European Smart Cities Research Articles

Business Models Used in Smart Cities—Theoretical Approach with Examples of Smart Cities

This paper examines business model implementations in three leading European smart cities: London, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Through a systematic literature review and comparative analysis, the study identifies and analyzes various business models employed in these urban contexts. The findings reveal a diverse array of models, including public–private partnerships, build–operate–transfer arrangements, performance-based contracts, community-centric models, innovation hubs, revenue-sharing models, outcome-based financing, and asset monetization strategies. Each city leverages a unique combination of these models to address its specific urban challenges and priorities. The study highlights the role of PPPs in large-scale infrastructure projects, BOT arrangements in transportation solutions, and performance-based contracts in driving efficiency and accountability. It also explores the benefits of community-centric models, innovation hubs, revenue-sharing models, outcome-based financing, and asset monetization strategies in enhancing the sustainability, efficiency, and livability of smart cities. The paper offers valuable insights for policymakers, urban planners, and researchers seeking to advance smart city development worldwide.

Scaling Up Innovation - Exemplary Initiatives for Sustainable Development in European Smart Cities with a Focus on Smart Mobility

The development of a sustainable economy is the goal of the whole society in the European Union. With over half of the global population residing in urban areas, the significance of building resilient cities cannot be overstated. Cities are at the forefront of driving adaptation and building resilience implementing ambitious strategies and activities to effectively cope, adapt, and transform, considering three pillars of sustainable development: economic growth, environmental management and social inclusion. This study explores the toolbox of best practices - activities and innovations that European cities are implementing to achieve sustainable development goals. In the article, the best practices and innovative approaches that cities are taking toward sustainability were identified. This article explores the key aspects of smart mobility and its potential to reshape urban transportation systems for a more sustainable future. The findings in the paper indicate that European cities are making significant efforts to adopt sustainable practices, including investments in renewable energy, green infrastructure, public transportation, waste management, and sustainable urban planning. The study highlights the importance of the need for inter-sectoral collaborations to achieve SD goals. The insights gained from this study can inform policy-making and assist cities in developing effective strategies for sustainable development. 
 Keywords: smart city, innovation, sustainable development, urban development, smart mobility

Interoperable, Smart, and Sustainable Urban Energy Systems

The decarbonization of cities is a priority for the European Union (EU). Fossil fuel and gas supplies need to be replaced with local renewable energy sources with a relevant increase in efficiency within 20 years in order to cap environmental, social, and economic negative impacts, and this cannot do significant harm. In this context, smart city development frameworks focused on mitigation, adaptation, and measurement not only collaborate in providing governance for sustainability but also facilitate the materialization of such sustainability along lifecycle engineering processes for decarbonization solutions. To achieve these goals, we must face the interoperability challenge and make information accessible for engineering and sustainability governance systematically. A starting point is to validate the models, data, and harmonized metadata. In this paper, the authors provide results that validate the utility of a conceptual model for interoperable smart and sustainable urban energy systems (ISSUESs). The validation is carried out for an urban energy system with a high potential for decarbonizing southern European smart cities and integrating several commercial solar technologies using academic bibliography and natural language processing (NLP) techniques.

“Smart Cities in Europe” Revisited: A Meta-Analysis of Smart City Economic Impacts

ABSTRACT Following up on a two decades-long debate on Smart Cities, this article provides quantitative evidence regarding the impact on urban economic outcomes of the adoption of Smart City strategies in planning and managing modern cities. In order to achieve this aim, a meta-analysis of quantitative and modeling studies is presented as a systematic synthesis tool, based on a keyword search on Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus data bases. Our meta-analytical modeling results demonstrate significant geographical heterogeneity in the assessed impacts, and suggest that a relevant role is played by whether urban smartness is interpreted and pursued in a holistic or digital-only orientation. Suggestions for further research are provided as well.

