Smart City Design Research Articles

Social factors that influence the design of smart cities

Esta investigacion tiene por objetivo determinar los diferentes factores sociales que influyen en el diseno de ciudades inteligentes, dejando de lado variables tecnologicas, pero no asi la relacion de ellas con el aspecto social; sustentado en estudios realizados desde perspectivas no solamente sociales, sino considerando tambien las del area de ingenieria y tecnologia. Se parte del analisis de la definicion de ciudad inteligente para continuar con una revision de literatura relacionada; se sigue con un estudio profundo de factores sociales asociados al diseno de ciudades inteligentes, finalizando con las conclusiones de la investigacion. Entre las variables de indole social mencionadas recurrentemente en diversas investigaciones se encuentran las economicas, politicas, de seguridad, de salud, educativas y el capital humano. En este ultimo factor se encuentra la percepcion (de las personas), calidad de vida, valores, movilidad, densidad, etcetera. Palabras clave: Factores Sociales, Ciudad Inteligente, Calidad de Vida, Sustentabilidad .

Listening to the citizens and building health care of the future

Purpose: The Region of Southern Denmark RSD and The University of Strathclyde UoS have set up a collaboration to address demographic challenges and focus on smarter healthcare services. The challenges require new ways of identifying solutions to provide the best care, and to empower and involve citizens in their own care. Context: There is wide consensus and growing evidence supporting that innovation in health and care can tackle societal challenges, increase growth, and boost efficiency and quality in the public sector. However, citizen-centred innovation efforts still struggle to trigger the expected benefits. WHO has reported that to accelerate gain in health and social outcomes and reduce inequalities, health and social services must be financially viable, fit for purpose, people-centred and evidence-informed 1. Both co-design and willingness to change are crucial for success, and eHealth City demonstrates this. Methods: To create better care, a citizen-centred approach is applied but with focus on a city level. Both the UoS and RSD introduce initiatives taking citizen-centred innovation to the next level: In RSD, a collaboration between Odense University Hospital, Svendborg municipality and SME Public Intelligence has transformed the Svendborg city into an eHealth City. The eHealth City is built on an open approach to retrieving input from citizens in 3 streets and also inviting them in on the development of new solutions. This way, we ensure that citizens get to express their needs and wishes, healthcare providers know which services to provide, and companies know which services to develop. The UoS hosts the Institute for Future Cities and the Digital Health and Care Innovation centre for Scotland. In this context, the expertise in citizen-centred design, development and evaluation of smart city and mobile digital health interventions at scale, capitalising on knowledge transfer opportunities to make a real world impact is applied. This approach aims to achieve equitable access to, and uptake, of ICT-enabled care solutions to improve to ensure maximum citizen benefit. Furthermore, it supports the urgent need for work within a quadruple helix Industry, Public, Civic and Academic to drive efficiency and realise best value to benefit our citizens and regional economies. Results/discussion: Involving citizens in the development of health and care have proven successful. However, eHealth City will take the concept a step further and push co-creation to the next level. The market for healthcare is well established and solutions for most challenges are available. However, to make sure that we develop the right services for the right needs, we need the citizens’ input. With our citizen-centred and city-wide approach, we ensure faster track to market for the sake of the citizens, companies, and healthcare providers. Conclusion: Many initiatives in citizen-centred innovation show great results. However, this approach keeps pushing the boundaries for involving citizens. We need to put the citizen in the driver’s seat for innovation and allow them to voice their opinions to provide the best possible services and support citizen empowerment.

Hearing the Voice of Citizens in Smart City Design: The CitiVoice Framework

In the last few years, smart cities have attracted considerable attention because they are considered a response to the complex challenges that modern cities face. However, smart cities often do not optimally reach their objectives if the citizens, the end-users, are not involved in their design. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework to structure and evaluate citizen participation in smart cities. By means of a literature review from different research areas, the relevant enablers of citizen participation are summarized and bundled in the proposed CitiVoice framework. Then, following the design science methodology, the content and the utility of CitiVoice are validated through the application to different smart cities and through in-depth interviews with key Belgian smart city stakeholders. CitiVoice is used as an evaluation tool for several Belgian smart cities allowing drawbacks and flaws in citizens’ participation to be discovered and analyzed. It is also demonstrated how CitiVoice can act as a governance tool for the ongoing smart city design of Namur (Belgium) to help define the citizen participation strategy. Finally, it is used as a comparison and creativity tool to compare several cities and design new means of participation.

