Smart Sustainable Cities Research Articles

Sustainable development factors governing the smart evolvement of developing countries

Urbanisation problems could be solved when cities adopt the smart city concept. However, the creation of smart cities without incorporating sustainable development principles from the onset could render the intended solutions nullified, due to the anticipated effect of an unsustainable smart city on the environment. The aim of this paper is to identify the key sustainable development factors of smart cities and the challenges of creating smart sustainable cities in developing countries. The study adopted positivism research philosophy using deductive approach and purposive sampling technique. Close-ended questionnaires were used, and 76 responses were retrieved. Cronbach alpha test, mean score ranking and relative importance index were employed to analyse the data in the study. The findings emphasise the key sustainable development factors of smart cities, such as improving recyclable and reusable water treatment systems and adopting renewable energy sources. Furthermore, the main challenging factors were identified, such as lack of preparedness on the side of government, and the financial inclusiveness of the creation of smart sustainable cities. The study provides insight into factors which must be considered to ensure the sustainability of smart cities, and barriers which must be understood when creating smart sustainable cities in developing countries.

The Role of E-Money in Sustainable Smart City Development in Bogor City Area

In the current era of society 5.0, especially in industry 4.0, the use of information systems is very important where in this era the community is expected to help the development of smart cities. In this era, people always carry out activities with technology and digitalization, one of which is how to transact that transforms electronically with technology. Currently, e-money is considered to have its own role in the sustainability of community activities, especially in the city of Bogor, so that if the role of e-money can be utilized, a positive value can be generated for the sustainability of smart city development. To assess the success of the role of e-money, this research instrument was built using the DeLone and McLean methods in building a research model that aims to support the development of smart cities with aspects of indicators such as information quality, system quality, service quality, user satisfaction level, utilizing and net benefit. The research method used in this study is factor analysis to process the data obtained from the questionnaire. The Alpha Cronbach value in this study has a value of 0.971 or 97.1%, so it can be concluded that the positive influence of e-money is very large to support the development of smart cities in Bogor City. This research is expected to provide information related to the sustainable development of smart cities in Bogor City.

Cognitive Technologies in Smart City Services as the Future in Strategic Management of Cities

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to indicate the possibility of applying cognitive technologies in smart city services and analyze their impact on strategic management in the city. The subject of this study is the use of cognitive technologies in big data as one of the tools of smart city. The study also identifies the risks that may occur when using modern technologies at the local level. At the same time, it refers to features that can provide a form of safeguards for an individual’s rights and freedoms. This article also covers legal issues that affect the use of cognitive technologies in local government units. This paper indicates that the challenge that local governments should now meet is to build a Smart Sustainable City. Implementation of modern solutions should strive to improve the lives of all residents and thus prevent the exclusion of social groups or individuals.

Blockchain Empowered Smart Home: A Scalable Architecture for Sustainable Smart Cities

Emerging growth in technology has rapidly changed our homes and cities. Present homes and cities will be upgraded to smart homes and smart cities in the near future. Various solutions used to build the smart-city network demand a scalable and decentralized solution. This study proposes a blockchain-empowered decentralized and scalable solution for a sustainable smart-city network. The Internet of Things (IoT), fog nodes, permissioned trust chain, smart contract, blockchain, and InterPlanetary file system (IPFS) are deployed to construct a scalable and decentralized solution for a sustainable smart city. Three main public sector departments, i.e., electricity, water supply, and health care, are studied over the proposed solution. The proposed solution is implemented over constrained application protocol (CoAP) and Ethereum blockchain. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated for 1500 devices and over 10,000 records. A total 77.44% improvement is registered during performance evaluation over a scalable environment. The performance evaluation of each case study and collaborative performance evaluation concludes the improvised performance of the proposed solution for scalable and distributed applications. Better performance, scalability, and the distributed nature of the presented model make it suitable for the sustainable smart-city network.

A Lifecycle-Based Smart Sustainable City Strategic Framework for Realizing Smart and Sustainability Initiatives in Riyadh City