Do European smart city developers dream of GDPR-free countries? The pull of global megaprojects in the face of EU smart city compliance and localisation costs

Do European smart city developers dream of GDPR-free countries? The pull of global megaprojects in the face of EU smart city compliance and localisation costs

Measuring sustainability, resilience and livability performance of European smart cities: A novel fuzzy expert-based multi-criteria decision support model

Cities of the 21st century are buffeted with challenges, leaving potentially serious consequences on the future of urban living. Smartening development in cities has reinvented hopes of melting down predicaments in the early 2000s'. However, perplexed by the intensifying complexities of smart cities, urban living in smart cities needs to be evaluated with multiple conflicting criteria. Multi-criteria-based evaluations have been an answer to this case when attempting to gauge the composite performance of multiple decision-making entities. Several multi-criteria assessment techniques exist when dealing with selection problems. Nonetheless, the vagueness associated with the methodologies accompanied by uncertainties and complexities is inevitable in multi-attribute assessments. Fuzzy-based multi-criteria models are often an answer to such uncertainties when modelling real-world problems. The study thus presents a novel fuzzy expert-based multi-criteria decision support model, where the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is combined with the Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) approach under a spherical fuzzy environment to create a composite index for comprehensive performance monitoring. The case of 35 high-tech European cities was used to empirically validate the proposed novel approach and thus construct a composite index. The composite index considers the intricate facet of integrating the concept of smart cities with sustainability, urban resilience, and livability under a unified framework. The fuzzy c-means partitioning technique was then used to segment smart cities into high, medium, and low-performing classes. A comparative analysis considering several distance-based approaches under a fuzzy environment with the SF-AHP and EDAS methodology is conducted to validate the robustness and stability of the proposed novel decision support model. The results revealed London as the top-ranked smart city that promotes sustainability, resilience, and livability in its current urban development model. Dusseldorf, Zurich, Munich, Oslo, Dublin, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Rome, Moscow, and Stockholm were no exemption from addressing the tritactic goals of sustainability, urban resilience, and livability well into their urban development plan and were placed in the high-performance cluster. The proposed model is efficient to express decision makers' preferences in a larger space and modelling functional parameters including hesitancy independently in the 3-dimensional domain. The model supports decision-makers and relocation analysts to assess the performance of smart cities and set targets to improve performance to remodel urban development to a more sustainable, resilient, and livable pattern.

Smart City for Sustainable Development: Applied Processes from SUMP to MaaS at European Level

Urban areas constitute one of the main issues of sustainability as defined by the United Nations with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The recent smart city concept represents a way for achieving the urban sustainability goals. The European Commission (EC) bases the smart city concept on three pillars: energy, transport and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The main objective of the paper is to investigate the European smart city process, by focusing on urban mobility and their interconnections with the other two pillars. The methodological approach of territorial planning is used by identifying the plan dimensions and then analyzing the processes at master and sectorial level. The applied processes are verified with a review of the European documents that constitute the rules for defining and implementing the smart city concept. European guidelines indicate the SUMP as the integrated master plan that contributes to reach the convergence among energy, transport and ICT processes. By focusing on people mobility sector, European cities are implementing the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) plan at the sectorial level. This implies the necessity to enhance the knowledge of mobility phenomenon, in relation to emerging ICT and their impact on energy consumptions. The contribution of the work is given by the identification of a planning and implementation path focused on smart city, in urban areas, which connects the general goals of Agenda 2030 with the daily implications for citizens and therefore with the specific results. The paper results are useful: from one side, for researchers that work on advancements of theories, and from another side, for planners and decision makers to explore the European attempts towards urban sustainability and the real implementations on urban mobility systems.

The effect of the pandemic on European narratives on smart cities and surveillance.

This article presents an analysis of European smart city narratives and how they evolved under the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic. We start with Joss et al.'s observation that the smart-city discourse is presently in flux, engaged in intensive boundary-work and struggling to gain wider support. We approach this process from the critical perspective of surveillance capitalism, as proposed by Zuboff, to highlight the growing privacy concerns related to technological development. Our results are based on analysing 184 articles regarding smart-city solutions, published on social media by five European journals between 2017 and 2021. We adopted both human and machine coding processes for qualitative and quantitative analysis of our data. As a result, we identified the main actors and four dominant narratives: regulation of artificial intelligence and facial recognition, technological fight with the climate emergency, contact tracing apps and the potential of 5G technology to boost the digitalisation processes. Our analysis shows the growing number of positive narratives underlining the importance of technology in fighting the pandemic and mitigating the climate emergency, but the latter is often mentioned in a tokenistic fashion. Right to privacy considerations are central for two out of four discovered topics. We found that the main rationale for the development of surveillance technologies relates to the competitiveness of the EU in the global technological rivalry, while ambitions like increasing societal well-being or safeguarding the transparency of new policies are nearly non-existent.

