Economic efficiency and energy security of smart cities

The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis of the determinants of economic efficiency and to assess the prerequisites for the energy security of smart cities. The main methods of the paper include an economic analysis of the infrastructure improvements that result in reducing the energy demand of the smart cities represented by the intelligent light-emitting diode (LED) street lighting system. Smart LED streetlights are getting increasingly popular in the world’s major metropolises as one of the leading components of the “smart” city. We compare the efficiency of LED street lighting used in smart cities with a commonly used lighting system based on sodium lamps. Our results demonstrate that LED street lighting system can significantly reduce the energy demand of any modern city. Moreover, we show that smart grids might help distribution systems within smart cities to better integrate intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The main research novelty of our study compared to previous studies from the literature is the estimation of net profit (NP), Net Discounted Savings (NDS), as well as the total savings (TS) using the example of an average European metropolis. Our findings show that there is a need for better management including strong networks of leaders to drive smart city policies and investments and to cover wider city areas with economically sustainable projects and plans. In addition, our findings yield that smart city projects should aim at finding solution for smart connected local energy storage systems to support more renewable energy sources on the power grids. Our results might be of a special interest for city planners, local government stakeholders, as well as urban policy makers dealing with planning and managing smart cities

Electric Vehicle Charging Station Placement: Formulation, Complexity, and Solutions

To enhance environmental sustainability, many countries will electrify their transportation systems in their future smart city plans. So the number of electric vehicles (EVs) running in a city will grow significantly. There are many ways to re-charge EVs' batteries and charging stations will be considered as the main source of energy. The locations of charging stations are critical; they should not only be pervasive enough such that an EV anywhere can easily access a charging station within its driving range, but also widely spread so that EVs can cruise around the whole city upon being re-charged. Based on these new perspectives, we formulate the Electric Vehicle Charging Station Placement Problem (EVCSPP) in this paper. We prove that the problem is non-deterministic polynomial-time hard. We also propose four solution methods to tackle EVCSPP and evaluate their performance on various artificial and practical cases. As verified by the simulation results, the methods have their own characteristics and they are suitable for different situations depending on the requirements for solution quality, algorithmic efficiency, problem size, nature of the algorithm, and existence of system prerequisite.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, revise

IoT-Enabled Smart Healthcare Infrastructure Maximises Energy Efficiency

Advancements in IoT-based applications have become the cutting-edge technology among researchers due to the wide availability of the Internet. In order to make the application more user-friendly, Android-based and Web-based technologies have become increasingly important in this cutting-edge technology. Smart cities, Internet of Things(IoT), Smart health care systems are the technology of the future. A combination of numerous systems focusing on monitoring different components of the smart city (such as water, e-health, gas,  power monitoring and emergency scenario detection) can be used to make the city more sustainable and secure. In smart cities, energy consumption is particularly important for e-health. An optimization approach is provided in this paper to reduce total network energy usage. When compared to previous methods, the overall performance has improved by 57.89%

Energy storage impact on light rail developments

– Smart cities imply a range of efficient mobility solutions for people and goods at the same time as minimising the environmental burden. This short paper focuses on Light Rail and particularly Tram systems as having advantages in responding to these needs and is the first stage on a longer project which will provide greater detail in due course. It further considers the alternatives for powering the system as an important component in the development of a clean, attractive and economic urban mass transit resource for the smart city. This leads to energy storage as a potential alternative to continuous energy supply such as overhead cables, and is followed by a comparison of various methods of on-board energy storage including batteries, supercapacitors and hydrogen. Interim conclusions are presented

Waste Management in the Smart City: Current Practices and Future Directions

The discourse surrounding sustainability, particularly in the urban environment, has gained considerable momentum in recent years. The concept of a smart city epitomises the integration of innovative technological solutions with community-centred approaches, thereby laying the ground- work for a sustainable lifestyle. One of the crucial components of this integration is the effective and innovative management of waste. The aim of this article was to classify scientific research pertaining to waste management within the context of smart city issues, and to identify emerging directions for future research. A systematic literature review, based on a bibliometric analysis of articles included in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, was conducted for this study. The purpose of such a systematic review is to identify, integrate, and evaluate research on a selected topic, using clearly defined criteria. The research query included: TITLE-ABS-KEY (“smart city” AND (waste OR garbage OR trash OR rubbish)) in the case of Scopus, and TS = (“smart city” AND (waste OR garbage OR trash OR rubbish)) in the case of the Web of Science database. A total of 1768 publication records qualified for the analysis. This study presents an investigation into the current and forthcoming directions of waste management in smart cities, synthesising the latest advancements and methods. The findings outline specific future research directions encompassing technological advancement, special waste challenges, digitisation, energy recovery, transportation, community engagement, pol- icy development, security, novel frameworks, economic and environmental impact assessment, and global implications. These insights reflect a multifaceted approach, advocating a technology-driven perspective that is integral to urban sustainability and quality of life. The study’s findings provide practical avenues for cities to enhance waste management through modern technologies, promoting efficient systems and contributing to sustainable urban living and the circular economy. The insights are vital for policymakers and industry leaders globally, supporting the creation of universal stan- dards and policies, thereby fostering comprehensive waste management systems aligned with global sustainability objectives