Smart cities rely on innovative technologies, guidelines, and mechanisms to advance city dwellers’ quality of life (QoL). Notwithstanding the global attention the smart city concept has received within the last decade, studies establishing pragmatic approaches for implementing smart sustainable city strategies in the Gulf region are rare. This study modelled a practical framework for implementing smart sustainable city strategies and megaprojects in one of the Gulf cities. A qualitative research methodology was used to assess smart city strategies from four cities to identify the optimum implementation strategies. This study design framework adopted a case study methodology, the identification of knowledge gaps, data collection and analysis, and interpretations of key findings. Best practices, paramount/relevant stakeholders, main issues/relevant considerations, 15 key performance indicators (KPI), and outputs/deliverables involved in diverse smart sustainable city strategies and project lifecycle phases were identified. The lifecycle phases adopted in the study were (i) conceptualization, (ii) planning/design, and (iii) installation/closure. A pragmatic understanding of how to effectively appraise, monitor, and implement smart sustainable city strategies and megaprojects is provided for policy/decision-makers and built environment experts in Saudi Arabia and globally. The proposed implementation strategic framework can perform the function of an appraisal tool for assessing each phase of the smart city project’s life cycle progress, informing preventions of delays or implementation challenges. This study’s contribution to research knowledge is the development of a model that reveals and illustrates the connections between different phases of smart sustainable city strategies and projects.

Smart Sustainable Cities: Characterization and Impacts for Sustainable Development Goals

Objective: This work brings light to the concept of Smart Sustainable Cities, creating a correlation between the terms Smart Cities and Sustainable Development, and maps out the technologies and projects implemented in this model of urban agglomeration. Methodology: A content analysis was carried out using the Methodi Ordinatio, a systematic literature review multicriteria methodology. Relevance: Smart Sustainable Cities arise with the aim of promoting technological development, but also facing the problems generated by cities. However, the concepts and structures of these cities are not clear, as well as which technologies are implemented and their impacts on cities. Results: Smart Sustainable Cities generate benefits for the three sustainable axes, in greater proportion for the Social axis, followed by the Environmental axis, and with less impact for the Economic axis. Contributions: This paper contributes to the academy by increasing the theoretical material, and to decision-makers, by highlighting the structures that make up the Smart Sustainable Cities. Keywords: Smart Cities; Smart Sustainable Cities; Sustainable Development; Sustainable Development Goals.

Pedagogy for the City as an Emergent Cognitive System for Sustainability

In this short paper, we develop the case for moving away from the concept of a smart city in which the focus tends to be on shifting managerial responsibility onto computers. We offer the alternative conception of the city as an ecosystem, a complex adaptive system, and draw upon the biology of cognition to construe cognition as the skilful adaptation to living sustainably. Such skilful adaptations necessitate human operators and managers themselves to both develop necessary systemic redundancy to withstand future shocks, but also to acquire skills in multi-faceted domains and disciplines, including the use of Artificial Intelligence, to simulate future scenarios and to plan accordingly. To attain such skills and competencies, we briefly outline a viable and relevant transdisciplinary pedagogy for future city managers to develop smart sustainable cities.

Role and challenge of technology toward a smart sustainable city: Topic modeling, classification, and time series analysis using information and communication technology patent data

This research defines and classifies essential technology groups that comprise a smart sustainable city (SSC) and explores patterns of technological growth by analyzing patents. First, topic modeling and network analysis are conducted using patent text data and international patent classification code, respectively. Patents are classified and defined based on the technology theme and the type of technology provider. Second, hardware-oriented and service application-oriented technologies are classified and predicted using machine learning. Third, the similarities in growth patterns of different technology groups are explored using dynamic time warping (DTW). Moreover, lagging or preceding relationships are examined using multivariate time series analysis. Network infrastructure and Internet-of-things (IoT) application technologies have short-term lagging and preceding relationships along with long-term equilibrium relationships. In terms of player groups, long-term relationships between device vendors, chipset makers, network operator and IoT service provider, and network equipment vendors are confirmed. Technologies for realizing a sustainable city must be prioritized, and the strategic direction of technology must be established to realize truly smart sustainable cities. The supplier of technologies along with possible collaboration opportunities must also be selected. This study proposes the role and direction of technology for SSC and presents a comprehensive methodology for analyzing technology using patents.

Assessing Safety Level of Affordable Housing Based on Safe City Concepts

Safety of residential areas, especially affordable housing has become an important aspect, and has been listed as part of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) initiatives by the United Nation (UN). Several initiatives on measuring the safety level have been proposed, including Safe City Index 2019, Safe City Program, Defensible Space Concept, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED), Smart Sustainable Cities, etc. However, some of these initiatives focus only on crime, others focus on steps to improve safety and other models that are broader but not specific to safety. Besides that, these models place less emphasis on the aspects of spatial assessment, especially the safety level assessment based on affordable housing location in Malaysia. To handle these issues, this study’s aim is to enhance current indicators to assess the safety level of affordable housing, using Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia as a case study area. This study identified 6 indicators; crime, safety and security, infrastructure security, accessibility, natural disaster, and health security. Spatial analysis was done based on the indicators, and from the results, it shows that almost all of the affordable housing score are more than 50%, with the highest score is 76.50%, and the lowest score is 44.7%. This indicator can be used as a basis to assess the safety level of affordable housing, especially in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Edge-cloud resource federation for sustainable cities

