Urban Facility Management Research Articles

Urban Heritage Facility Management: A Conceptual Framework for the Provision of Urban-Scale Support Services in Norwegian World Heritage Sites

This study validated the theoretical keypoints obtained from a previously published scoping literature review within the context of three Norwegian World Heritage sites: Røros, Rjukan, and Notodden. The cross-sectional table of the urban heritage facility management (UHFM) framework, which is based on interviews and correspondence, demonstrates the connection between the tasks of the six clusters of technical departments responsible for the provision of urban-scale support services and the modified critical steps of the Historic Urban Landscape approach, in which an additional step for “monitoring and evaluation” was included. UHFM operates at the intersection of heritage preservation, urban-scale facility management, and stakeholder coordination, which requires a careful balance between urban heritage conservation and sustainable urban management practices, thus enabling the preservation of World Heritage status that, among others, fosters sustainable tourism. The three case studies highlighted the significance of UHFM in preserving heritage value, authenticity, visual quality, and significance. Besides providing comprehensive support services that extend beyond the daily tasks of conservators and World Heritage managers, UHFM also allows feedback mechanisms for continuous improvement. This study highlighted the complex relationship between the provision of urban-scale support services and the preservation of Outstanding Universal Value as the core business of World Heritage sites.

Urban Facility Management Improving Livability through Smart Public Spaces in Smart Sustainable Cities

Public spaces play a significant role in improving social, recreational and cultural activities that are inclusive. However, smart public spaces are required to save time and costs, and to provide comfort to the public, ultimately enhancing livability. There are various user requirements and demands to respond to. This research aims to adopt intelligent technologies applied in public spaces to facilitate livability through urban facility management (UFM) involvement in improving livability. The establishment of intelligent systems in the architecture industry goes hand in hand with the growing advancement of science and technology in several aspects of human life. A fundamental key to the success of smart cities is the high quality of livability offered to their residents and visitors. The UFM can enable livability by providing data centers, access controls, integrated security systems, monitoring, smart waste, energy and water management in public spaces. This study focused on five elements of livability, including accessibility, functional infrastructure, interaction and social cohesion, amenity and participation, quality of life through safety and security and privacy. The research methodology adopts the activity theory (AT) as its underpinning theory for the qualitative data collection process (interviews and a workshop) from industry experts in two prominent smart cities in Qatar, Lusail and Msheireb, along with a literature review. This study’s results provide information on existing smart city and public space features, infrastructures and their impact on livability. The findings of this study support the development of the smart livable public spaces (SLiPS) framework. The framework is a baseline for improving livability in smart cities, which allows future updates based on existing ICT infrastructure, enabling new functions and the availability of novel technology applied by UFM. The outcome of livability leads to the achievement of smart city goals.

A scoping review of community-based facilities management for public services through social enterprises in developing communities

PurposeThis study aims to ascertain the forms of social enterprises created for public services and the dimensions of community-based management of public facilities. It seeks to understand how community-based facilities management (CbFM) can apply to the management of public services created by social enterprises in developing communities.Design/methodology/approachThe study examines research studies on CbFM through a scoping review of papers published between 1997 and 2022.FindingsThe scoping review revealed that there are five dimensions of CbFM for developing communities: CbFM, urban facilities management, sustainable CbFM, urban infrastructure management and management of community hubs. It also revealed that social enterprises have been used to manage services, and for social inclusion, and to increase the efficiency of tangible infrastructure in communities.Research limitations/implicationsThe scoping review included literature from 1997 to 2022 to understand the development trends in CbFM in developing communities. It is possible that literature from a broader timeframe could have produced more in-depth understanding of the subject investigated.Practical implicationsThe paper articulates a framework of CbFM models for public services in developing communities and developed a database of the relevant studies, which can further guide future researchers, stakeholders and policymakers in this area.Originality/valueThe comprehensive review produced a framework for community management of public services. It also identified that there is a paucity of literature on social infrastructure. It highlighted the need for skillsets to support community-based enterprises. There are limited studies that touch on the development of performance indicators for developing communities.