Resilient power grid for smart city

Modern power grid has a fundamental role in the operation of smart cities. However, high impact low probability extreme events bring severe challenges to the security of urban power grid. With an increasing focus on these threats, the resilience of urban power grid has become a prior topic for a modern smart city. A resilient power grid can resist, adapt to, and timely recover from disruptions. It has four characteristics, namely anticipation, absorption, adaptation, and recovery. This paper aims to systematically investigate the development of resilient power grid for smart city. Firstly, this paper makes a review on the high impact low probability extreme events categories that influence power grid, which can be divided into extreme weather and natural disaster, human-made malicious attacks, and social crisis. Then, resilience evaluation frameworks and quantification metrics are discussed. In addition, various existing resilience enhancement strategies, which are based on microgrids, active distribution networks, integrated and multi energy systems, distributed energy resources and flexible resources, cyber-physical systems, and some resilience enhancement methods, including probabilistic forecasting and analysis, artificial intelligence driven methods, and other cutting-edge technologies are summarized. Finally, this paper presents some further possible directions and developments for urban power grid resilience research, which focus on power-electronized urban distribution network, flexible distributed resource aggregation, cyber-physical-social systems, multi-energy systems, intelligent electrical transportation and artificial intelligence and Big Data technology

A tale of three cities: decarbonising Auckland, Sydney and Christchurch and consequences for other cities around the world

Sydney and Auckland have similar climates, cultures and urban form. However, methods for reducing carbon emissions and energy use are completely different. Auckland has low carbon buildings due to the large proportion of renewable energy in the electricity supply. However, it is a car dependent city and lacks resilience in transport energy. Sydney has high carbon buildings due to the large proportion of coal used to generate electricity. However, its public transport system is more resilient than Auckland. In the case of Sydney, the energy use and carbon emissions of buildings and precincts is measured and mapped onto a 'carbon map'. This informs policy on the appropriate technologies and distribution systems for infrastructure in the city. A precinct based tri-generation system is shown to be the most effective means of reducing energy demand and carbon emissions in Sydney's central business district. In Auckland, a sprawling city with poor public transport systems, the most effective means of reducing energy demand and carbon emissions is by tackling the suburbs. This is established by mapping the 'net-metering' potential of the City. Distributed renewable energy by photovoltaics located on suburban roofs will not only power all the transport energy needs of the City but also produce an excess for reducing peak cooling demands in buildings. This presentation argues that each city should be evaluated on its own individual merits. The emerging technologies of tri-generation, photovoltaics, smart metering and electric vehicles offer different solutions for different cities. It is argued that the energy culture of each city should be taken into account and that commonly held beliefs of the relationship between urban form and resilience, such as the compact city, are not always appropriate. For all their similarities, Auckland and Sydney are almost opposites where methods for carbon reduction are concerned. The most effective way to tackle Sydney is improving its buildings in the CBD. The most effective way of tackling Auckland is improving its transport system in the suburbs. For, many other cities, the effective means of increasing resilience, in terms of energy and carbon, may lie somewhere between. Both electricity and carbon emissions are generally invisible. The metrics that this paper uses to evaluate cities and the different mapping techniques that are presented make energy and carbon visible so that they are readily understood for policy purposes. While this research focuses on Sydney and Auckland the mapping techniques would be appropriate for other cities

Virtual reality for smart urban lighting design: Review, applications and opportunities

More and more cities are evolving into smart cities, increasing their attractiveness, energy efficiency, and users satisfaction. Lighting systems play an important role in the evolution process, thanks to their ability to affect city life at night along with people s mood and behaviour. In this scenario, advanced lighting design methods such as virtual reality (VR) became essential to assess lighting systems from different points of view, especially those linked with the city users expectations. Initially, the review highlights a list of objective and subjective parameters to be considered for the lighting design of three main city areas/applications: roads, green areas and buildings. Besides, the state-of-Art in using VR for outdoor lighting design is established. Finally, the Unreal game engine is used to analyse the ability of VR to take into account the lighting parameters, not yet investigated in current literature and to highlight the VR potential for augmenting lighting design. The results confirm the benefit of using VR in lighting design, even if further investigations are needed to establish its reliability, especially from the photometrical point of view

Smart energy management for non-domestic buildings: case studies of two local authorities in the UK

The use of smart meters has increased since the beginning of the 21st century. The UK government, for example, has recently initiated a programme of rolling out 53 million smart electricity and gas meters for homes and small businesses by 2020 with the expectation that €20 billion will be saved on energy bills over the coming 15 years. The UK’s mass deployment of smart meters has resulted in Local Authorities experiencing additional costs from their installation in their non-domestic buildings, including the costs of new data collection and reporting systems. As a consequence, energy managers are increasingly being forced to consider the ideal frequency for collecting and reporting energy data, appropriate methods for processing that data and the need to rely on ‘real-time’ energy data when there are several other ways in which energy data can be accessed (bills, direct readings, etc.). Finally, what are the realistic expectations about the financial savings attributable to the installation of smart meters? This paper seeks to address these questions through two case studies which examine the effects of the smart meter roll-out programme on two separate UK Local Authorities, Northamptonshire County Council and Leicester City Council