This work will contribute to open data management and smart city development, providing boundaries and theoretical insights for further research and experimentation on how open data can be leveraged to develop better smart cities.

Hybrid RPL-based sensing and routing protocol for smart city

PurposeWireless sensor network (WSN) and mobile crowd sensing (MCS) technologies face some challenges, especially when deployed in a large environment such as a smart city environment. WSN faces network latency, packets delivery and limited lifetime due to the nature of the used constrained internet of things small devices and low power network. On the other hand, most of the current applications that adapt MCS technology use 3G or long term evalution network to collect data and send them directly to the server. This leads to higher battery and bandwidth consumption and higher data cost.Design/methodology/approachThis paper proposes a hybrid routing protocol based on the routing protocol (RPL) protocol that combines the two wireless sensing technologies (WSN and MCS) and allows the integration between them. The aim is to use MCS nodes in an opportunistic way to support static WSN nodes to enhance the performance.FindingsThe evaluation of the proposed protocol was conducted in a static WSN to study the impact of the integration on the WSN performance. The results reveal a good enhancement on packet delivery ratio (17% more), end-to-end delay (50% less) and power consumption (25% less) compared with native RPL (without MCS integration).Originality/valueThe authors believe that the hybrid-RPL protocol can be useful for sensing and data collection purposes, especially in urban areas and smart city contexts.

The urban data deluge: challenges for smart urban planning in the third data revolution

ABSTRACT Effective urban planning is increasingly affected and governed by the current information society. This paper argues that the so-called third data revolution creates unprecedented challenges for sustainable city policy in the digital age. Three types of data revolutions are distinguished in this paper. The nowadays popular notion of smart cities may be helpful to enhance the cognitive quality of urban policy-making, but leads also to new issues on complex data handling in the modern age of social media and digital information systems. The various issues at stake are outlined in this paper, while this study is concluded with a sketch of the contours of a so-called smart city policy fly-wheel, so as to demonstrate that the urban fabric – also in a smart city context – is always work in progress, with a view to the achievement of sustainable development goals. Highlights The birth of the smart cities concept originates from the third data revolution. Sustainable city policy calls for smart data management. In the ‘New Urban World’ systematic data warehousing is needed. The tension between closed administrative city borders and open data systems can be bridged. The attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs) presupposes smart city policy.

Mobile Crowd Sensing RPL-based Routing Protocol for Smart City

Recently, Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) has been usedin many smart city monitoring applications, leveraging the latest smartphone features of sensing and networking. However, most of these applications use a direct internet connection for sending the collected data to the server through a 3Gor 4G (LTE)network.This type of communication leads to higher bandwidth, battery consumption, and higher data plan cost.In this paper, we presenta new ad-hoc tree-based routing protocol named MCS-RPL based on theIoT RPL protocolfor the smart city context. The proposed protocol aims to utilize smartphone and Mobile CrowdSensing (MCS) opportunistically to support static Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)and to cover more sensing areas with less routing overhead and power consumption. MCS-RPL usesa grid-based cluster head to address mobility issues and reduce control packets. The conducted performance evaluation reveals that the proposed protocol outperforms RPL in terms of packet delivery ratio and power consumption due to control packet overhead reduction, which reached more than 75% in the tested scenarios.