Urban FM and POPS – implications for UN’s SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

Urban FM (UFM) is usually understood as micro level Facility Management (FM) methods and tools applied on macro level challenges in communities and neighbourhoods in urban areas, among others to improve the citizens’ wellbeing. UFM is also often associated with smart cities, technology, and UN’s SDGs. However, many studies of UFM overlook property rights and other institutional matters that establish many of the ground rules. Property rights are frequently understood as a bundle of rights, i.e., the right of use (USUS), the right of enjoyment (USUS FRUCTUS), and the right of disposition (ABUSUS). UFM usually takes place across property boundaries, on properties with disparate bundles of rights, including restrictions through public zoning. Many urban transformation projects have established privately owned public spaces (POPS), leading to a restructured division of responsibilities between public authorities and private owners in the management, design, access control, and use of urban public spaces. This paper investigates whether and under which conditions UFM and management of POPS can contribute to realisation of UN’s SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, hereunder to facilitate development of inclusive, safe, robust, and sustainable cities and local communities.

Norwegian stakeholder's attitudes towards EU taxonomy

PurposeThe European Union (EU) aims to become climate-neutral by 2050. Achieving this requires targeted measures and strategies. One of the instruments of the EU is the EU taxonomy, a classification system with the purpose of creating a common definition of what economic activities are deemed sustainable. The paper aims to examine how the EU taxonomy can affect the Norwegian construction industry, property owners and facilities management (FM) providers.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on a document analysis and interviews with main stakeholders within the financial sector, construction and real estate (RE) sector, authorities, environmental organisations and businesses related to FM and RE.FindingsThe findings show that different stakeholders share largely similar attitudes towards the taxonomy, although some differ in their opinions. This paper finds that there are high levels of uncertainty and confusion associated with the taxonomy, which can be said to be a major obstacle for successful implementation. Several stakeholders show concerns related to the fact that Norway lacks definitions and regulations on which the taxonomy is based. The requirements for new buildings and existing buildings are considered stricter than the current practice in the Norwegian construction and RE industry, while the requirements for renovation are considered more achievable. The uptake of the EU taxonomy will impact the FM and the urban FM practices and standards for the procurement of services, and the integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies must be developed.Research limitations/implicationsThe research presented in this paper was conducted at a time when the EU taxonomy was a relatively unknown concept in the Norwegian construction and RE industry. FM providers were not interviewed in this study.Practical implicationsThis research is one of the first studies to be conducted on this topic in Norway and represents the first meeting between the EU taxonomy and the industry. The discussion underpins the relevance of adjusting and updating FM standards to today’s knowledge about ESG principles.Originality/valueThe paper shows the viewpoint of the Norwegian stakeholders involved in the construction and RE industry. This gives valuable information about the challenges that the industry needs to overcome.

Get smart: the importance of urban facilities management to smart neighbourhoods and their citizens in a project’s early stages

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how citizen participation as part of Urban Facility Management both as a consideration and practical application can contribute to the positive development of human-centred Smart Neighbourhoods. Through a combination of desk research and data from an ongoing research project in Norway, this paper will use literature to provide a theoretical link between these concepts whilst also showing how this link can be demonstrated in real work projects in the Norwegian Municipality of Lier. The findings illustrate that Facilities Management-focused urban planning processes allow for citizen-optimized communities, well planned and easy-to-implement maintenance strategies that ensure the long-term viability of Smart and Sustainable Cities. The results of this paper can be important for the development of Urban FM as a field, the reorientation of FM as not just a building level concept, but community level and has applicability to the fields of FM, architecture, urban planning, and Smart Cities.

