A Framework to Use Public-Private Partnership for Smart City Projects

The concept of Smart City has been emerging as a strategic set of integrated initiatives encompassing infrastructures, technology and digital services for the purpose of enhancing the quality of life of citizens. However, the development and implementation of Smart City projects require considerable investments that are difficult to fund with traditional public finance. In this context, Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) appear to be suitable solutions to overcome the shortage of public finance and cuts on public spending. However, the adoption of PPP forms for Smart City projects has not been fully explored and only experimentally applied so far. In order to promote the usage of PPP to finance Smart City initiatives, this paper proposes some PPP financial instruments and discusses the associated strengths and weaknesses. In particular, the use of Project Finance, Revenue Sharing and Social Impact Bonds are suggested as sound alternatives and suitable sources of financing for Smart City project

TOWARD SUSTAINABLE SMART CITIES: CONCEPTS & CHALLENGES

The world’s urban population is growing enormously, increasing of energy usage, air toxicity, and traffic congestion in urban areas which need a furthermost effective way for solutions. Smart city as a solution is expected to solve the functionality of urban systems. It needs to improve ICT infrastructure as an authoritative, adaptable, accessible, secure, and flexible one, and improve the quality of daily lifetime, refine citizen’s healthiness as well to achieve economic growth and develop the physical infrastructure services to promote sustainable development. This research is a narrative review, kind of methodological approach presented as open research and structured as follows: First section presents the smart city concept by reviewing the definitions, characteristics, and its dimensions. Based on the creation of smart cities, the research aims to identify and investigate the main challenges that smart cities development will face in the coming years by analysing, estimating, and evaluating the available data. It also includes a various assortment of challenges classified under; infrastructure challenges, theoretical, urban design, interdisciplinary, hackers challenges, urban land use, disability of the elderly challenges, the Big Data, technology trap, cultural and democracy challenges, budgetary and cost constraints, and regulations challenges. Besides, it is important to be conscious of security and privacy risks when implementing new systems. One example specifically discussed, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia smart city practices, provides a general overview of the Saudi Vision 2030. It is enlightened by a brief about “the most recent smart city project in Saudi Arabia”, NEOM and illustrates the smart city practices of Makkah, in the light of the six dimensions of the smart city, also studied the city of Amsterdam as it considered one of the first smart cities at the global level. Finally, the research ends with the conclusions and recommendations

Challenges and opportunities to develop a smart city: A case study of Gold Coast, Australia

With the rapid growth of information and communication technologies, there is a growing interest in developing smart cities with a focus on the knowledge economy, use of sensors and mobile technologies to plan and manage cities. The proponents argue that these emerging technologies have potential application in efficiently managing the environment and infrastructure, promoting economic development and actively engaging the public, thus contributing to building safe, healthy, sustainable and resilient cities. However, are there other important elements in addition to technologies which can contribute to the creation of smart cities? What are some of the challenges and opportunities for developing a smart city? This paper aims to answer these questions by developing a conceptual framework for smart cities. The framework is then applied to the city of Gold Coast to identify challenges and opportunities for developing the city into a ‘smart city’. Gold Coast is a popular tourist city of about 600,000 populations in South East Queensland, Australia, at the southern end of the 240km long coastal conurbation that is centred by Brisbane. Recently, IBM has nominated Gold Coast as one of the three cities in Australia for its Smarter Cities Challenge Grant. The grant will provide the Gold Coast City Council with the opportunity to collaborate with a group of experts from IBM to develop strategies for enhancing its ICT arrangements for disaster response capabilities. Gold Coast, meanwhile, has potential to diversify its economy from being centred on tourism to a knowledge economy with focus on its educational institutions, investments in cultural precincts and high quality lifestyle amenities. These provide a unique opportunity for building Gold Coast as an important smart city in the region. As part of the research methodology, the paper will review relevant policies of the council. Finally, lessons will be drawn from the case study for other cities which seek to establish themselves as smart cities

