Towards a Smart Sustainable City Roadmap : Identifying Competency Gaps

This workshop of the CAP4CITY (Erasmus+ Strengthening Governance Capacity for Smart Sustainable Cities) project is to promote and stimulate the discussion and networking in the area of Digital Government. Smart Sustainable Cities and related concepts of Digital, Intelligent and Smart Cities represent a progression of how cities around the world apply digital technology to serve their populations, pursue sustainable socio-economic development, and transform themselves in the process, and require strong capacity for public governance in the digital world. In order to identify the gaps concerning missing knowledge and training needs in this area we propose to validate a Smart Sustainable Cities roadmap through a scenario-building approach.Trabajo publicado en Chen, Y. C., Salem, F., Zuiderwijk, A. (eds.). dg.o 2019: Proceedings of the 20th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research. Association for Computing Machinery: New York, 2019.Facultad de Informátic

Roadmaps to Utopia: Tales of the Smart City

Notions of the Smart City are pervasive in urban development discourses. Various frameworks for the development of smart cities, often conceptualized as roadmaps, make a number of implicit claims about how smart city projects proceed but the legitimacy of those claims is unclear. This paper begins to address this gap in knowledge. We explore the development of a smart transport application, MotionMap, in the context of a £16M smart city programme taking place in Milton Keynes, UK. We examine how the idealized smart city narrative was locally inflected, and discuss the differences between the narrative and the processes and outcomes observed in Milton Keynes. The research shows that the vision of data-driven efficiency outlined in the roadmaps is not universally compelling, and that different approaches to the sensing and optimization of urban flows have potential for empowering or disempowering different actors. Roadmaps tend to emphasize the importance of delivering quick practical results. However, the benefits observed in Milton Keynes did not come from quick technical fixes but from a smart city narrative that reinforced existing city branding, mobilizing a growing network of actors towards the development of a smart region. Further research is needed to investigate this and other smart city developments, the significance of different smart city narratives, and how power relationships are reinforced and constructed through them

A Tale of Evaluation and Reporting in UK Smart Cities

Global trends towards urbanisation are associated with wide-ranging challenges and opportunities for cities. Smart technologies create new opportunities for a range of smart city development and regeneration programmes designed to address the environmental, economic and social challenges concentrated in cities. Whilst smart city programmes have received much publicity, there has been much less discussion about evaluation of smart city programmes and the measurement of their outcomes for cities. Existing evaluation approaches have been criticised as non-standard and inadequate, focusing more on implementation processes and investment metrics than on the impacts of smart city programmes on strategic city outcomes and progress. To examine this, the SmartDframe project conducted research on city approaches to the evaluation of smart city projects and programmes, and reporting of impacts on city outcomes. This included the ‘smarter’ UK cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough. City reports and interviews with representative local government authorities informed the case study analysis. The report provides a series of smart city case studies that exemplify contemporary city practices, offering a timely, insightful contribution to city discourse about best practice approaches to evaluation and reporting of complex smart city projects and programmes

Towards evaluation design for smart city development

Smart city developments integrate digital, human, and physical systems in the built environment. With growing urbanization and widespread developments, identifying suitable evaluation methodologies is important. Case-study research across five UK cities - Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough - revealed that city evaluation approaches were principally project-focused with city-level evaluation plans at early stages. Key challenges centred on selecting suitable evaluation methodologies to evidence urban value and outcomes, addressing city authority requirements. Recommendations for evaluation design draw on urban studies and measurement frameworks, capitalizing on big data opportunities and developing appropriate, valid, credible integrative approaches across projects, programmes and city-level developments

Communication on Smart City Evaluation and Reporting In UK cities: Pilots, Demos and Experiments Case