At differing scales: the commonalities between green leasing and urban FM from the perspectives of sustainable urban development projects

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to look at what Urban Facilities Management (FM) and Green Leasing have in common and the degree to which they are ultimately reliant on one another. Whilst both are similar in terms of their placement in organizational management, Green Leasing is a building level concept whilst Urban FM is at the community level. The primary purpose of this paper is to show how the commonalities of both can strengthen one another and offer tangible possibilities to improve the sustainable credentials of urban development projects.Design/methodology/approachThis study will be conducted with a mixed-methods approach. Firstly, a literature study will determine the commonalities between both concepts, and the degree to which they rely on one another to work effectively in projects. The second method will be a cross-sectional case study. Using existing cases that use both (either implicitly or explicitly), the study can demonstrate how these commonalities and reliabilities can offer tangible outputs to real work projects. These will then be combined in a case study to demonstrate many of these aspects in a real-world setting.FindingsThe finding demonstrates that there are commonalities between Green Leasing and Urban FM at all levels of organizational management and that the success of both requires holistic consideration of each other, as well as other aspects such as FM and citizen participation. The success and failure of projects are depending upon considering these aspects. By not considering the buildings and community levels as separation aspects, but more as different levels of the same project, multi-level considerations can contribute to the success of urban development projects.Originality/valueThe commonalities between Urban FM and Green Leasing are profound and do not just show the value of holistic thinking, but also the inclusion of other considerations such as FM to reduce project failure and long-term project viability. This can add value to the study of not just Urban FM and Green Leasing, but also FM more generally, architectural design and urban planning.

SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF URBAN FACILITIES IN NEIGHBOURHOOD OF KHULNA CITY: A CASE STUDY OF KHULNA, BANGLADESH

A sustainable neighborhood offers a distinctive physical and social reality that seems to have a profound influence mostly on the environment and the residents who live there. The main purpose of the study is to inspect the sustainable management of urban facilities in Khulna city on a neighborhood scale by considering social, economic, and environmental aspects. Moreover, this research is conducted to determine the connection between the underlying variables that contribute to the sustainability of the city. The study is conducted by using a qualitative approach. Landsat data, photographs, walkthrough analysis, and content analysis are used as analysis tools. From the outcomes, it's visible that in the case of neighborhood-scale, there are many diversities in sustainable management of urban facilities in Khulna city. It is identified that from the selected seven neighborhoods, mostly planned, higher and middle-income groups of neighborhoods (Sonadanga, Babukhan Road) are close to fulfilling sustainability principles. However, these neighborhoods also have many challenges. In contrast, unplanned and lower-income groups of neighborhoods (Lobonchora, Joragate, Khalishpur, Gollamari, Musolman Para) are completely detached from the characteristics of neighborhood sustainability. The challenges to achieving sustainability in different neighborhoods are highlighted in this study, and recommendations are suggested relevant to these issues. The results can provide a new view of the field of sustainable development and act as a benchmark for other studies. Policymakers and planners may apply this as a source of urban planning and urban management to achieve the goals of sustainable development.

A clearance pipeline-based method for street tree maintenance information detection using MLS data

Street trees provide a multitude of benefits but may cause hidden dangers to traffic safety under inaccurate maintenance. Mobile laser scanning (MLS) system can efficiently provide high-precision urban environment information. This article aims to develop a clearance pipeline-based method to obtain street tree maintenance information by analysing the spatial relationship between street trees and the clearance pipeline using MLS data. Our method consists of two steps: pipeline construction and maintenance information detection. The proposed approach can map street tree maintenance information and serve as an urban management tool. An urban block with a total length of 6.4 km was selected as the case area. The results indicated our method can effectively detect obstructive objects and pruning the street trees identified by our method can effectively improve the visibility of traffic signs. Our study shows the potential of MLS data in urban facilities management and aims to provide a safer road environment. Highlights A clearance pipeline-based method for detecting street tree maintenance information is developed. Three indexes derived from MLS data for quantitative analysis of the impact of maintenance information are defined. The thematic map has been drawn to assist the urban infrastructure management department.

Edge-based passive crowd monitoring through WiFi Beacons

Tracking people’s flows has become crucial, not only for safety and security, but also for numerous practical business applications and better management of urban spaces, facilities and services. In this paper, we proposed methodologies that, exploiting IoT technology deployed at the edge of the network, allow for the analysis of people’s movement in urban environments, both outdoors and indoors. In particular, leveraging the use of WiFi probe packets sent by smart devices carried by people on the move, we first describe an implementation of our methodology using off-the-shelf hardware to count people boarding public transportation vehicles. We then present an alternate implementation using commercial WiFi scanners connected to the edge and leveraging suitably deployed virtual network functions to process the data collected by a OneM2M IoT platform, proposing also a mobility tracking procedure that can be applied to anonymized data provided by commercial WiFi scanners. Our experimental results show that the proposed approaches to people counting and mobility detection can achieve a good level of accuracy, while overall carrying a low price tag.