As cloud computing becomes the dominant mechanism for delivery of electronic services, significant recent effort has focused on certifying cloud services to ensure their compliance with security and privacy standards (such as GDPR). Assessing the benefit of using a particular cloud service, especially if such a service is being offered by providers that may be new to the cloud marketplace, remains a challenge. Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) provides a certification approach that associates a ranking to providers based on their capability assessment using a “cloud control matrix”. A provider can make a self-assessment, or an assessment can be undertaken by a third party. The intention is to increase user trust in a provider based on their rating using this methodology. This work investigates whether a similar certification methodology can be applied to edge resources, especially if these edge resources are combined with cloud services in a “smart cities” context. Can a CSA-like approach also be used to increase trust in use of edge resources? How would the CSA methodology need to change to support this type of assessment, and how useful is such an approach likely to be in practice? We propose a risk assessment methodology that can be used to address these concerns, and evaluate it in a practical application using both edge and cloud computing resources. • “ Smartainability ” - a strategy to assess how sustainable smart cities are as a result of smart technology. • Smart services must ensure their compliance with security and privacy standards (such as GDPR). • Cloud-Edge-IoT resources differ in their capability, security and availability profiles — making reliance on them risk prone. • Trust can be established across an ensemble of “smart” devices and clouds to support “risk-informed” interventions.

Оценка жизненного цикла интеллектуальных устойчивых городов

Introduction. The problem of the life cycle-based assessment of cities (LC), involving systems of indicators for a smart sustainable city, is relevant. The objectives of the study include the review and analysis of existing LC-based methods in construction, housing and utilities sector (HUS), the review and analysis of systems of indicators, evaluation frameworks, benchmarking systems that exist both in the format of standards and are proposed as research developments, the review of the software used for the assessment of the LC of facilities in construction and HUS, the review of open-access databases for the LC assessment of construction and HUS, drafting a thematic plan for the training course “Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Cities”. Materials and methods. Research articles in indexed journals, standards, guidelines, and specifications were used. The search was performed using the following databases: eLIBRARY.RU, Google Scholar, Scopus, ScienceDirect, ISI Web of Knowledge, researchgate.net, standards.ru, iso.org, shop.bsigroup.com. The key words, used to search for the information, include life cycle assessment (LCA), smart sustainable cities, city assessment, sustainability assessment, environmental assessment, environmental impact, sustainability indicators, construction, housing and utilities sector (HUS). Results. A sample thematic plan for the training course titled “The life cycle assessment of sustainable cities” was developed on the basis of the analysis of the sources and the systematization of the information thus obtained. Conclusions. The research and its results show that the problem of LC-based assessment of cities, involving the use of indicator systems for smart sustainable cities, has many solutions. The goal, which was to accumulate, analyze and use the information in the training course, has been achieved. Of particular practical interest are the LCA software tools available in construction and HUS. Of great importance for the LCA are open-access databases focused on construction and HUS.

Smart Mobility in a Smart City in the Context of Generation Z Sustainability, Use of ICT, and Participation

Smart sustainable cities represent a great challenge for the modern world. Generation Z (Gen Z), whose representatives are now entering adult life, will play a key role in the implementation of this concept. The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of the relationship between the evaluation of smart mobility’s importance for a smart city and the attitudes and behaviours of Generation Z members in the context of sustainability, use of ICT, and their declarative and actual participation in smart city activities. The diagnostic survey method was used to achieve the research objective. The authors designed the questionnaire based on a literature analysis. The research sample consisted of 484 representatives of Generation Z—students of universities located in a smart city, Lublin (Poland). The collected data was statistically analysed using the following methods and statistical tests: Cronbach’s alpha, Pearson’s chi-square test for independence, symmetric measures: Cramer’s V, and the contingency coefficient. The analysis of the obtained research results confirms that the conscious approach of Generation Z to sustainability has a significant and positive impact on their evaluation of actions taken in the field of smart mobility for a smart city. A similar relationship was confirmed with regard to the relationship between ICT use and smart mobility evaluation. The significant and positive impact of young people’s participation in smart cities on their evaluation of smart mobility solutions’ importance was not fully and unequivocally confirmed. In conclusion, the Generation Z representatives’ awareness of the importance of sustainability and caring for the natural environment was confirmed by their desire to be pro-ecological in the areas of smart mobility studied in the paper. Moreover, young people who constantly use the latest technologies see their huge potential for the development of smart mobility in cities. However, despite the growing expectations of citizens’ active attitudes and their increasing participation in smart mobility development, it seems that the representatives of Generation Z are not really interested in it. Their declarations of willingness to join various opinion-forming and decision making processes do not actually transform them into active co-creators of smart mobility solutions. Changing this approach can be an educational, organisational and technological challenge for smart city authorities. The obtained research results could be used as guidelines for facilitating the search for innovative solutions in the area of smart mobility, improving the quality of life of smart city residents based on the principle of sustainable development.

