scholarly journals Where’s the database in digital ethnography? Exploring database ethnography for open data research

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 598-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Burns ◽  
Grace Wark
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Digital Ethnography ◽  
Fundamental Dimension ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Technical Specifications ◽  
The City

Contemporary cities are witnessing momentous shifts in how institutions and individuals produce and circulate data. Despite recent trends claiming that anyone can create and use data, cities remain marked by persistently uneven access and usage of digital technologies. This is the case as well within the emergent phenomenon of the ‘smart city,’ where open data are a key strategy for achieving ‘smartness,’ and increasingly constitute a fundamental dimension of urban life, governance, economic activity, and epistemology. The digital ethnography has extended traditional ethnographic research practices into such digital realms, yet its applicability within open data and smart cities is unclear. The method has tended to overlook the important roles of particular digital artifacts such as the database in structuring and producing knowledge. In this paper, we develop the database ethnography as a rich methodological resource for open data research. This approach centers the database as a key site for the production and materialization of social meaning. The database ethnography draws attention to the ways digital choices and practices—around database design, schema, data models, and so on—leave traces through time. From these traces, we may infer lessons about how phenomena come to be encoded as data and acted upon in urban contexts. Open databases are, in other words, key ways in which knowledges about the smart city are framed, delimited, and represented. More specifically, we argue that open databases limit data types, categorize and classify data to align with technical specifications, reflect the database designer’s episteme, and (re)produce conceptions of the world. We substantiate these claims through a database ethnography of the open data portal for the city of Calgary, in Western Canada.

scholarly journals Smart city components and review of smart city applications in the city of Konya

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-513
Author(s):  
Nazmiye Nur Şenyıl ◽  
Süheyla Büyükşahin
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
English Summary ◽  
Ease Of Use ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
City Formation ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
The City

Smart cities are a way of life that emerged after the 2000s in order to produce innovative solutions by using information and communication technologies and to transform cities into livable conditions, with awareness and consciousness against global problems and adverse living conditions. With the use of developing technologies and the inclusion of sustainability in every sense, smart applications are developed and ease of use is provided by including these applications in urban life. Thanks to this concept, which consists of different sub-components, urban life, which creates crowded living spaces, becomes smart from their current situation and comes to a position that provides its own future. Smart city formation emerges as an important issue in the effort of reaching the future, affecting every city that exists globally as a result of the cooperation of technological developments, innovations and sustainability. Especially in recent years, intensive researches, applications and studies have been carried out in order to create smart cities in the global sense. However, apart from some cities that have developed themselves in this sense, smart applications developed to create smart cities are used in pilot areas with limited access and cannot be generalized. The city of Konya, which was chosen as the sample area within the scope of the study; It is one of the leading cities in Turkey that develops itself by using smart applications and sustainable methods and develops in the process of becoming a smart city. It is aimed to examine and evaluate the smart city applications discussed in this study and to make suggestions on the diversification and dissemination of such smart city applications. ​Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file. Özet   Akıllı kentler, 2000’li yıllardan sonra küresel anlamda meydana gelen problemler ve olumsuz yaşama şartlarına karşı oluşan farkındalık ve bilinç ile bilgi iletişim teknolojileri kullanılarak yenilikçi çözümler üretilmesi ve kentlerin yaşanabilir hale dönüştürülmesi için ortaya çıkmış bir yaşam şeklidir. Gelişen teknolojilerin kullanılması ve bu kullanıma her anlamda sürdürülebilirliğin katılması ile akıllı uygulamalar geliştirilmekte ve kent yaşamına bu uygulamalar dahil edilerek kullanım kolaylıkları sağlanmaktadır. Farklı alt bileşenlerden oluşan bu kavram sayesinde kalabalık yaşam alanlarını oluşturan kent hayatları, mevcut durumlarından akıllı hale geçerek kendi geleceğini kendi sağlayan bir konuma gelmektedir. Akıllı kent oluşumu, teknolojik gelişmeler, yenilikler ve sürdürülebilirlik kavramının beraber çalışması sonucu küresel anlamda var olan her kenti etkileyen ve geleceğe ulaşma çabasında önem taşıyan bir konu olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Özellikle son yıllarda küresel anlamda akıllı kentler oluşturabilmek için yoğun araştırmalar, uygulamalar ve çalışmalar yapılmaktadır. Ancak Türkiye’de bu anlamda kendini geliştirmiş bazı kentler dışında akıllı kentler oluşturabilmek için geliştirilen akıllı uygulamalar pilot alanlarda sınırlı erişim ile kullanılmakta ve genele yaygınlaştırılamamaktadır. Çalışma kapsamında örneklem alan olarak seçilen Konya kenti; Türkiye’de akıllı uygulamalar ve sürdürülebilir yöntemler kullanarak kendini geliştiren ve akıllı kent olma sürecinde gelişim gösteren kentlerin başında gelmektedir. Bu çalışmada ele alınan akıllı kent uygulamalarının incelenmesi ve değerlendirilmesi ile bu tarz akıllı kent uygulamalarının çeşitlendirilmesi ve yaygınlaştırılması konusunda öneriler getirilmesi amaçlanmaktadır.

