Trends in Smart Cities: Implications for Research and Practice in Developing Economies

The concept of a smart city is an emerging one that has attracted strong interest from researchers and practitioners. A myriad of research has focused on the adoption of smart cities, components of smart cities, use of smart and open data in smart cities, solutions for smart cities, the influence of the Internet of Things(IoT) and big data analytics in smart cities, and public engagement in smart city planning. However, following a systematic review of smart city trends, little research has been done on the implications of the trends in smart cities for researchers and practitioners, especially in developing economies. As an emerging concept, there are key lessons to be learned from cities that have been able to build sustainable smart cities. With some developing economies initiating smart city projects, it will be interesting to know the issues researchers and practitioners should pay attention to when it comes to the fast-moving trends in smart cities. Key among these implications are as follows; developing economies looking to build smart cities should consider a collaboration among public authorities, private businesses, and academia. Key stakeholders in the government and private sector could establish IS policies that will guide smart city initiatives. Developing economies should also understand the concerns for testing in closed environments, and pay attention to cyberattack

The role of open data in the transformation to Society 5.0: a resource or a tool for SDG-compliant Smart Living?

Open data are characterized by a number of economic, technological, innovative and social benefits. They are seen as a significant contributor to the city's transformation into Smart City. This is all the more so when the society is on the border of Society 5.0, i.e., shift from the information society to a super smart society or society of imagination takes place. However, the question constantly asked by open data experts is, what are the key factors to be met and satisfied in order to achieve promised benefits? The current trend of openness suggests that the principle of openness should be followed not only by data but also research, education, software, standard, hardware etc., it should become a philosophy to be followed at different levels, in different domains. This should ensure greater transparency, eliminating inequalities, promoting, and achieving sustainable development goals. Therefore, many agendas now have openness as a prerequisite. This chapter deals with concepts of open (government) data and Society 5.0 pointing to their common objectives, providing some success stories of open data use in smart cities or transformation of cities towards smart cities, mapping them to the features of the Society 5.0. We believe that this trend develops a new form of society, which we refer to as "open data-driven society". It forms a bridge from Society 4.0 to Society 5.0. This Chapter attempts to identify the role of openness in promoting human-centric Smart Society, Smart city, and Smart Living.Comment: Cite as: Nikiforova, A., Alor Flores M. A., & Lytras, M. D. (2023). The Role Of Open Data In The Transformation To Society 5.0: A Resource Or A Tool For SDG-Compliant Smart Living?. In Smart Cities and Digital Transformation Empowering Communities, Limitless Innovation, Sustainable Development and the Next Generation (pp. 219-252). Emerald Publishing Limited, ISBN: 978180455995

Big and Open Linked Data (BOLD) to Create Smart Cities and Citizens: Insights from Smart Energy and Mobility Cases

Part 2: Open and Smart Government; International audience; Smart cities focus on using existing resources in a better way to improve the urban environment. At the same time Big and Open Linked Data (BOLD) can be used to better understand the use of the resources and to suggest improvements. The objective of this paper is to investigate the complementariness of the smart cities and big and Open Data research streams. Two inductive cases concerning different aspects of smart cities, energy and mobility, are investigated. The idea of using BOLD for smart cities seems initially straightforward, but the cases show that this is complex. A taxonomy for forms of collecting and opening data is derived. A major challenge is to deal with data distributed over various data sources and how to align the data push with the citizensâ needs. This paper highlights a continuous scale between open and closed data and emphasizes that not only Open Data but also closed data should be used to identify improvements. BOLD can contribute to the âsmartnessâ of cities by linking and combining data or employing data or predictive analytics to improve better use of resources. A smart city only becomes smart when there are smart citizens, businesses, civil servants and other stakeholders. Document type: Part of book or chapter of boo

Investigating the current approach to developing data governance in the Canadian smart city

Smart cities have grown in prevalence as cities take advantage of big data and connected technologies to address the issues of sustainable urban development in the face of their growing urban populations. Data governance is necessary to smart cities to ensure integrity, accessibility, and accountability of data. There is also a growing concern about having proper data governance to protect citizens’ digital rights and democracy. Though these concerns are pressing, there is a gap in understanding the data governance strategies of city governments and the roles that they play in developing those strategies. Additionally, literature on smart cities often focuses on data privacy and security instead of discussing data governance comprehensively and does not discuss the role of the city. This thesis aims to address this gap by understanding the current state of data governance of proposed Canadian smart cities, through identifying their data governance decisions and classifying them into the roles they are adopting. The Smart Cities Challenge in Canada presented an opportunity to study proposed smart cities for their data governance decisions and the role of the city through content analysis, using concepts from Khatri and Brown’s (2010) data governance framework and Bayat and Kawalek’s (2018) model of data governance city roles. The analysis found that the proposed Canadian smart cities are planning to develop their smart city projects and data governance using an approach driven by open and collaborative principles. This open and collaborative approach adopted by the Canadian smart cities prioritizes data governance activities that address the data access, data principles, and data lifecycle decision domains, in conjunction to the cities taking on roles that emphasize transparency, co-creation, and high stakeholder involvement. Openness and collaboration are discussed to be critical to the success of smart cities, as they can drive mechanisms to help address the challenges of trust and achieve and maintain democratic accountability. This open and collaborative state of smart city data governance also supports a transformation of the smart city discourse, moving away from vendor-driven and citizen-driven smart cities and towards government-driven smart cities. The study outlines considerations for the proposed Canadian smart cities and their stakeholders to act on the gaps in their data governance strategies as identified in the results. Future smart cities are recommended to proactively use an open and collaborative approach in developing their smart city plans and data governance strategies