Sustainable building renovation in residential buildings: barriers and potential motivations in Norwegian culture

Retrofit of existing housing increases the possibility of meeting Sustainable Development Goals. Improving quality of life, minimising energy consumption and increasing productivity in buildings process with the aim of affordable housing (social, environmental, and economic sustainability) set new demands for renovation amongst residential housing in Norway. Most studies to date emphasised on mitigation of CO2 emissions in building sector through building renovations. However, recent studies started evaluating why such renovation plans may not be considered by property owners. This study investigates potential barriers and motivations for Sustainable Building Renovations (SBR) from house-owners’ perspective and discusses the role of urban Facility Management (FM) in promoting SBR. Results from a questionnaire survey with 341 citizens in Trondheim city, Norway, confirm economic issues as the main barrier for SBR with respondents suggesting different forms of financial support to resolve these barriers. Social engagement of citizens with public/private partners and neighbours illustrates the collective motivation for SBR. This requires an intermediary role like urban FM engaging citizens to co-create their needs in urban areas with public/private sectors. The output of this study helps to promote urban FM engaging with SBR targets through renovation of neighbourhoods.

Research on Simulation of Distribution Network Engineering Scene Based on 3D GIS Technology

With the rapid development of the power system and the increasing complexity of the power grid structure, users’ demand for information-based management of the power distribution network is growing, and the need to improve various power production service standards is becoming increasingly urgent. Geographic information systems (GIS) are a natural combination of geographic and data attributes that are particularly well suited to the management of urban pipeline systems such as distribution and telecommunication networks. This paper discusses the current application characteristics and challenges of 3D GIS in the power system. A 3D graphic analysis model of the power grid and its realization method are proposed using 2D GIS and scene simulation technology combined with object-oriented design method. The problems that exist in current urban distribution facility management are solved in this paper through the effective integration of information construction and distribution facility management, and the goal of refined management is achieved on this basis. More and more complex 3D spatial data can be processed more realistically and intuitively with 3D GIS.

Sustainable Urban Development Strategic Initiatives

In order to ensure the implementation of the “Strategy for the Development of the Construction Industry of the Russian Federation until 2030” and the implementation of the UN resolution on sustainable development, there is a need to develop new strategic management initiatives. They should allow authorities to make inter-city comparisons, considering specific cities and their objects against the background of others undergoing similar development processes. In this article, the authors propose strategic initiatives for the management of urban facilities. In particular, the authors’ approach to the assessment of the sustainable development of housing and communal service facilities in the city is proposed. According to the authors, the housing and communal city service objects mean capital construction objects in different forms of reproduction. Moreover, the article examines both residential buildings and structures, and utility networks. The authors’ approach consists in the constant assessment of the city’s housing and communal service facilities at different stages of their operation. For this, the authors use several types of analysis: ex post analysis, ex ante analysis, and foresight analysis. For each type of analysis, the authors form a set of assessment indicators and indicate the period of the analysis. The result of the study is the development of an indicator for the assessment of the level of sustainable development of housing and communal service facilities in the city, and a roadmap for their development strategy. The roadmap is formed considering the introduction of modern end-to-end technologies and digital tools into the work of state bodies. The proposed approach, on the one hand, considers the internal complexity and heterogeneity of the city’s housing and communal service facilities. On the other hand, it is a simple tool for the making of effective management decisions by power structures, as it uses data which are available on a regular basis.

A Digital Twin Decision Support System for the Urban Facility Management Process.