Smart (Electricity) Grids for Smart Cities: Assessing Roles and Societal Impacts

Smart energy and electricity networks are a crucial component in building smart city architectures; their consistent and harmonized inclusion in the smart city design should be carefully considered through a detailed analysis of the impacts (environmental, energy, economic, societal) and the implementation of cost benefit analysis (CBA), not only in terms of managing the grid itself but also in a wider perspective that includes environmental, security, and social aspects. This paper first discusses the main impact that smart grid deployment has, in different respects, in smart cities and then presents a methodology for an extended CBA, able to go beyond the strictly financial aspects. It is based on previous developments at the European level. The methodology conceptually illustrated can naturally be extended to the assessment of proposals for the development of smart cities.

Utilization of Cloud Computing Service for Smart City Development of Medan City

The existence of technology, especially information technology is growing up rapidly currently. Medan City government at this time have to utilize advances information technology to process, manage, distribute and information distribute and public services. Thus, the development of Smart City is needed, where the concept aims to accommodate and improve the quality of public services. In this study was done planning of smart city development Medan city by utilizing Cloud Computing Service technology. By the main priority of realizing the population with proper health and educated, any aspects of Smart City equipped with security server or centralized security system. Cloud Computing Service Design for Medan Smart City Development is designed for next 3, it is the most considering method to be applied. Thus, three agencies were taken of direct contact by the community and the most experiencing obstacles in the field. The result of this work is a Masterplan Smart City design Medan city for the development of the next five years.

An Exploration of “Hyper-Local” Community-University Engagement in the Development of Smart Cities

ABSTRACTThe use of big data in smart cities poses new questions about higher education and community-university engagement practices in addressing longstanding social and economic exclusion in urban communities. Drawing on transdisciplinary ideas in higher education, cultural theory, and science and technology studies, primary concerns in the era of big data are considered with current conceptualizations of higher education engagement and anchor institution purposes. Tensions in the narratives of civic engagement and democratic practice for community well-being are juxtaposed with tensions in the smart citizen narrative implied by the idealized smart city design. A new framing of community-university relations under what I term “hyper-local” engagement is suggested for more justice-oriented and democratic practices when universities interact with their surrounding communities given the impending and sweeping changes occurring from the use of big data in social policy.

WLAN based energy efficient smart city design

The rapid growth of new technologies resulted in a new city model, known as the famous “Smart City”. The main aim in this paper is to create a paradigm for building an energy efficient smart city. Wireless local area network (WLAN) controller that will be used by the city will be constructed in such a manner that when there will be no request from any node to the access point (AP), the AP will be send from active mode to sleep mode. In Qualnet7.2, with the help of three types of energy model generic, mica z and mica motes the energy consumption in three modes transmit, receive and sleep mode is analysed, where it is seen that energy consumption in sleep mode is much less than in any other modes. In this paper, we propose an algorithm where it is shown that the energy consumption in sleep mode is less than in any other modes.

Interactive Environment Design in Smart City

The interactive environment design of smart city is not just an interactive progress or interactive mode design, rather than generate an environment such as the “organic” life entity as human beings through interactive design, forming a smart environment with perception, memory, thinking, and reaction.

The Impact of Urban Design on the Realization of the Zero Energy Building Target Through On-site Energy Production: a Case Study

Purpose of Review The concept of the smart city goes beyond the employment of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) for better resource use as it also includes smarter and more efficient ways to heat and power buildings. The implementation of on-site renewable energy technologies, as well as the exploitation of the solar global irradiance for buildings passive heating, is a key element in the urban design of smart cities. This study aims to present an urban design concept for smart cities, which puts the spotlight on the optimal solar exposure of buildings, which will allow the maximization of smart building solar energy profit.

“Four-Hospitality: Friendly Smart City Design for Disability”

There are four standards that we define to make the right smart city designs for the disabled people. Namely Four-Hospitality, which consists of accessible, safety, problem solve, and flexible. The Four-Hospitality will become the standard benchmark assessment of smart city design. In this research method, we compare between the literature of different countries and the concept of Four-Hospitality. The comparison in this study aims to enable us knowing the latest form of the technological solutions that are applied by various countries, to provide disability welfare and most discussed in several literatures. The result can be observed that around 62.5% of the 8 literatures fulfill Four-Hospitality standard. The most observed deals using IT-based technologies such as Wemap, Wheelmap, SIMON, OpenStreetMap and other similar applications. For implementation, is tailored to the competitiveness of the city, where the competitiveness of the city is shaped by the main factors (input) and economic performance (output). So, the conclusion is by using the Four-Hospitality standard, we will get the right public service facility to implement a smart city with friendly environment design for disability. And for the implementation phase, we can use the city progress parameters by measuring the level of competitiveness based on input and output factors. We believe, by implementing this strategy, selecting technology with Four-Hospitality standard in implementation a smart city with ideal design, it will be able to build a city that can improve welfare’s life of disability.