Lessons Learned from Positive Energy District (PED) Projects: Cataloguing and Analysing Technology Solutions in Different Geographical Areas in Europe

A Positive Energy District (PED) is a portion of urban area with defined boundaries that can produce energy in excess of its own consumption. The aim of this study is to analyse design variations among the six projects (12 case studies) of PED belonging to the European Smart Cities and Communities programme. Thus, it will be possible to identify the reasons behind the energy choices related to generation, storage and distribution that appear in the different geographical areas. To achieve this, different data were collected by consulting official documents and creating questionnaires that were communicated with the project representatives. Thus, the result of this study is a catalogue of the energy system solutions adopted in the studied PEDs with a critical analysis of the different motivations behind them in order to outline general trends in the geographical areas with similar characteristics. In conclusion, this study defined which technological choices are the most common in territories with similar profiles and how divergent those with different profiles are. Furthermore, applied to a large catalogue of PED, the methodology identified would make it possible to create different operating models for different territorial types and urban settlements.

Bureaucracy Meets Digital Reality: The unfolding of urban platforms in European municipal governments

The rise of digital technologies provides an opportunity to study smart cities as new organizational forms. We ask whether and how digital platforms and ecosystems affect the bureaucratic governance of municipal governments. To this end, we offer a multiple case analysis based on rich empirical, longitudinal data of seven European smart cities. We find that the contradicting logic of platform governance creates organizational tensions within the bureaucratic municipal government and at the interface between the municipal government and its external partners. We distil a process that describes how these tensions are resolved through a temporary shift to a non-bureaucratic work mode, and the subsequent formalization and institutionalization of those practices as new bureaucratic rules. We make three contributions. First, we contribute to the smart-city literature by outlining an overarching process of how data-driven technologies affect bureaucratic municipal governments. Second, we contribute to the ongoing conversation about the changing nature of Weberian bureaucracy showing how bureaucracy preserves its core while simultaneously adapting to and shaping its environment. Third, we highlight the role of lower-echelon bureaucrats as change agents who devise rules at the intersection of technological and societal development.

Urban resilience and livability performance of European smart cities: A novel machine learning approach

Smart cities are centres of economic opulence and hope for standardized living. Understanding the shades of urban resilience and livability in smart city models is of paramount importance. This study presents a novel two-stage data-driven framework combining a multivariate metric-distance analysis with machine learning (ML) techniques for resilience and livability assessment of smart cities. A longitudinal dataset for 35 top-ranked European smart cities from 2015 till 2020 applied as the case study under the proposed framework. Initially, a metric distance-based weighting approach is used to weight the indicators and quantify the scores across each aspect under city resilience and urban livability. The key aspects under city resilience include social, economic, infrastructure and built environment and, institutional resilience, while under urban livability, the aspects include accessibility, community well-being, and economic vibrancy. Fuzzy c-means clustering as an unsupervised machine learning technique is used to sort smart cities based on the degree of performance. In addition, an intelligent approach is presented for the prediction of the degree of livability, resilience, and aggregate performance of smart cities based on various supervised ML techniques. Classification models such as Naïve Bayes, k-nearest neighbors (kNN), support vector machine (SVM), Classification and Regression Tree (CART) and, ensemble models including Random Forest (RF) and Gradient Boosting machine (GBM) were used. Three coefficients (accuracy, Cohen's Kappa (κ) and average area under the precision-recall curve (AUC-PR)) along with confusion matrix were used to appraise the performance of the classifier ML models. The results revealed GBM as the best classification and predictive model for the resilience, livability, and aggregate performance assessment. The study also revealed Copenhagen, Geneva, Stockholm, Munich, Helsinki, Vienna, London, Oslo, Zurich, and Amsterdam as the smart cities that co-create resilience and livability in their development model with superior performance.

A Common Management Framework for European Smart Cities? The Case of the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities Six Nations Forum

ABSTRACT To minimize market fragmentation, optimize efficiencies through compatible digital architectures, and encourage collaboration, high-level smart city harmonization efforts have been advocated across Europe. This paper critically analyzes attempts by the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities Six Nations Forum (EIP-SCC 6N) to constitute a common smart city management framework through application of a generic Blueprint. Analysis highlights how these efforts are brought to bear through four techniques: simplification, interoperability, integration, and authorization. Examining the adoption (and rejection) of these techniques underscores the importance of attending to distinctive urban contexts and alternative ways of knowing and acting in the city.