The ever increasing pace of IoT deployment is opening the door to concrete implementations of smart city applications, enabling the large-scale sensing and modeling of (near-)real-time digital replicas of physical processes and environments. This digital replica could serve as the basis of a decision support system, providing insights into possible optimizations of resources in a smart city scenario. In this article, we discuss an extension of a prior work, presenting a detailed proof-of-concept implementation of a Digital Twin solution for the Urban Facility Management (UFM) process. The Interactive Planning Platform for City District Adaptive Maintenance Operations (IPPODAMO) is a distributed geographical system, fed with and ingesting heterogeneous data sources originating from different urban data providers. The data are subject to continuous refinements and algorithmic processes, used to quantify and build synthetic indexes measuring the activity level inside an area of interest. IPPODAMO takes into account potential interference from other stakeholders in the urban environment, enabling the informed scheduling of operations, aimed at minimizing interference and the costs of operations.

The impact of an urban facilities management summer school on the participants

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how an Urban Facilities Management (Urban FM) focused summer school in Norway in 2019 impacted knowledge creation, as well as the host and foreign educators, along with the international student participants.Design/methodology/approachThis paper’s data collection is formed as a “post-event study” using interviews and a quantitative survey from both the students and educators to look at the impact of the summer school on the student and the associated educational programs.FindingsThe outcomes of this study indicate that the impact on educators and their educational programs was substantial with regard to their teaching experiences. The study confirmed that foreign experience allowed not just for greater potential for cross institution cooperation for the future but also allowed for the usage of the summer school case studies in host and guest educational programs. For the students, the added value was in the international experience primarily and a chance to study on a case study project. The study was also successful in the dissemination of Urban FM knowledge.Originality/valueThis paper also offers added theoretical value in the development of a model in future projects on how to capitalize on the potential impact of the summer school on educators and students. The possibilities for increased dissemination and knowledge creation in Urban FM is also significant.

Analysis of Maintenance Safety Management of Urban Road and Bridge Facilities

Analysis of Maintenance Safety Management of Urban Road and Bridge Facilities

Urban Heritage Facility Management: A Scoping Review

This review examines current discussions from the cross-section study between urban heritage conservation and urban facility management fields in the academic literature from 2011–2020. The purpose is to identify the gaps within the examined papers to reveal the challenges and opportunities in the combined fields using the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s recommendation of the historic urban landscape (HUL) approach. The scoping review procedure was followed. The six critical steps and four supporting tools of the HUL approach were used to analyze the examined papers. Most aspects of urban heritage management within the body of literature were directly related to urban-scale facility management. The potential usage of building information modelling became one of the most discussed technological aspects. The expansion of the public–private partnership model into the public–private–people partnership is considered as a new potential business model. At the same time, the adaptive reuse approach is deemed to be the most sustainable method of managing heritage areas. This scoping review identified the financial tools as the most under-researched urban heritage facility management component. Therefore, it needs to be endorsed among the scientific communities to improve the knowledge and provide operable guidelines for the authorities and practitioners in the urban heritage field.

“Smart City” concept in the urban economy digitalization system of St. Petersburg

The article is devoted to the “Smart City” concept substantiation, focused on digitalization of urban processes and infrastructure facilities management in St. Petersburg. The priority strategic goals of this project and the corresponding tools are highlighted, a SWOT analysis is carried out to identify the range of possible risks of its implementation. The prerequisites for the “Smart St. Petersburg” concept implementation in the pursuit of widespread digitalization are highlighted, taking into account the dynamics of exo- and endogenous development factors.

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.

Understanding and Modeling Urban Mobility Dynamics via Disentangled Representation Learning

Understanding the underlying patterns of the urban mobility dynamics is essential for both the traffic state estimation and management of urban facilities and services. Due to the coupling relationship of generative factors in spatial-temporal domain, it is challenging to model the citywide traffic dynamics under a structural pattern of critical features such as hours of days, days of weeks and weather conditions. To address this challenge, this article develops a disentangled representation learning framework to learn an interpretable factorized representation of the independent data generative factors. In order to make full use of the knowledge on generative factors, this article proposes spatial-temporal generative adversarial network (ST-GAN) to assign the generative factors of traffic flow to the feature vector in latent space and reconstructs the high-dimensional citywide traffic flow from the given factors. With the help of the disentangled representations, the decomposed feature vector in latent space discloses the relationship between underlying patterns and citywide traffic dynamics. Several comprehensively experiments show that ST-GAN not only effectively improves the prediction accuracy but also promisingly characterize structural properties of the traffic evolution process.