Edge AI and Blockchain for Smart Sustainable Cities: Promise and Potential

Modern cities worldwide are undergoing radical changes to foster a clean, sustainable and secure environment, install smart infrastructures, deliver intelligent services to residents, and facilitate access for vulnerable groups. The adoption of new technologies is at the heart of implementing many initiatives to address critical concerns in urban mobility, healthcare, water management, clean energy production and consumption, energy saving, housing, safety, and accessibility. Given the advancements in sensing and communication technologies over the past few decades, exploring the adoption of recent and innovative technologies is critical to addressing these concerns and making cities more innovative, sustainable, and safer. This article provides a broad understanding of the current urban challenges faced by smart cities. It highlights two new technological advances, edge artificial intelligence (edge AI) and Blockchain, and analyzes their transformative potential to make our cities smarter. In addition, it explores the multiple uses of edge AI and Blockchain technologies in the fields of smart mobility and smart energy and reviews relevant research efforts in these two critical areas of modern smart cities. It highlights the various algorithms to handle vehicle detection, counting, speed identification to address the problem of traffic congestion and the different use-cases of Blockchain in terms of trustworthy communications and trading between vehicles and smart energy trading. This review paper is expected to serve as a guideline for future research on adopting edge AI and Blockchain in other smart city domains.

Assessing the European Union capitals in the context of smart sustainable cities

PurposeThe concept of a smart city, which is relatively new, is analysed from different aspects, including sustainability. Due to rapid urban development, smart city and sustainable city synergy has become an approach supported by the authorities. Hence, the paper aims at assessing and ranking the European Union (EU) capitals in the context of the smart sustainable city (SSC).Design/methodology/approachThe paper assesses and ranks 19 EU capitals according to 41 indicators. The assessment was done in four steps. First, each target SSC indicator was accessed for each city. Second, the scattering results of each city in the list of indicators were noted. Third, the indicators were ranked using the VIsekriterijumska optimisacija i KOmpromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method. And fourth, both scattering and ranking results were compared.FindingsThe comparison of the scattering and ranking results revealed that almost the same cities share the top ten positions. Although two cities fell out of the top ten, the overall results reinforce the reliability of the research results. Amsterdam ranked as the Number 1 SSC, and Helsinki took the second position.Originality/valueA comparison of a wide range of indicators highlights the current situation and the disparities between EU capitals. The results could help local and national authorities and policymakers increase the sustainability and smartness of cities.

Management of Smart and Sustainable Cities in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Lessons and Implications

Nowadays, the concept of smart sustainable governance is wrapped around basic principles such as: (i) transparency, (ii) accountability, (iii) stakeholders’ involvement, and iv) citizens’ participation. It is through these principles that are influenced by information and communication technologies (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence, that the practices employed by citizens and their interaction with electronic government (e-government) are diversified. Previously, the misleading concepts of the smart city implied only the objective of the local level or public officials to utilize technology. However, the recent European experience and research studies have led to a more comprehensive notion that refers to the search for intelligent solutions which allow modern sustainable cities to enhance the quality of services provided to citizens and to improve the management of urban mobility. The smart city is based on the usage of connected sensors, data management, and analytics platforms to improve the quality and functioning of built-environment systems. The aim of this paper is to understand the effects of the pandemic on smart cities and to accentuate major exercises that can be learned for post-COVID sustainable urban management and patterns. The lessons and implications outlined in this paper can be used to enforce social distancing community measures in an effective and timely way, and to optimize the use of resources in smart and sustainable cities in critical situations. The paper offers a conceptual overview and serves as a stepping-stone to extensive research and the deployment of sustainable smart city platforms and intelligent transportation systems (a sub-area of smart city applications) after the COVID-19 pandemic using a case study from Russia. Overall, our results demonstrate that the COVID-19 crisis encompasses an excellent opportunity for urban planners and policy makers to take transformative actions towards creating cities that are more intelligent and sustainable.