scholarly journals AN OVERVIEW OF THE USE OF BIOMETRIC TECHNIQUES IN SMART CITIES

2021 ◽  
Vol XLIV-2/W1-2021 ◽  
pp. 41-45
Author(s):  
E. Farazdaghi ◽  
M. Eslahi ◽  
R. El Meouche
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Gait Recognition ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Smart Healthcare ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Gender Detection ◽  
The City

Abstract. The human desire to live in an urban area increases every day. However, citizens’ expectation of urban life is very different compared to the past. It is, thus, essential to satisfy their requirements and ensure their safety within their cities. As a result, there is a huge trend in the implementation of smart cities around the world. A smart city is a solution to improve the quality of life of the citizens, and governing the city in an efficient and systematic. Besides, significant advances have been raised in biometrics technologies, which have made many aspects of urban life easier, more efficient, and more secure. Accordingly, to be compliant with the demands of a smart city in the future, biometrics-based technologies will certainly play a significant role from now on. Thus, it is necessary to list the different biometrics methods that could be used in smart cities and to review the variety of applications for each method. In this article, we have listed the potential biometrics systems that can be employed in smart cities, such as facial recognition, age estimation, gender detection, facial expression detection and sentiment recognition, and gait recognition. We also have listed different applications imagined for each biometrics system such as their application in identification systems and security, smart healthcare, smart advertising, education, and high-risk lifestyle behaviours prevention. We believe that this work can help to better use of these methods, improve their technical quality, and also employing them in the advance and more effective ways.

YOUTH EXPECTATIONS OF SMART CITY LIVING: AN IMPORTANCE- PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF YOUNG RESIDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES OF CITY GOVERNMENT

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-128
Author(s):  
Jason Cohen ◽  
Judy Backhouse ◽  
Omar Ally
Keyword(s):  
Performance Analysis ◽  
Young People ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
City Government ◽  
Diagnostic Tools ◽  
City Management ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The City

Young people are important to cities, bringing skills and energy and contributing to economic activity. New technologies have led to the idea of a smart city as a framework for city management. Smart cities are developed from the top-down through government programmes, but also from the bottom-up by residents as technologies facilitate participation in developing new forms of city services. Young people are uniquely positioned to contribute to bottom-up smart city projects. Few diagnostic tools exist to guide city authorities on how to prioritise city service provision. A starting point is to understand how the youth value city services. This study surveys young people in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, and conducts an importance-performance analysis to identify which city services are well regarded and where the city should focus efforts and resources. The results show that Smart city initiatives that would most increase the satisfaction of youths in Braamfontein  include wireless connectivity, tools to track public transport  and  information  on city events. These  results  identify  city services that are valued by young people, highlighting services that young people could participate in providing. The importance-performance analysis can assist the city to direct effort and scarce resources effectively.

Trust in open data applications through transparency

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482097970
Author(s):  
Christian Wiencierz ◽  
Marco Lünich
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Application Process ◽  
Data Application ◽  
User Data ◽  
Data Ecosystem

Open data provide great potential for society, for example, in the field of smart cities, from which all citizens might profit. The trust of these citizens is important for the integration of various data, like sensitive user data, into an open data ecosystem. In the following study, we analyzed whether transparency about the application of open data promotes trust. Furthermore, we formulated guidelines on how to create transparency regarding open data in an ethical way. Using an open-data-based fictitious smart city app, we conducted an experiment analyzing to what extent communication of the technical open data application process and the ethical self-commitment for the transparent communication of data application affect trust in the app’s provider. The results indicate that the more information users obtain regarding the use of open data, the more trustworthy they perceive the app provider to be, and the more likely they are to use the app.