On the Similarities Between Urban Traffic Management and Communication Networks: Application of the Random Early Detection Algorithm for Self-Regulating Intersections

Communications are revolutionizing transport systems. Recently, novel technologies from the fields of telecommunications and data networks have been incorporated into both vehicle systems and road infrastructures, setting new frontiers in the design and development of Smart Cities and Smart Urban Mobility. Whereas each scenario, i.e., the vehicular one and the data communications one, has its own and well-defined particularities, there are also similarities that should be further explored. In this work, we address this confluence of research areas by investigating the applicability in vehicle traffic management of an active queue control algorithm employed in communication networks and called Random Early Detection (RED). RED provides congestion avoidance in data networks by controlling the average queue size of network buffers. It detects incipient congestion and, using probabilistic packet-marking or packet-dropping behavior, it is able to keep the data network at high throughput and low delay. In this work, we propose an adaption of RED to vehicle traffic management in signaled intersections, namely, RED for Vehicles (REDV). A complete characterization of REDV is provided, including the impact of several configuration parameters. We also conduct an extensive comparative performance evaluation via computer simulation. Results show that REDV is a light and simple algorithm able to significantly reduce the average trip time, waiting time, and CO2 emissions in a signaled intersection compared to other approaches from the related literature.

Measuring Urban Redevelopment Sustainability: Exploring Challenges from Downtown Seoul

A main challenge for the design and building of green and smart cities is the redevelopment of existing built environments. This research investigates the usefulness of urban district sustainability evaluation systems in informing and guiding urban redevelopment projects. The German DGNB Urban District (DGNB UD) sustainability assessment and certification system has been chosen among others due to its comprehensive method to evaluate eight awarded projects from the “Re-structuring Seunsangga Citywalk International Competition” organized for Seoul’s downtown redevelopment. The results have been compared with the sustainability assessment of the district status quo and the competition call text, noticing a generic enhancement of sustainability. However, sustainability categories and criteria were not addressed sufficiently by any project in order to meet the integrated and holistic certification requirements of DGNB UD. The findings from this research emphasize the need for integrated assessment and measurements of urban sustainability, beyond projects’ self-promotion emphasizing greening or single sustainability facets. The research findings particularly exemplify how awarded project proposals might still be stuck in a specific, limited framework of sustainability. This paper concludes that balanced sustainability could be achieved by utilization of comprehensive assessment and evaluation systems in the preparation and assessment of plans.

Citizen-driven dashboards in smart ecosystems: a framework

This position paper is concerned with the research and design of infocommunication technologies for citizen engagement and learning in smart ecosystems. The work assumes a human-centric citizen-driven smart city design approach and also proposes a R&D iterative framework model based on SOA work that goes from citizen inquiry to a front-end dashboard paradigm proposal. A research framework is discussed alongside scientific and public state of the art projects, their methods, techniques and main goals/results that inform smart ecosystem R&D agenda today. The specific contribution of this work concentrates on the proposal of affordant visual personal dashboards to represent selected open data smart ecosystem dimensions to be interpreted by the common citizen, capable of engaging the citizen and supporting in locolearning of real context of need/use situations.

Digital Sustainability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The fourth industrial revolution launched digitalization in manufacturing sector, business and human environment. This opens a question of influence to development of the digital sustainability concept and resource-efficiency in the focus on the design of smart cities and smart factories. Furthermore, it is also necessary to respect ethical rules when using private information. These factors are fundamental framework conditions for successful products. The aim of this paper is to present the known theory and practices of digital sustainability in the fourth industrial revolution and to investigate the changes that result from digital sustainability and influence on the corporate social digital responsibility development. In order to achieve this objective, a comprehensive review of journal articles, conference papers, books and edited volumes will be performed.

Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms for the taxi sharing problem

Transportation planning plays a central role in the design and development of smart cities. In particular, the concept of sharing economy applied to urban transportation is gaining massive public attention in recent years. This article presents the application of two multiobjective evolutionary algorithms to the problem of distributing passengers travelling from the same origin to different destinations in several taxis. A new problem formulation is presented, accounting for two quality of service metrics from the point of view of taxi users: the total cost of the trips and the delay experienced by each passenger. Two multiobjective evolutionary algorithms are proposed: a parallel microevolutionary algorithm following a linear aggregation approach to combine the problem objectives and one well-known algorithm from the literature following a full multiobjective approach based on Pareto dominance. Both algorithms are compared against each other and against two greedy heuristics based on the ideas presented in the related literature. The experimental evaluation is performed over a set of 88 problem instances generated using real GPS taxi data. Results show that the proposed algorithms are able to efficiently reach significant improvements in both problem objectives over the greedy heuristics in short execution times.