Understanding social sustainability for smart cities: The importance of inclusion, equity, and citizen participation as both inputs and long-term outcomes

In the last decade, the world has witnessed increasing investments in smart city initiatives, which frequently employ data and emerging technologies to tackle complex urban challenges. Although existing literature has acknowledged the potential benefits of smart cities, such as increasing economic development and improving urban operations, their sustainability, understood as the enduring or long-term impact of specific outcomes, has been under-researched. Furthermore, the few studies touching on sustainability have focused on environmental or economic sustainability, mostly ignoring social sustainability. Therefore, this paper aims to review and synthesize the state-of-the-art research on social sustainability in smart cities. Our research questions are: (1) what are the main topics in the literature related to social sustainability in smart cities? and (2) what are the gaps that require further investigation? Our review shows that inclusion and equity are crucial components that must be considered. More specifically, civic engagement is an effective method for smart cities to better understand and respond to all residents’ social, economic, and environmental demands, enabling a more inclusive and equitable smart community.

Research on the Operation Modes of Electric Vehicles in Association with a 5G Real-Time System of Electric Vehicle and Traffic

With the popularity of 5G technology and electric vehicles, many countries around the world have adopted 5G technology to build sustainable smart city systems, and intelligent transportation is an important part of smart cities. From the perspective of 5G technology innovation bringing changes to traditional industries, in this paper, we analyze the mechanism by which 5G technology drives the transformation and upgrading of the electric vehicle industry. Based on the changes brought by 5G technology to the three industries of agriculture, industry and services, we analyzed the transformation of business models brought about by 5G with respect to electric vehicle operation. Furthermore, we analyzed the data of a 5G real-time system of electric vehicle and traffic operating in Nanjing, China, for a month in 2021, with a total of 10,610 electric vehicles and 1,048,575 cases to model the modes of electric vehicle operation associated with the platform. Based on the frequency density method, we identified three typical operating modes of urban electric vehicles: private electric vehicle use instead of walking accounts for 24.8%, passenger vehicles (Uber/Didi and taxi) account for 64.4% and logistic distribution electric vehicles account for 10.8%. We developed a method to automatically identify the operating mode of electric vehicles using data from a 5G real-time electric vehicle traffic platform, which provide a reference for the operation of electric vehicles associated with the platform. This work also provides data that can be used to support the establishment of models for the commercial operation of charging points.

The social sustainability of smart cities: A conceptual framework

The smart city concept has emerged as an attractive label to address pressing issues of global urbanization and combat the critical challenges to attain sustainable development. Sustainability is still often conceived through a green environmental lens, but any change in the built environment also has implications for the social environment. Social sustainability is a dynamic concept that combines design of the physical realm with design of the social world and promotes infrastructure to support social needs and concerns. While smart cities primarily aim at enhancing performance through innovative use of digital data and technology, a social sustainability perspective stresses the critical interconnections between people and place. Through a critical systematic literature review, this paper establishes a dialogue between the smart city and social sustainability. It evaluates the smart city concept through a social sustainability lens within a built environment paradigm. A multi-stage conceptual framework is advanced around notions of place, identification of core social sustainability themes and related factors, and sensitivity to broader policy and detailed implementation scales. The framework provides guidance for further studying both the social objectives and outcomes of smart city policies. • The social sustainability of smart cities: a conceptual framework. • Smart city policy agendas must include the social dimension of sustainability. • Dimensions include social capital, infrastructure, equity, inclusion, collaborative planning. • These underpin a model for evaluating objectives and outcomes of smart cities.

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.

Multiscale analysis of human social sensing of urban appearance and its effects on house price appreciation in Wuhan, China

• Explore the effect of human social sensing of urban appearance on the house price appreciation rate with consideration of temporal and scale heterogeneity. • Use machine learning with big data containing 34 variables. • Provide strategies to achieve sustainable smart urban layout plan. City managers seek to achieve people-oriented sustainable city development, which requires a clear understanding of socioeconomic effects of citizens’ perceptions of urban appearance. Traditional studies have investigated effects of urban appearance but have ignored the perception of place, which depends on people's unique social experiences. We distinguish “house” and “home” and propose an integrated model to test the prediction effect of combining conventional perception and social perception variables on house price appreciation. We establish a dataset that includes factors, e.g., housing structures, visual quality, and human physical perception. Then, we use machine learning models to extract features from multisource data, investigate the price appreciation of 1,032 houses in Wuhan from 2015 to 2020 and use multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to discuss spatial dependence. Finally, we perform a cluster analysis to understand the combined effects. The results show that human physical perception has the highest effect, the visual quality of urban streets has the highest impact in places where highly educated people gather, and the impact of service facilities is greatest in economically underdeveloped areas. Our findings provide novel insights into the interlinkages between human social sensing and appreciation rates, which can be efficiently applied to build sustainable smart cities.