Ontology-based Classification and Analysis of non- emergency Smart-city Events

Several challenges are faced by citizens of urban centers while dealing with day-to-day events, and the absence of a centralised reporting mechanism makes event-reporting and redressal a daunting task. With the push on information technology to adapt to the needs of smart-cities and integrate urban civic services, the use of Open311 architecture presents an interesting solution. In this paper, we present a novel approach that uses an existing Open311 ontology to classify and report non-emergency city-events, as well as to guide the citizen to the points of redressal. The use of linked open data and the semantic model serves to provide contextual meaning and make vast amounts of content hyper-connected and easily-searchable. Such a one-size-fits-all model also ensures reusability and effective visualisation and analysis of data across several cities. By integrating urban services across various civic bodies, the proposed approach provides a single endpoint to the citizen, which is imperative for smooth functioning of smart cities

Usability of Open Data for Smart City Applications – Evaluation of Data, Development of Application and Creation of Visual Dashboards

Today different sources of information on urban areas are becoming openly available at various spatial and temporal resolutions and extents. They are crucial for driving towards “Smart Cities”. Many smart cityrelevant applications, to understand and predict certain phenomena such as mobility, air quality, etc., depend on large amounts of readily available good quality data. Many datasets related to such topics are already publicly available. However, the appropriate use of these datasets must be ensured by checking the quality of data in a systematic way. Under quality of data, one not only evaluate the number of missing or false data points but also determine data characteristics such as resolution, frequency and ease of use, etc. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are to evaluate the open data available in different portals (80 in total) with special consideration to these factors and to evaluate their usability in some of the smart city applications. In this regard, an extensive literature review is carried out. We observed that especially official government data portal often lack these qualities. This could have occurred due to the lack of concrete examples of how cities and citizens can profit from the applications created with the appropriate kind of data. Some civil servants might have experienced some levels of mistrust regarding the abstract ideas of ‘Smart City’ and ‘Open Data’. We therefore illustrate three possible applications, e.g. (a) use of high-resolution low- cost sensor data around Europe (b) GPS trajectories of a large number of taxis monitored inside the city and (c) land-use and accesability data from voluntered geographic information. In this regard, other open source spatial data portals (such as Open Street Map APIs) and open source software such as python and relevant libraries are also utilized. For each application, we elaborate the data characteristics and the detailed methodological steps (e.g., analytics methods) as well as communicate the results with an easy to operate dashboard having strong visualisation and analytical aids (maps, graphs, statistical summary, etc.). The dashboards help to understand the significance of open data and to support decision makers in creatingservices for the citizens with the context of “Smart City”. Finally, we conclude with the limitation and further recommendations to the city officials regarding their role of shaping the future of (smart) cities with the right open data policy

Smart Cities and standards – The approach of the Horizon2020-project ESPRESSO

A Smart City integrates physical, digital and human systems to deliver a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future for its citizens. Many of these innovative solutions will be based on sophisticated information and communication technologies. However, technological complexity, as well as the complexity of the various sectoral services involved within a Smart City, require a system approach to standardisation. Such an approach must promote the greatest possible reuse of existing open standards to accelerate the Smart City deployment. In an effort to leverage the promise of a system approach, the Horizon 2020-project ESPRESSO (systEmic standardisation apPRoach to Empower Smart citieS and cOmmunities) will focus on the development of a conceptual Smart City Information Framework based on open standards. A further goal of ESPRESSO will be to envisage the impact of those technologies for urban planning and also in societal terms. The partner cities will be engaged to analyse how their services can be streamlined and improved through large-scale use of standards. This will be done by analysing the downstream changes from the new scenarios enabled by large-scale interoperability and what this could bring for a future Smart City. Based on a detailed requirements-engineering campaign executed in close cooperation with cities, standardisation organizations, administrative bodies, and private industry, the project will identify open standards matching the elicited requirements and will establish a baseline for interoperability between the various sectoral data sources and the Smart City enterprise application platform. In a comprehensive set of coordination, support and networking activities, the project will engage a very large number of stakeholders, such as Smart Cities (both existing and those with aspirations), European Standardisation Organizations (ESOs), National Standardisation Bodies (NSBs), Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), public administrations, industries, SMEs, and other institutions. ESPRESSO’s approach emphasises cost reduction and will foster an open market for many actors, avoiding lock-in to proprietary solutions