Social Media Meets Big Urban Data: A Case Study of Urban Waterlogging Analysis.

With the design and development of smart cities, opportunities as well as challenges arise at the moment. For this purpose, lots of data need to be obtained. Nevertheless, circumstances vary in different cities due to the variant infrastructures and populations, which leads to the data sparsity. In this paper, we propose a transfer learning method for urban waterlogging disaster analysis, which provides the basis for traffic management agencies to generate proactive traffic operation strategies in order to alleviate congestion. Existing work on urban waterlogging mostly relies on past and current conditions, as well as sensors and cameras, while there may not be a sufficient number of sensors to cover the relevant areas of a city. To this end, it would be helpful if we could transfer waterlogging. We examine whether it is possible to use the copious amounts of information from social media and satellite data to improve urban waterlogging analysis. Moreover, we analyze the correlation between severity, road networks, terrain, and precipitation. Moreover, we use a multiview discriminant transfer learning method to transfer knowledge to small cities. Experimental results involving cities in China and India show that our proposed framework is effective.

Smart city design principles and TOD

Smart city design principles and TOD

‘Smart Cities’ – Dynamic Sustainability Issues and Challenges for ‘Old World’ Economies: A Case from the United Kingdom

The rapid and dynamic rate of urbanization, particularly in emerging world economies, has resulted in a need to find sustainable ways of dealing with the excessive strains and pressures that come to bear on existing infrastructures and relationships. Increasingly during the twenty-first century policy makers have turned to technological solutions to deal with this challenge and the dynamics inherent within it. This move towards the utilization of technology to underpin infrastructure has led to the emergence of the term ‘Smart City’. Smart cities incorporate technology based solutions in their planning development and operation. This paper explores the organizational issues and challenges facing a post-industrial agglomeration in the North West of England as it attempted to become a ‘Smart City’. In particular the paper identifies and discusses the factors that posed significant challenges for the dynamic relationships residents, policymakers and public and private sector organizations and as a result aims to use these micro-level issues to inform the macro-debate and context of wider Smart City discussions. In order to achieve this, the paper develops a range of recommendations that are designed to inform Smart City design, planning and implementation strategies.

A Computational Architecture Based on RFID Sensors for Traceability in Smart Cities.

Information Technology and Communications (ICT) is presented as the main element in order to achieve more efficient and sustainable city resource management, while making sure that the needs of the citizens to improve their quality of life are satisfied. A key element will be the creation of new systems that allow the acquisition of context information, automatically and transparently, in order to provide it to decision support systems. In this paper, we present a novel distributed system for obtaining, representing and providing the flow and movement of people in densely populated geographical areas. In order to accomplish these tasks, we propose the design of a smart sensor network based on RFID communication technologies, reliability patterns and integration techniques. Contrary to other proposals, this system represents a comprehensive solution that permits the acquisition of user information in a transparent and reliable way in a non-controlled and heterogeneous environment. This knowledge will be useful in moving towards the design of smart cities in which decision support on transport strategies, business evaluation or initiatives in the tourism sector will be supported by real relevant information. As a final result, a case study will be presented which will allow the validation of the proposal.

Programming Environments: Environmentality and Citizen Sensing in the Smart City

A new wave of smart-city projects is underway that proposes to deploy sensorbased ubiquitous computing across urban infrastructures and mobile devices to achieve greater sustainability. But in what ways do these smart and sustainable cities give rise to distinct material—political arrangements and practices that potentially delimit urban ‘citizenship’ to a series of actions focused on monitoring and managing data? And what are the implications of computationally organized distributions of environmental governance that are programmed for distinct functionalities and are managed by corporate and state actors that engage with cities as datasets to be manipulated? In this paper I discuss the ways in which smart-city proposals might be understood through processes of environmentality or the distribution of governance within and through environments and environmental technologies. I do this by working through an early and formative smart-city design proposal, the Connected Sustainable Cities (CSC) project, developed by MIT and Cisco within the Connected Urban Development initiative between 2007 and 2008. Revisiting and reworking Foucault's notion of environmentality in the context of the CSC smart-city design proposal, I advance an approach to environmentality that deals not with the production of environmental subjects, but rather with the specific spatial—material distribution and relationality of power through environments, technologies, and ways of life. By updating and advancing environmentality through a discussion of computational urbanisms, I consider how practices and operations of citizenship emerge that are a critical part of the imaginings of smart and sustainable cities. This reversioning of environmentality through the smart city recasts who or what counts as a ‘citizen’ and attends to the ways in which citizenship is articulated environmentally through the distribution and feedback of monitoring and urban data practices, rather than through governable subjects or populations.