Abstract
Although there is no shortage of international commentary on China’s more ambitious urban development projects and policies, researchers have paid relatively little attention to the growing importance of smart city ideas within these. The current chapter therefore aims to add to our collective understanding of ‘smart urbanism’ in the Chinese context. However, rather than taking its cues from global cities in the international limelight (for example, Shanghai) or from new digital technologies in exemplar development projects (for example, Tianjin Eco-City), the chapter responds to the call by Shelton and colleagues (2015) to investigate how the ‘actually existing smart city’ is rolling out in more ‘ordinary’ settings (Amin and Graham 1997, Robinson 2006). Specically, the case of Wuhan is used to illustrate the ways that the smart city concept has ‘landed’ in typical Chinese urban space, since the city is neither a high-prole coastal metropolis nor a remote backwater. The case of Wuhan, and its national context, is potentially of empirical interest to readers more familiar with smart city development elsewhere; but it also has particular importance as one of several cities in which signicant hope and resources are currently being invested as a model for future urban development in China. In this chapter, we address two research questions: What is distinctive about the Chinese smart city, as exemplied by Wuhan? And what does that tell us about smart city development elsewhere?
Internet of Things (loT) has revolutionized the 21st century through its applications in smart cities. According to Gartner Inc. the market nowadays for loT is geared towards smart cities and governments with an estimated 3.3 billion connected smart things in 2018 [8], [11]. Smart cities involve establishing sustainable technological processes for managing cities from utility control, electricity, housing, to transportation. The ultimate goal is to provide a safer, better quality of life all the while reducing costs [2], [12]. Smart city usage of loT is expected to climb to 9.7 billion by 2020, in comparison to its 1.1 billion investment in 2015 according to Gartner report [4].
In this paper, we consider energy cooperation in an Internet of Things (IoT) smart city scenario. We assume the presence of interconnecting energy harvesting IoT gateways (GWs), that are endowed with energy harvesting capabilities and whose role is to collect and aggregate data from field sensing devices. Energy cooperation complements and balances the energetic needs to those devices that are neither connected to the power grid, nor satisfactorily served by energy harvesting due to the instability of ambient energy arrivals. The proposed solution entail energy transfers from energy rich gateways to energy scarce ones, i.e., those which are not connected to the power grid. To identify the optimal energy transfer/allocation scheme, we formulate a convex optimization problem that finds the optimal solution for heterogeneous smart systems. With this energy allocation technique, the gateways are unlikely to run out of energy during operation and the gap between energy offer and demand among interconnected gateways is kept to a minimum. We also quantify the performance of the proposed energy transfer policies as a function of network parameters, including: the amount of traffic generated by sensing devices, the number of smart services in the system, and the number of gateways that are connected to the power grid.
Abstract
As research on smart cities garners increased attention and its status consolidates as one of the fanciest areas of research today, this paper makes a case for a cautious rethink of the very rationale and relevance of the debate. To this end, this paper looks at the smart cities debate from the perspectives of, on the one hand, citizens’ awareness of applications and solutions that are considered ‘smart’ and, on the other hand, their ability to use these applications and solutions. Drawing from a detailed analysis of the outcomes of a pilot international study, this paper showcases that even the most educated users of smart city services, i.e., those arguably most aware of and equipped with skills to use these services effectively, express very serious concerns regarding the utility, safety, accessibility and efficiency of those services. This suggests that more pragmatism needs to be included in smart cities research if its findings are to remain useful and relevant for all stakeholders involved. The discussion in this paper contributes to the smart cities debate in three ways. First, it adds empirical support to the thesis of ‘normative bias’ of smart cities research. Second, it suggests ways of bypassing it, thereby opening a debate on the preconditions of sustainable interdisciplinary smart cities research. Third, it points to new avenues of research.