scholarly journals Disaster Management in Smart Cities

Smart Cities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 819-839
Author(s):  
Luís B. Elvas ◽  
Bruno Miguel Mataloto ◽  
Ana Lúcia Martins ◽  
João C. Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Disaster Management ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Practical Implication ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Critical Infrastructures ◽  
Cascading Effects ◽  
Data Driven Approach ◽  
New Research ◽  
The City

The smart city concept, in which data from different systems are available, contains a multitude of critical infrastructures. This data availability opens new research opportunities in the study of the interdependency between those critical infrastructures and cascading effects solutions and focuses on the smart city as a network of critical infrastructures. This paper proposes an integrated resilience system linking interconnected critical infrastructures in a smart city to improve disaster resilience. A data-driven approach is considered, using artificial intelligence and methods to minimize cascading effects and the destruction of failing critical infrastructures and their components (at a city level). The proposed approach allows rapid recovery of infrastructures’ service performance levels after disasters while keeping the coverage of the assessment of risks, prevention, detection, response, and mitigation of consequences. The proposed approach has the originality and the practical implication of providing a decision support system that handles the infrastructures that will support the city disaster management system—make the city prepare, adapt, absorb, respond, and recover from disasters by taking advantage of the interconnections between its various critical infrastructures to increase the overall resilience capacity. The city of Lisbon (Portugal) is used as a case to show the practical application of the approach.

scholarly journals An Efficient Management Platform for Developing Smart Cities: Solution for Real-Time and Future Crowd Detection

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 765
Author(s):  
David Garcia-Retuerta ◽  
Pablo Chamoso ◽  
Guillermo Hernández ◽  
Agustín San Román Guzmán ◽  
Tan Yigitcanlar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Smart Cities ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Climate Data ◽  
Smart Meters ◽  
Security Systems ◽  
Crowd Management ◽  
Management Platform ◽  
Efficient Management ◽  
Pedestrian Traffic ◽  
The City

A smart city is an environment that uses innovative technologies to make networks and services more flexible, effective, and sustainable with the use of information, digital, and telecommunication technologies, improving the city’s operations for the benefit of its citizens. Most cities incorporate data acquisition elements from their own systems or those managed by subcontracted companies that can be used to optimise their resources: energy consumption, smart meters, lighting, irrigation water consumption, traffic data, camera images, waste collection, security systems, pollution meters, climate data, etc. The city-as-a-platform concept is becoming popular and it is increasingly evident that cities must have efficient management systems capable of deploying, for instance, IoT platforms, open data, etc., and of using artificial intelligence intensively. For many cities, data collection is not a problem, but managing and analysing data with the aim of optimising resources and improving the lives of citizens is. This article presents deepint.net, a platform for capturing, integrating, analysing, and creating dashboards, alert systems, optimisation models, etc. This article shows how deepint.net has been used to estimate pedestrian traffic on the streets of Melbourne (Australia) using the XGBoost algorithm. Given the current situation, it is advisable not to transit urban roads when overcrowded, thus, the model proposed in this paper (and implemented with deepint.net) facilitates the identification of areas with less pedestrian traffic. This use case is an example of an efficient crowd management system, implemented and operated via a platform that offers many possibilities for the management of the data collected in smart territories and cities.

scholarly journals Making a Building Smart with a Co-Created and Continuously Evolving Enjoyable Service Entity—Insights from a Collaborative Study

Smart Cities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Maaria Nuutinen ◽  
Eija Kaasinen ◽  
Jaana Hyvärinen ◽  
Airi Mölsä ◽  
Sanni Siltanen
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Collaborative Study ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Smart Services ◽  
Smart Building ◽  
Quality Of Urban Life

Buildings shape cities as those cities grow from and nurture people living and working within the built environment. Thus, the conceptualization of smart building should be brought closer to the smart city initiatives that particularly target ensuring and enhancing the sustainability and quality of urban life. In this paper, we propose that a smart building should be interlinked with a smart city surrounding it; it should provide good experiences to its various occupants and it should be in an ongoing state of evolving as an ecosystem, wherein different stakeholders can join to co-produce, co-provide and co-consume services. Smart buildings require a versatile set of smart services based on digital solutions, solutions in the built environment and human activities. We conducted a multiphase collaborative study on new service opportunities guided by a Design Thinking approach. The approach brought people, technology, and business perspectives together and resulted in key service opportunities that have the potential to make the buildings smart and provide enjoyable experience to the occupants who support their living and working activities in smart cities. This paper provides the resulting practical implications as well as proposes future avenues for research.

