The smartness profile of selected European cities in urban management – a comparison analysis

The smart cities concept plays an important role in urban management worldwide as well as should be implemented with the participation of residents and with consideration for their needs. This study examines an analysis of the smartness diversity of European cities on the basis of the International Organization for Standardization 37120 norm dealing with sustainable development of communities. Cities with a higher level of certification exhibit more effective management and their residents show greater commitment to civic life. The assessment of the level of smartness was based on statistics collected by the World Council on City Data using Multidimensional Comparative Analysis. Hellwig’s (1968) synthetic indicators were used to create a ranking gauging the level of smartness of European cities which were classified into four groups. The investigation shows large disparities in the smartness of selected European cities

Smart City Ontologies and Their Applications: A Systematic Literature Review

The increasing interconnections of city services, the explosion of available urban data, and the need for multidisciplinary analysis and decision making for city sustainability require new technological solutions to cope with such complexity. Ontologies have become viable and effective tools to practitioners for developing applications requiring data and process interoperability, big data management, and automated reasoning on knowledge. We investigate how and to what extent ontologies have been used to support smart city services and we provide a comprehensive reference on what problems have been addressed and what has been achieved so far with ontology-based applications. To this purpose, we conducted a systematic literature review finalized to presenting the ontologies, and the methods and technological systems where ontologies play a relevant role in shaping current smart cities. Based on the result of the review process, we also propose a classification of the sub-domains of the city addressed by the ontologies we found, and the research issues that have been considered so far by the scientific community. We highlight those for which semantic technologies have been mostly demonstrated to be effective to enhance the smart city concept and, finally, discuss in more details about some open problems

Smart city : How smart is it actually?

The global megatrends of population growth and fast urbanisation are negatively impacting the life in the cities. Smart city is the high-level concept by which the cities try to address the need to improve their social, economic and environmental sustainability. This thesis studies how the smart city concept is defined, what are the underlying hypotheses and assumptions on which the smart city research is based on, what are the latest results and innovations of the smart city research, how the smart city initiatives are meeting their objectives, and how the hypotheses and assumptions may vary between the smart city initiatives. The objective of this study is to critically review the smart city research paradigm to find possible pitfalls, conflicting results and topics for further study and improvement. This research is conducted as a traditional critical literature review, covering the current academic literature on the smart city topic, the websites presenting the smart city initiatives around the world, and the latest popular literature for contrasting views. A qualitative comparison of the smart city initiatives in selected cities – Helsinki, Singapore and London – complements the literature review. The research strategy in this study approximates the grounded theory, utilising inductive reasoning to generate arguments and conclusions about the form, validity and future of the smart city. This study produced the following key findings: there are many different and overlapping definitions of smart city; the smart city development is mostly seen as the responsibility of smart ICT implementations, while simultaneously demanding for a more focused human viewpoint; the smart city initiatives form complex, multidisciplinary platforms that require holistic evaluation; the current evaluation methods and rankings of the smart cities vary considerably, making the evaluation of the success of the smart cities difficult; some of the existing smart city elements and proposed solutions are ineffective or even counterproductive for the smart city objectives. The main conclusions of this study were that the complex nature of the smart city initiatives and the conflicts and interdependencies of the smart city objectives are not fully addressed in the current smart city research, and that the current smart city research is not adequately multidisciplinary in nature. For the future, this research argues for the increased utilisation of research methods used in information systems science for their ability to address socio-technical and multidisciplinary problems. Also, the need for a future research on the efficacy of the multidisciplinary research of smart cities is identified.Väestönkasvu, siitä aiheutuva muuttoliike ja nopea kaupungistuminen ovat maailmanlaajuisia megatrendejä, jotka usein vaikuttavat kielteisesti elämisen ja asumisen laatuun kaupungeissa. Älykaupunki on ylemmän tason konsepti, jonka avulla kaupungit yrittävät muokata sosiaalista, taloudellista ja ympäristönsä kehitystä kestävämmälle pohjalle. Tässä tutkielmassa tarkastellaan, miten älykaupungin konsepti on määritelty, mitkä ovat ne taustaolettamukset ja perusteet, joiden varaan älykaupunkien tieteellinen tutkimus pohjautuu, mitkä ovat älykaupunkitutkimuksen viimeisimmät tulokset ja innovaatiot, miten älykaupunkihankkeet saavuttavat tavoitteensa ja miten niiden perusteet ja taustaolettamukset vaihtelevat älykaupunkien välillä. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena on kriittisesti tarkastella älykaupunkien tutkimusparadigmaa ja löytää mahdollisia sudenkuoppia sekä ristiriitaisia tutkimusaiheita ja -tuloksia, joita voitaisiin käyttää älykaupunkien jatkotutkimukseen ja -kehittämiseen tulevaisuudessa. Tämä tutkimus on toteutettu perinteisenä kriittisenä kirjallisuustutkimuksena. Lähdeaineistona on käytetty älykaupunkien viimeisimpiä akateemisia tutkimustuloksia ja julkaisuja, älykaupunkihankkeiden omia nettisivustoja ympäri maailman sekä kontrastin vuoksi myös viimeisimpiä populaarin lähdekirjallisuuden käsittelemiä aiheita ja ilmiöitä. Kirjallisuustutkimusta on täydennetty kvalitatiivisella älykaupunkivertailulla, jossa Helsingin, Singaporen ja Lontoon älykaupunkihankkeita on vertailtu keskenään. Työn tutkimusstrategia muistuttaa ankkuroitua teoriaa, jossa induktiivisen päättelyn avulla pyritään lähdeaineistosta löytämään ja luomaan väitteitä, perusteluja ja johtopäätöksiä älykaupunkien muodosta, olemassaolon oikeellisuudesta ja tulevaisuudesta. Tutkimuksessa havaittiin seuraavat pääkohdat: älykaupunki voidaan määritellä usealla, myöskin samanaikaisesti päällekkäisellä tavalla; älykaupunkien kehittäminen nähdään yleensä tieto- ja viestintäteknologisten innovaatioiden kehittämisenä, vaikka samanaikaisesti usein vaaditaan myös inhimillisemmän näkökulman korostamista; älykaupunkihankkeet muodostavat monitahoisia, monia tieteenaloja koskettavia alustoja, jotka vaativat nykyistä kokonaisvaltaisempaa tarkastelua ja arvi-ointia; nykyiset älykaupunkien menestyksen mittarit ja arviointitavat vaihtelevat huomattavasti, jolloin älykaupunkien älykkyyden ja onnistumisen yhteismitallinen arviointi on vaikeaa; jotkut havaituista älykaupunkien ominaisuuksista ja ratkaisuista ovat tehottomia tai jopa kielteisesti älykaupunkien tavoitteisiin vaikuttavia. Tässä tutkimuksessa päädyttiin seuraaviin johtopäätöksiin: älykaupunkihankkeiden monimutkaisen ja ristiriitaisen luonteen takia nykyinen älykaupunkitutkimus- ja kehitys ei täysin pysty vastaamaan näiden ristiriitaisuuksien ja keskinäisriippuvuuksien tuomiin haasteisiin; nykyinen älykaupunkitutkimus ei myöskään ole tieteellisesti riittävän monialaista. Tämän tutkimuksen pohjalta voidaan suositella, että tulevaisuudessa älykaupunkien kehitys voisi pohjautua enemmän tietojärjestelmätieteiden tutkimusmetodologioiden hyödyntämiseen, jolloin älykaupunkien vaatimat sosiotekniset ja monitieteelliset näkökulmat saataisiin paremmin havaittua, katettua ja arvioitua tutkimustuloksissa. Tulevaisuudessa tarvitaan myös tutkimusta siitä, kuinka tehokkaasti monitieteellinen älykaupunkitutkimus onnistuu