As research on smart cities garners increased attention and its status consolidates as one of the fanciest areas of research today, this paper makes a case for a cautious rethink of the very rationale and relevance of the debate. To this end, this paper looks at the smart cities debate from the perspectives of, on the one hand, citizens’ awareness of applications and solutions that are considered ‘smart’ and, on the other hand, their ability to use these applications and solutions. Drawing from a detailed analysis of the outcomes of a pilot international study, this paper showcases that even the most educated users of smart city services, i.e., those arguably most aware of and equipped with skills to use these services effectively, express very serious concerns regarding the utility, safety, accessibility and efficiency of those services. This suggests that more pragmatism needs to be included in smart cities research if its findings are to remain useful and relevant for all stakeholders involved. The discussion in this paper contributes to the smart cities debate in three ways. First, it adds empirical support to the thesis of ‘normative bias’ of smart cities research. Second, it suggests ways of bypassing it, thereby opening a debate on the preconditions of sustainable interdisciplinary smart cities research. Third, it points to new avenues of research.
Stakeholder engagement to evaluate tourist development plans with a sustainable approach
Abstract
This study provides an evaluation of tourist development plans in the city of Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). Different stakeholders are involved in the search for solutions to this problem. The proposal is based on a model that combines two techniques, namely the analytic network process (ANP) and social network analysis (SNA). SNA is used to assess the relationships among stakeholders by identifying those who are most relevant and ANP is used to aggregate their opinions and evaluate tourist development plans of Cartagena to improve tourist experiences in a participatory way. The results suggest that the combination of SNA and ANP is a novel and suitable tool for strategic planning of a city.
A Study on Italian Metropolitan Cities
Abstract
In recent years, there has been a wide diffusion of two concepts, the Sustainable City and the Smart City. Considering the several definitions of Smart City, it arises that the two concepts can have many commonalities. For instance, the most obvious refers to the role of ICT—main characteristic of the Smart City—for reaching the goal of sustainability. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to compare the current status of environmental sustainability in some Italian cities with the strategies regarding the “Environment” dimension, which are adopted in accordance with the Smart City concept. In the first part, the paper proposes a brief summary of the cities surveyed from an environmental perspective. In the second part, the methodology implemented during research is illustrated. The third part highlights the results obtained in relation both to the definition of the cities’ status in terms of environmental sustainability and of assessing their propensity towards the implementation of a “smart” approach in the Environmental dimension, thanks also to a detailed analysis of projects underway in the various cities. Finally, the last part is aimed at highlighting the specific experiments underway and challenges identified during the research.
Smart Eco-Cities Are Managing Information Flows in an Integrated Way: The Example of Water, Electricity and Solid Waste
Authors Meine Pieter van Dijk
Authors Meine Pieter van Dijk
Abstract
Smart eco-cities are about managing flows of information in an integrated way. The information may concern the traffic, the people, pollution or the number of enterprises moving in and out of the city. We focus on a classification of cities. Resilient cities is a more defensive concept, while the eco-city concept translates an ambition on what a city should be. We will argue that the smart eco-city concept integrates the two approaches.
Smart eco-cities are about managing flows of information in an integrated way. The information may concern the traffic, the people, pollution or the number of enterprises moving in and out of the city. We focus on a classification of cities. Resilient cities is a more defensive concept, while the eco-city concept translates an ambition on what a city should be. We will argue that the smart eco-city concept integrates the two approaches.
In this chapter, the examples of water, electricity and solid waste management will be used to show how cities can be smarter by using the available information differently. It is concluded that different stakeholders and several policy instruments are needed to achieve smart eco-cities and that the large-scale processing of data concerning the metabolism of the city also implies ethical issues of how to deal with privacy and possible misuse of all this information
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A Smart City Remembers Its Past: Citizens as Sensors in Survey and Mapping of Historic Places
Jennifer Minner (Cornell University, USA), Andrea Roberts (Texas A&M University, USA), Michael Holleran (University of Texas at Austin, USA) and Joshua Conrad (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
A Smart City Remembers Its Past: Citizens as Sensors in Survey and Mapping of Historic Places
Jennifer Minner (Cornell University, USA), Andrea Roberts (Texas A&M University, USA), Michael Holleran (University of Texas at Austin, USA) and Joshua Conrad (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Source Title: New Approaches, Methods, and Tools in Urban E-Planning
Abstract
Integral to some conceptualizations of the “smart city” is the adoption of web-based technology to support civic engagement and improve information systems for local government decision support. Yet there is little to no literature on the “smartness” of gathering information about historic places within municipal information systems. This chapter provides three case studies of technologically augmented planning processes that incorporated citizens as sensors of data about historic places. The first case study is of SurveyLA, a massive effort of the city of Los Angeles to comprehensively survey over 880,000 parcels for historic resources. A second case study involves Motor City Mapping, an effort to identify the condition of buildings in Detroit, Michigan and a parallel historical survey conducted by volunteers. In Austin, Texas, a university-based research team designed a municipal web tool called the Austin Historical Survey Wiki. This chapter offers insights into these prior efforts to augment planning processes with “digitized memory,” web-based technology, and public engagement.