Data driven approaches for smart city planning and design: a case scenario on urban data management

Purpose Because of the use of digital technologies in smart cities, municipalities are increasingly facing issues related to urban data management and are seeking ways to exploit these huge amounts of data for the actualization of data driven services. However, only few studies discuss challenges related to data driven strategies in smart cities. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to present data driven approaches (architecture and model), for urban data management needed to improve smart city planning and design. The developed approaches depict how data can underpin sustainable urban development. Design/methodology/approach Design science research is adopted following a qualitative method to evaluate the architecture developed based on top-level design using a case data from workshops and interviews with experts involved in a smart city project. Findings The findings of this study from the evaluations indicate that the identified enablers are useful to support data driven services in smart cities and the developed architecture can be used to promote urban data management. More importantly, findings from this study provide guidelines to municipalities to improve data driven services for smart city planning and design. Research limitations/implications Feedback as qualitative data from practitioners provided evidence on how data driven strategies can be achieved in smart cities. However, the model is not validated. Hence, quantitative data is needed to further validate the enablers that influence data driven services in smart city planning and design. Practical implications Findings from this study offer practical insights and real-life evidence to define data driven enablers in smart cities and suggest research propositions for future studies. Additionally, this study develops a real conceptualization of data driven method for municipalities to foster open data and digital service innovation for smart city development. Social implications The main findings of this study suggest that data governance, interoperability, data security and risk assessment influence data driven services in smart cities. This study derives propositions based on the developed model that identifies enablers for actualization of data driven services for smart cities planning and design. Originality/value This study explores the enablers of data driven strategies in smart city and further developed an architecture and model that can be adopted by municipalities to structure their urban data initiatives for improving data driven services to make cities smarter. The developed model supports municipalities to manage data used from different sources to support the design of data driven services provided by different enterprises that collaborate in urban environment.acceptedVersio

Gulf Cooperation Council countries and urbanisation:Are Open Government Data portals helping?

Today, the concepts of the smart city and smart government are well established, and have become key in dealing with the challenges faced by rapidly increasing urbanisation across the world. One of the many ways in which smart cities and government can help meet these challenges is by empowering citizens to take more and better control of their own decisions, by giving them access to open (i.e., public and unrestricted) data via online portals. These portals can enable citizens and professionals to make more informed decisions across a wide variety of areas, from health and traffic issues to developing new businesses. They can also encourage citizens to become more involved in the making of more effective social policy. Open data is increasingly seen as a key enabler in designing and implementing knowledge-based solutions for more sustainable urban development. For these reasons, as well as others, OGD (Open Government Data) portals are already being implemented in many countries. However, if smart cities are to maximise their potential, OGD portals must be understood, accepted and—crucially—used by the public. The extent to which this is the case is not clear, as there have been few studies that have specifically examined the impact of open data in a smart city context. This is particularly true in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries. This research uses a mixed methods (questionnaires and interviews) approach to examine this issue by carrying out a comparative study of the use of portals across the region and, therefore, whether these countries are making optimum use of open data. An existing evaluation framework was used with a group of evaluators representing professional users who are not experienced in using data portals. The findings of the research suggest that these countries are not yet realising the full potential of their portals, and more effective support for the transition to smart cities could be achieved with fuller and better cross-national cooperation

Data literacy in the smart city: why Smart cities should be populated by MIL Citizens.

Capitulo 3 - MIL Cities and MIL Citizens: Informed, Engaged, Empowered by Media and Information Literacy (MIL).Smart Cities typify the current and future data-rich environments. In these types of environments, technology and the analysis of vast data facilitate more intelligent choices and actions—largely automated using algorithms and artificial intelligence—related to mobility, security, energy use, culture, markets, etc. (Ballon, van der Graaf, & Walravens, 2017). A discussion on the necessity of data literacy has emerged from debates on datafication, big data, open data, artificial intelligence, and algorithms. The question, however, lies on the relation between media and data literacy. In this contribution, we reflect on aspects of data literacy by examining the literature on smart cities and data in smart cities. We argue that smart cities are not automatically media and information-literate cities. Furthermore, smart cities can only become media and information-literate cities by actively developing an open data context, involving citizens in data projects, empowering civil society participation, and stimulating data literacy in a broad sense