Conceptualising the multifaceted nature of urban road congestion

Urban road congestion is not a new phenomenon and remains an outstanding problem that continues to impact people around the world. Road congestion costs the European Union an estimated 1-2% of GDP each year and is responsible for 27% of deadly C02 emissions. In addition, it can cause life-threatening delays in the emergency services response time. Road congestion has a multifaceted nature and lacks a clear and explicit definition. This makes the problem of tackling it very subjective, time and context dependent. There have been several approaches to both modelling and predicting road congestion. From a physical perspective, road congestion has been modelled using speed, capacity, velocity, and journey time; relatively road congestion has been classified using terms such as non-recurrent and recurrent congestion which tend to be relative to each stakeholder; conceptual models such as the bathtub, traffic flow, and origin to the destination have been used to ascertain the impact of road congestion on a city scale. This research presented tackles the problem of defining what is meant by congestion within an urban road network through defining a conceptual model that captures the semantics of road traffic congestion and its causes. The model is validated through the construction of a real-world dataset and the development of a visual tool which can be used to identify and alleviate congestion. The final stage of the project uses both the model and the dataset to investigate and implement a series of fuzzy systems to classify three types of congestion (non-recurrent, recurrent, and semi-recurrent). The fuzzy system results are then validated against human methods of classifying congestion. The main contributions of this thesis to world knowledge can be summarised as follows: The design and development of a novel universal Urban Road Congestion Conceptual (URCC) model. The URCC model is broken down into two main components: Analogical conceptualisation which builds upon the famous ‘bathtub’ model and will integrate with other analogies to create ‘a raindrop hitting a leaf inside the bathtub with ever changing water temperatures’. The second component is an ontological approach to modelling congestion thus providing a better understanding for decision-makers through providing a formal and explicit explanation for concepts within the domain of urban road congestion. Another contribution is the development of a real-world spatiotemporal quasi-real-time big data dataset known as the Manchester Urban Congestion Data (MUCD) dataset which was used to validate the URCC. A visualisation graphical user interface called TIM (Transport Incident Manager) was developed with stakeholders TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester). TIM has the ability to fill the void left by the clear lack of visualisation tools that are capable of visualising real-world big data datasets, such as the MUCD and models of urban road congestion. The final contribution to knowledge is the design and development of two fuzzy decision-making systems which are not only capable of predicting urban road congestion on a link but the type of congestion occurring on a network of links. Using a fuzzy decision-making system allows for explainable and interpretable decisions, and also provided useful and meaningful qualitative context back to the relevant TfGM stakeholders. The non-optimised multi-classification fuzzy system had slightly worst accuracy than the J48 decision tree algorithm, however, the fuzzy system is easier to interpret and provides meaningful context compared to the J48 algorithm due to only requiring 12 rules compared to the 1184 learned rules in the J48 decision tree. Furthermore, once the fuzzy system has been optimised (future work) it is likely to have similar if not better performance than the J48 decision tree