Introduction
Integral to some conceptualizations of the “smart city” is the adoption of web-based technology to support civic engagement and improve information systems for local government decision support. Yet there is little to no literature on the “smartness” of gathering information about historic places within municipal information systems. This chapter provides three case studies of technologically augmented planning processes that incorporated citizens as sensors of data about historic places. The first case study is of SurveyLA, a massive effort of the city of Los Angeles to comprehensively survey over 880,000 parcels for historic resources. A second case study involves Motor City Mapping, an effort to identify the condition of buildings in Detroit, Michigan and a parallel historical survey conducted by volunteers. In Austin, Texas, a university-based research team designed a municipal web tool called the Austin Historical Survey Wiki. This chapter offers insights into these prior efforts to augment planning processes with “digitized memory,” web-based technology, and public engagement.
Introduction
Local governments around the world aspire to be ‘smart cities’ where information and communication technologies are applied in innovative ways to increase the efficacy of municipal services in a quest for more efficient, and, in some cases more equitable city (Albino, Berardi, & Dangelico, 2015; Fietkiewicz, Mainka, & Stock, 2016; Glasmeier & Christopherson, 2015; Townsend, 2013). Although the rhetoric of smart cities appears to reach beyond volunteered geographic information and Web 2.0 to autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and robotics (Batty, 2017; Dia, 2017), web-based planning support technologies remain a central vision of ‘smartness’ (Afzalan, Sanchez, & Evans-Cowley, 2017). Web infrastructure for technology-augmented planning processes, include the use of social media, crowdsourcing platforms, and web-based geographic information systems (GIS) for urban planning and public administration (Townsend, 2013; Evans-Cowley & Hollander, 2010; Seltzer & Mahmoudi, 2013; Gordon & de Souza e Silva, 2011). The aim of many of these efforts is to enhance municipal decision-making by incorporating volunteered time, perspectives, and knowledge.
Some municipal historic preservation programs have expanded the use of digital technologies to serve preservation and urban planning. An example is the award-winning, multi-million-dollar effort of the City of Los Angeles to survey historic resources citywide, including development of specialized GIS tools, a web presence for public outreach and data collection, and a robust public engagement plan to accomplish it (Bernstein, Sun, & Sucre, 2009; (Bernstein & Hansen, 2016; City of Los Angeles, 2017). In Detroit, Michigan, Motor City Mapping and a related effort among preservationists to survey for historic places aimed to provide information for a city losing building stock to decades of population decline and disinvestment (Scola, 2014; Evans, 2014).
In Austin, Texas, a university-based research team created The Austin Historical Survey Wiki (referred to throughout this chapter as the Wiki) as municipal web infrastructure to maintain a cumulative database of historic resources that is open to public contributions. Through this web-based tool, historic resources were intended to be surveyed, documented, and maintained over time by a combination of municipal officials, professional preservationists, and interested members of the public. The Wiki was inspired by visions of advancing municipal decision-making and urban planning. The effort was based on the conviction that public participation, online or otherwise, can give governments a firmer basis for making decisions that are more defensible, representative, and potentially more equitable, because they arise from pluralistic, democratic processes (Habermas & McCarthy, 1985). The project also originated out of a pragmatic need for timely information about historic resources to serve the City of Austin’s long range planning and regulatory functions, which includes drafting land use plans, designation of historic landmarks and historic districts, and review of demolition and remodeling permits.