The role of organizational capacity to foster digital transformation in local governments: The case of three European smart cities

Organizational capacity is required to explain what it takes for local governments to succeed in their digital transformation. However, the current literature largely ignores how local governments are adapting their organizational dynamics in order to change. This paper aims to contribute to better understanding how local governments enhance their organizational capacity to achieve digital transformation. We conduct a comparative case study that includes three cases of digital transformation through smart city initiatives in Milan, Barcelona, and Munich. Our findings show that these cities made decisions to enhance specific attributes of their organizational capacity mainly related to the dimensions of management (having a strategy, leadership, and a dedicated unit) and collaboration (public-private partnerships, collaboration with citizens, collaboration with other levels of government).

Positive energy district stakeholder perceptions and measures for energy vulnerability mitigation

100 Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) are to be created in Europe by 2025, with a stated goal of urban decarbonization. These are highly energy efficient residential urban areas, powered entirely through renewables. PED creation is to be guided by principles of quality of life, sustainability, and inclusiveness (specifically focusing on affordability and energy poverty prevention). Although there is research into the decarbonization aspects of PEDs, there has been little focus on the guiding principles, and their potential to reduce energy vulnerability. Using energy vulnerability factors and an energy justice framework, this article examines how the topic of energy vulnerability mitigation is perceived by professional PED stakeholders. Stakeholders from multiple countries were interviewed in order to determine how and to what extent they approached the topic of inclusivity and energy vulnerability. The contribution of this paper to academic research is in helping to frame energy vulnerability in European smart city urban areas, focusing on the perceptions of key stakeholders. This contributes to research on the identification and evaluation of innovations such as PEDs which offer a potential model for an inclusive transition. Furthermore, this article offers a contribution for policymakers, informing PED replication policies with a focus on the synergistic aims of decarbonization and energy vulnerability mitigation.

Sustainability Performance of European Smart Cities: A Novel DEA Approach with Double Frontiers

Sustainability is the crux of urban renaissance. Imbibed with utopian technological planning, understanding the convergence between smart development and sustainable practices for city development is necessary. Smart cities have succeeded in bringing high standards of living to its residents. This article evaluates the long-term sustainability performance of 35 leading European smart cities over time from 2015 till 2020 to understand on how these cities address sustainability to make the concept of smart sustainable cities more actionable. A novel Double-Frontier Slack Based Measure Data Envelopment Analysis (DFSBM-DEA) model considering undesirable factors in the technology set is proposed for the assessment. An integrated relative sustainability performance assessment model considering both the optimistic and pessimistic viewpoint simultaneously, in terms of interval efficiency is used to determine the most efficient smart city under 6 various dimensions of sustainable development. These key dimensions include; Energy and Environmental Resource, Governance and Institution, Economic dynamism, Social cohesion and solidarity, Climate Change and, Safety and Security. A productivity progress assessment from a double frontier perspective using a modified Malmquist-DEA model is then used to capture the response of each smart city in terms of their productivity growth towards achieving sustainable development. Results show Dublin (ranked 1st) as the most smart and sustainable European city under all the proposed dimensions of sustainable development from the double-frontier perspective. Along with Dublin lies Oslo, Zurich and Amsterdam as the cities with high aggregate sustainability performance. The results also revealed significant difference in the productivity progress values from the optimistic and pessimistic viewpoint, thus exemplifying the significance for the proposed aggregate productivity progress measurement model. The findings of the present study contribute to knowledge and practice for smart city modellers, decision makers and urban planners, by aiding methodological clarity in assessing sustainable capacity of cities from a double frontier perspective and, in particular, by drawing attention to underlying assumptions about the role of sustainability in smart city development. This research stands as a breakthrough in the field of relative sustainability assessment using non-parametric approaches and a benchmark for global smart cities to shape their development in light of sustainability.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on smart city performance in Europe

Today's global shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the current war conflict, raise serious challenges to cities. Smart cities, as engines of innovation, can respond to these shocks and show resilience. However, there are significant differences in the performance of smart cities around the world, which have been further widened by the COVID-19 pandemic. In our study, we use the IMD smart city index to examine how the pandemic has affected European smart cities and how their ranking has changed in a global comparison. The results suggest that there have been major shifts in their rankings, and that some of the differences in the performance of individual cities during the pandemic can be traced back to different urban governance models. The changes in the ranking of smart cities highlight the fact that different urban governance models operate differently in times of crisis, especially in terms of measurable short- and long-term effectiveness. These results highlight the importance of complex and combined urban governance models to deal effectively and flexibly with external shocks.