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action

Outlines a community education movement to implement Knight's 2009 recommendation to enhance digital and media literacy. Suggests local, regional, state, and national initiatives such as teacher education and parent outreach and discusses challenges

Business begins at home

One of the most significant trends in the post-industrial era has been for the home to become an important focus for work. The boundaries between work and home are now increasingly blurred, reversing the forces of the industrial era in which places deemed suitable for each were clearly demarcated and physically separate. The most recent published figures available from the Labour Force Survey (2005)1 indicate that 3.1m people now work mainly from home, 11% of the workforce. This represents a rise from 2.3m in 1997 (9% of the workforce), a 35% increase. The majority of homeworkers (2.4m or 77% of the total) are 'teleworkers' – people who use computers and telecommunications to work at home. The number of teleworkers has increased by 1.5m between 1997 and 2005, a 166% increase. Clearly, it is the growth in the number of teleworkers which is driving the increase in homeworking

Luxembourg's evolution from city to smart city with 5G

This paper aims at showing the link between the fifth-generation mobile network and the concept of smart cities. Herein, the goal is to argue how could Luxembourg evolve towards a smart city with 5G. 5G demonstrates several distinctions compared to its predecessor the fourth-generation, such as its ultra-high reliability and low-latency, its efficiency, capacity as well as its greater coverage. Thanks to those main characteristics, it is an enabler of many new use cases and it could potentially support Luxembourg tackle its main challenges that are mobility, housing, and healthcare. Although this technology seems to present new possible applications and capabilities, it also has drawbacks such as, amongst others, the need to have 5G-enabled devices to use it. Indeed, it does not appear to be the logical continuation of 4G but more of an advanced technology that could disrupt the decade ahead of us. Thereafter, the concept of a smart city is discussed and argued in this research paper, aiming to evaluate the smartness of Luxembourg regarding its public sector, and mostly the sectors representing the biggest defy for the country. Academic literature has been studied in this research paper and compared with the conducted interviews of both the public sector and 5G. This has also been supported by the conduction of a survey that aimed to evaluate Luxembourg’s inhabitants’ expectations and needs for the future of their country, and mainly regarding the three challenging sectors as well as their potential fears regarding the implementation of 5G in the Grand-Duchy. Advantages of Luxembourg to both become a smart city and to deploy 5G are discussed and counterbalanced with the challenges the city could face during this evolution towards an increased smartness

Smart City: Concepts and two Relevant Components

In the last 30 years, the Smart City (SC) definitions have changed, they expressed different meanings by different people, but still no universally accepted definition, yet. The paper aims to summarize the existing relevant definitions to and propose a concept for characterizing the smartness of a city through intelligent planning and monitoring, guided by actionable information that underpins computer-assisted decisions and institutional digital transformation. As a practical approach, the SC concept is promoted by two components namely: spatial urban territorial planning and cultural heritage via virtual exhibitions. The article highlights the schematic diagram of cross-sectoral interactions between different stakeholders grouped by roles, and the expected impact for these interactions, a proposed functional system architecture for cultural heritage digital transformation and concrete steps for virtual exhibitions implementation

Technological innovation and complex systems in cities

Many solutions to the problems confronting cities involve the integration of systems of systems. The complexity of integrating diverse systems requires approaches that are adaptive and collaborative. This paper argues that these approaches can valuably draw on a range of emerging technologies, such as virtual representations, using the massive increase in available data from ubiquitous instrumentation. It contends that the interrelations in cities between different systems can be better explored, and decisions improved, through using this technology. A brief case study of some elements of IBM's Smarter Cities strategy, based on instrumentation, interconnection, and intelligence is presented. The company's Emergency Response System in Rio de Janeiro is provided as an example of the role technology can play in developing an integrated system of systems. This exploratory paper concludes that the new innovation technologies can contribute to effective approaches for dealing with emerging challenges in cities