This book chapter considers these three cases of city-wide survey efforts along with the idea of citizens as sensors (Goodchild, 2007) for capturing geographic information and local knowledge about valued places, especially those that can be described as ‘historic’. Here it should be noted that when we as authors use the term “citizens,” we refer generally to members of the public as distinguished from local government officials or professionals.
Abstract
60% of the world’s total population are going to live in the cities by 2030, increased by 10% from today’s number. The cities will be more congested and facing more challenges such as pollution, scarcity in land use, noises, and traffic jam etc. But at the same time, the society requires better urban mobility system to support the daily traffic transportation, which demands better urban infrastructure to be planned (Bouton et al., 2015). During the last few years, the problem of traffic congestion in urban centers and the growing attention to environmental sustainability issues have led the European Union (EU) to develop direct regulations to find an alternative to the use of vehicles, engine and the development of new, more sustainable and integrated mobility. With the concept of intermodality summarized by the EU as "the efficient use of different modes of transport individually or in combination with each other, thanks to which the available resources will be used in an optimal and sustainable way" emphasizes the intention to reduce the use of cars and traffic congestion and at the same time guarantee a high level of mobility to individuals without going to significantly affect the environmental impact. Many studies conducted on the mobility of urban centers in recent years have found an increase in cycling mobility, as a mode of sustainable movement at environmental, economic and social level. Bike sharing systems can be adopted as a strategy and opportunity to optimize travel thanks to efficient combinations of various modes of transport, thus favoring more sustainable intermodal mobility. There are currently more than 600 traditional bike sharing systems in the world and it is a phenomenon that is constantly expanding globally. Besides the traditional European and American bike sharing systems, managed most of the time by local government, in April 2016 an innovation arise from China, one of the country that suffers more about environmental issues. Mobike, the first startup company founded in 2015 that provides bike sharing service without stations using IoT technologies and intelligent solutions based on big data support launched its innovative products in Shanghai, revolutionising the idea of the concept of bike sharing. Mobike, being the first startup in China who initialized station-less smart bike sharing scheme, is one of the most innovative companies who acts nowadays as a leading company within the new bike sharing industry. This new bike sharing system has gain popularity and has developed dramatically across China and it has been expanding globally starting from the last year threatening the traditional bike sharing industry present in Europe and North America.
60% of the world’s total population are going to live in the cities by 2030, increased by 10% from today’s number. The cities will be more congested and facing more challenges such as pollution, scarcity in land use, noises, and traffic jam etc. But at the same time, the society requires better urban mobility system to support the daily traffic transportation, which demands better urban infrastructure to be planned (Bouton et al., 2015). During the last few years, the problem of traffic congestion in urban centers and the growing attention to environmental sustainability issues have led the European Union (EU) to develop direct regulations to find an alternative to the use of vehicles, engine and the development of new, more sustainable and integrated mobility. With the concept of intermodality summarized by the EU as "the efficient use of different modes of transport individually or in combination with each other, thanks to which the available resources will be used in an optimal and sustainable way" emphasizes the intention to reduce the use of cars and traffic congestion and at the same time guarantee a high level of mobility to individuals without going to significantly affect the environmental impact. Many studies conducted on the mobility of urban centers in recent years have found an increase in cycling mobility, as a mode of sustainable movement at environmental, economic and social level. Bike sharing systems can be adopted as a strategy and opportunity to optimize travel thanks to efficient combinations of various modes of transport, thus favoring more sustainable intermodal mobility. There are currently more than 600 traditional bike sharing systems in the world and it is a phenomenon that is constantly expanding globally. Besides the traditional European and American bike sharing systems, managed most of the time by local government, in April 2016 an innovation arise from China, one of the country that suffers more about environmental issues. Mobike, the first startup company founded in 2015 that provides bike sharing service without stations using IoT technologies and intelligent solutions based on big data support launched its innovative products in Shanghai, revolutionising the idea of the concept of bike sharing. Mobike, being the first startup in China who initialized station-less smart bike sharing scheme, is one of the most innovative companies who acts nowadays as a leading company within the new bike sharing industry. This new bike sharing system has gain popularity and has developed dramatically across China and it has been expanding globally starting from the last year threatening the traditional bike sharing industry present in Europe and North America.