A Review of Energy Modeling Tools for Energy Efficiency in Smart Cities

Nowadays, modeling tools are a crucial part of best practice in the elaboration and implementation of a decarbonization plan in any organization, city, or country. The present review analyzes the different modeling tools available to assess energy systems in smart cities. It creates an updated overview of the modeling tools currently available, showing their capabilities and main potential outputs when considering the energy efficiency objective in the context of smart cities in Europe. A restricted set of 14 tools are identified which optimally fulfill the modeling mission of the energy sector, in a smart city context, for different time horizons. The selection considers the capability to include decarbonization assessments, namely, by considering the flexibility to use different external factors, energy policies, technologies, and mainly the implementation of Article 7 from the Energy Efficiency Directive and the “energy efficiency first” principle defined by the European Commission. The ELECTRE TRI method was used to implement a multi-criteria decision approach for sorting modeling tools, aiming at distributing the various alternatives by previously defined categories, and considering the performance criteria of each alternative modeling tool, the analysis suggests that the best options are the LEAP, MESSAGEix, and oemof tools.

Entrepreneurial ecosystem and well-being in European smart cities: a comparative perspective

PurposeThis study investigates the relationship between the strength of innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems and subjective well-being in 43 European smart cities. Subjective well-being is operationalized by a Quality of Life (QOL) survey that references the level of multidimensional satisfaction or happiness expressed by residents at the city level. The entrepreneurial ecosystem concept depicted here highlights actor interdependence that creates new value in a specific community by undertaking innovative entrepreneurial activities. The research uses objective and subjective variables to analyze the relationships between the entrepreneurial ecosystem and subjective well-being.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a cluster analysis with a nonaggregative quantitative approach based on the theory of the partially ordered set (poset); the objective was to find significant smart city level relationships between the entrepreneurial ecosystem and subjective well-being.FindingsThe strength of the entrepreneurial ecosystem is positively related to subjective well-being only in large cities. This result confirms a strong interdependency between the creation of innovative entrepreneurial activities and subjective well-being in large cities. The smart cities QOL dimensions showing higher correlations with the entrepreneurial ecosystem include urban welfare, economic well-being and environmental quality, such as information and communications technology (ICT) and mobility.Practical implicationsDespite the main implications being properly referred to large cities, the governments of smart cities should encourage and promote programs to improve citizens' subjective well-being and to create a conducive entrepreneurship environment.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few contributions focused on the relationship between the entrepreneurial smart city ecosystem and subjective well-being in the urban environment.

Smart City EU - Lighthouse Projects – Investigation of Economic Benefits

Abstract The major European Smart City Lighthouse Projects have gained a lot of attention and importance from the designers of Smart City Initiatives (SCI) since 2014. The EU Commission’s funding under the Horizon 2020 program is significant. The supported cities include the European metropolises but also several smaller cities. All these cities are repeatedly named Smart City pioneers. However, the research still has a gap when it comes to value generation. This article deals with the economic benefits of these Lighthouse projects. The own developed categories are applied and proved with Lighthouse projects. The range of economic benefits is shown and evaluated using the qualitative content analysis of the data from the EU - CORDIS database. The sustainability in the Smart City Initiatives is showcased as economic benefit is prioritized higher than cost saving or efficiency.

The social issues of smart home: a review of four European cities\u2019 experiences

The urban industrialization trend and the increasing urban population have posed global and local concerns related to urban management. Today, scientists introduce the “smart city” concept, among many others. The primary concept purpose is to empower cities to enhance the quality of life of their residents. To achieve this, one of the smart city components named “smart living” has a direct connection to citizens’ quality of life. This research aims to analyze the smart home as one of the sub-components of smart living. Consequently, based on the “smart home” residents’ viewpoint, the main question is which social barriers are more critical?To achieve this essay’s objectives, the researcher conducts three phases: data collection, analysis based on the constructed conceptual model, and results. The researcher selected four leading smart cities in Europe, including Copenhagen, Berlin, London, and Barcelona, as case studies. The study collected primary data by cluster-random sampling by utilizing a questionnaire survey with 320 participants. In conclusion, according to the inhabitants, the research results list the most significant social challenges in smart homes. Eventually, suggestions offer for reducing the side effect of living in a smart home.