Global trends towards urbanisation are associated with wide-ranging challenges and opportunities for cities. Smart technologies create new opportunities for a range of smart city development and regeneration programmes designed to address the environmental, economic and social challenges concentrated in cities. Whilst smart city programmes have received much publicity, there has been much less discussion about the evaluation and measurement of smart city programme outcomes. Existing evaluation approaches have been criticised as non-standard and inadequate, focusing more on implementation processes and investment metrics than on city outcomes and the impacts of smart city programmes. Addressing this, the SmartDframe project aimed to examine city approaches to the evaluation of smart city projects and programmes and reporting of their impacts on city outcomes. A number of ‘smarter’ UK cities were invited to participate, with agreement by city authorities from Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough to be interviewed about their smart city work. The findings provide a series of smart city case studies that exemplify contemporary city practices, offering a timely, insightful contribution to city discourse about existing and best practice approaches to evaluation and reporting of complex smart city projects and programmes

A European research roadmap for optimizing societal impact of big data on environment and energy efficiency

We present a roadmap to guide European research efforts towards a socially responsible big data economy that maximizes the positive impact of big data in environment and energy efficiency. The goal of the roadmap is to allow stakeholders and the big data community to identify and meet big data challenges, and to proceed with a shared understanding of the societal impact, positive and negative externalities, and concrete problems worth investigating. It builds upon a case study focused on the impact of big data practices in the context of Earth Observation that reveals both positive and negative effects in the areas of economy, society and ethics, legal frameworks and political issues. The roadmap identifies European technical and non-technical priorities in research and innovation to be addressed in the upcoming five years in order to deliver societal impact, develop skills and contribute to standardization.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Roadmap for Real World Internet applications

This paper emphasises the socioeconomic background required to design the Future Internet in order that its services will be accepted by its users and that the economic value latent in the technology is realised. It contains an innovative outlook on sensing aspects of the Future Internet and describes a scenario-based design approach that is feasible to roadmap the dynamic deployment of Real World Internet applications. A multifaceted socioeconomic assessment leads to recommendations for the technology deployment and key features of the Future Internet that will globally integrate technologies like Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks and Networked Embedded Devices.Real World Internet ; Future Internet ; Scenario-based Design ; Socioeconomics ; Business Models ; Requirements

Monitor Sustainable Municipalities Report 2019 Key topic Circular Economy. Bertelsmann Stiftung Study 4 November 2019

At first sight, the concept for a recycling economy appears to be just the latest trend in the field of urban development, but in fact conversion to circular value creation also contains numerous oppor-tunities for the creation of long-term sustainable economic, social and environmental benefits for local communities. We have therefore chosen to look at this topic in this, our fourth, Monitor Report. Recycling Economy, Circular Value Creation and Cradle To Cradle are three concepts which – alt-hough each has a different main focus – basically all describe the same paradigm shift: away from a classic linear economy (“Take, Make, Use, Dispose”) towards a model based on restoration and regeneration. The recycling economy principle is actually anchored in the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Devel-opment Goals, or SDGs. Goal 12 calls for sustainable consumption and sustainable production patterns. The recycling economy is also associated with a number of other sustainability goals, as it makes a significant contribution to their achievement. We are convinced that it is worth considering the applicability of the concept to local communities in Germany. What does transferring the recycling economy principle to local communities entail? How can towns be converted into “Recycling Cities”? Where are the obstacles and what potential is there? This Monitor Report is a first – it is the first bilingual version. With the kind permission of the Collab-orating Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP) in Wuppertal, we have issued their “Circular Economy Guidebook for Cities” in the original English with a German translation. We hope that, by looking at the bigger picture, we will also generate the impulse to consider how the topic can be adopted in (European) towns and cities, and what the resulting benefits could be. We are fully aware that a one-to-one transfer will not work. “One size fits all” does not apply to local communities. Although something that makes sense in Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Oslo may not necessarily work in towns, districts and local communities in Germany, it is definitely worth looking at how things are done in other countries. I would sincerely like to thank everyone who contributed to the creation of this Report, and especially the CSCP for its trust and invaluable cooperation. We hope you enjoy reading the Report, and look forward as always to your feedback and suggestions