Abstract
Building a smart city involves almost all the aspects of social, economic, and technological issues. This paper gives a brief survey and overview of the latest technologies for building a smart city. It covers IoT, device as a service, service-oriented computing and cloud computing as the infrastructure, big data analysis and processing for data mining, and artificial intelligence. A visual programming language for IoT and robotics application development is also introduced, which offers a tool for architects and developers to define the applications using computational thinking and workflow of existing services and components.
Building a smart city involves almost all the aspects of social, economic, and technological issues. This paper gives a brief survey and overview of the latest technologies for building a smart city. It covers IoT, device as a service, service-oriented computing and cloud computing as the infrastructure, big data analysis and processing for data mining, and artificial intelligence. A visual programming language for IoT and robotics application development is also introduced, which offers a tool for architects and developers to define the applications using computational thinking and workflow of existing services and components.
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Solid waste collection system selection for smart cities based on a type-2 fuzzy multi-criteria decision technique
Solid waste collection system selection for smart cities based on a type-2 fuzzy multi-criteria decision technique
Abstract
Energy-efficient and eco-friendly information and communication technologies (ICTs) make increasingly significant contributions to daily life while supporting environmental protection and a sustainable economy. Smart city approach aims to integrate ICTs and physical devices to track, analyze, and optimize the parameters of urban operations and services. The purpose of this study is to suggest a type-2 fuzzy multiple criteria methodology to evaluate and rank alternative waste collection systems in a smart city environment. Type-2 fuzzy sets, whose membership functions are also fuzzy, can constitute a strong theoretical base to techniques which can handle problems with vague components. In this regard, type-2 fuzzy TOPSIS method is applied to a real case study from Eskisehir, Turkey. Considering the current needs of Tepebaşı district, in which there are currently ongoing smart city projects funded by European Union, four alternative concepts are designed. Each of the concepts is based on a particular ICT. Analysis results show that the drone and the visible light communication-based collection systems are the most appropriate systems for the study area. To track the stability of the results to changes in the attribute weights, a sensitivity analysis is also provided. This study can be considered as one of the first attempts to evaluate the integration of emerging ICTs into smart waste collection systems using type-2 fuzzy sets.
Energy-efficient and eco-friendly information and communication technologies (ICTs) make increasingly significant contributions to daily life while supporting environmental protection and a sustainable economy. Smart city approach aims to integrate ICTs and physical devices to track, analyze, and optimize the parameters of urban operations and services. The purpose of this study is to suggest a type-2 fuzzy multiple criteria methodology to evaluate and rank alternative waste collection systems in a smart city environment. Type-2 fuzzy sets, whose membership functions are also fuzzy, can constitute a strong theoretical base to techniques which can handle problems with vague components. In this regard, type-2 fuzzy TOPSIS method is applied to a real case study from Eskisehir, Turkey. Considering the current needs of Tepebaşı district, in which there are currently ongoing smart city projects funded by European Union, four alternative concepts are designed. Each of the concepts is based on a particular ICT. Analysis results show that the drone and the visible light communication-based collection systems are the most appropriate systems for the study area. To track the stability of the results to changes in the attribute weights, a sensitivity analysis is also provided. This study can be considered as one of the first attempts to evaluate the integration of emerging ICTs into smart waste collection systems using type-2 fuzzy sets.
Keywords
Smart city Municipal solid waste Emerging ICTs Type-2 fuzzy sets Multi-criteria Fuzzy TOPSIS
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Smart Cities: Development and Governance Frameworks
edited by Zaigham Mahmood
The Urban Planet: Knowledge Towards Sustainable Cities
edited by Thomas Elmqvist, Xuemei Bai, Niki
edited by Thomas Elmqvist, Xuemei Bai, Niki
http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/4/1184/htm
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