scholarly journals Framework for Developing an Information Technology Maturity Model for Smart City Services in Emerging Economies: (FSCE2)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 10712
Author(s):  
Wilson Nieto Bernal ◽  
Keryn Lorena García Espitaleta
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Maturity Model ◽  
It Services ◽  
Implementation Model ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
The City

The goal of this research is to design a framework to develop an information technology (IT) maturity model to guide the planning, design, and implementation of smart city services. The objectives of the proposed model are to define qualitatively and measure quantitatively the maturity levels for the IT dimensions used by smart cities (IT governance, IT services, data management and infrastructure), and to develop an implementation model that is practical and contextualized to the needs of any territory that wants to create or improve smart city services. The proposed framework consists of three components: a conceptual model of smart city services, IT dimensions and indicators, and IT maturity levels. The framework was validated by applying it to a case study for the evaluation of the IT maturity levels for the city of Cereté, Colombia.

scholarly journals Smart cities and robotic technologies for a model of integrated growth

2021 ◽  
pp. 237-252
Author(s):  
Elena Laudante
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Use Of Resources ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
The City

The paper focuses on the importance of robotics and artificial intelligence inside of the new urban contexts in which it is possible to consider and enhance the different dimensions of quality of life such as safety and health, environmental quality, social connection and civic participation. Smart technologies help cities to meet the new challenges of society, thus making them more livable, attractive and responsive in order to plan and to improve the city of the future. In accordance with the Agenda 2030 Program for sustainable development that intends the inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable city, the direction of growth and prosperity of urban environments is pursued by optimizing the use of resources and respecting the environment. In the current society, robotic technology is proposed as a tool for innovation and evolution in urban as well as industrial and domestic contexts. On the one hand the users-citizens who participate dynamically in the activities and on the other the new technological systems integrated in the urban fabric. Existing urban systems that are “amplified” of artificial and digital intelligence and give life to smart cities, physical places that allow new forms of coexistence between humans and robots in order to implement the level of quality of life and define “human centered” innovative solutions and services thus responding to the particular needs of people in an effective and dynamic way. The current city goes beyond the definition of smart city. In fact, as said by Carlo Ratti, it becomes a "senseable city", a city capable of feeling but also sensitive and capable of responding to citizens who define the overall performance of the city. The multidisciplinary approach through the dialogue between designers, architects, engineers and urban planners will allow to face the new challenges through the dynamics of robot integration in the urban landscape. The cities of the future, in fact, will be pervaded by autonomous driving vehicles, robotized delivery systems and light transport solutions, in response to the new concept of smart mobility, on a human scale, shared and connected mobility in order to improve management and control of the digitized and smart city. Automation at constant rates as the keystone for urban futures and new models of innovative society. Through the identification of representative case studies in the field of innovative systems it will be possible to highlight the connections between design, smart city and "urban" robotics that will synergically highlight the main "desirable" qualities of life in the city as a place of experimentation and radical transformations. In particular, parallel to the new robotic solutions and human-robot interactions, the design discipline will be responsible for designing the total experience of the user who lives in synergy with the robots, thus changing the socio-economic dynamics of the city.

Smart City: An Approach from the View of Smart Urban Governance

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hung Viet NGO ◽  
◽  
Quan LE ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Effective Governance ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Government Work ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Urban Issues ◽  
The City

The world’s population is forecasted of having 68% to be urban residents by 2050 while urbanization in the world continues to grow. Along with that phenomenon, there is a global trend towards the creation of smart cities in many countries. Looking at the overview of studies and reports on smart cities, it can be seen that the concept of “smart city” is not clearly defined. Information and communication technology have often been being recognized by the vast majority of agencies, authorities and people when thinking about smart city but the meaning of smart city goes beyond that. Smart city concept should come with the emphasizing on the role of social resources and smart urban governance in the management of urban issues. Therefore, the "smart city" label should refer to the capacity of smart people and smart officials who create smart urban governance solutions for urban problems. The autonomy in smart cities allows its members (whether individuals or the community in general) of the city to participate in governance and management of the city and become active users and that is the picture of e-democracy. E-democracy makes it easier for stakeholders to become more involved in government work and fosters effective governance by using the IT platform of smart city. This approach will be discussed more in this paper.

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