scholarly journals Citizen Engagement for Co-Creating Low Carbon Smart Cities: Practical Lessons from Nottingham City Council in the UK

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 6615
Author(s):  
Sam Preston ◽  
Muhammad Usman Mazhar ◽  
Richard Bull
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
City Council ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
City Development ◽  
The Uk

Cities constitute three quarters of global energy consumption and the built environment is responsible for significant use of final energy (62%) and greenhouse gas emissions (55%). Energy has now become a strategic issue for local authorities (LAs) and can offer savings when budget cuts have threatened the provision of core services. Progressive LAs are exploring energy savings and carbon reduction opportunities as part of the sustainable and smart city agenda. This paper explores the role of citizens in smart city development as “buildings don’t use energy: people do”. Citizens have the potential to shape transitions towards smart and sustainable futures. This paper contributes to the growing evidence base of citizen engagement in low carbon smart cities by presenting novel insights and practical lessons on how citizen engagement can help in smart city development through co-creation with a focus on energy in the built environment. A case study of Nottingham in the UK, a leading smart city, is analysed using Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation. Nottingham City Council (NCC) has pledged to keep “citizens at the heart” of its plans. This paper discusses learnings from two EU funded Horizon 2020 projects, REMOURBAN (REgeneration MOdel for accelerating the smart URBAN transformation) and eTEACHER, both of which aimed to empower citizens to reduce energy consumption and co-create smart solutions. Although these two projects are diverse in approaches and contexts, what unites them is a focus on citizen engagement, both face to face and digital. REMOURBAN has seen a “whole house” approach to retrofit in vulnerable communities to improve liveability through energy efficiency. User interaction and co-creation in eTEACHER has provided specifications for technical design of an energy saving App for buildings. eTEACHER findings reflect users’ energy needs, understanding of control interfaces, motivations for change and own creative ideas. Citizens were made co-creators in eTEACHER from the beginning through regular communication. In REMOURBAN, citizens had a role in the procurement and bidding process to influence retrofit project proposals. Findings can help LAs to engage demographically diverse citizens across a variety of buildings and communities for low carbon smart city development.

scholarly journals Sustainable Smart City Building Construction Methods

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 4947 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haoran Zhuang ◽  
Jian Zhang ◽  
Sivaparthipan C. B. ◽  
Bala Anand Muthu
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Fuzzy Controller ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Minimum Energy ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
Atmospheric Environment ◽  
City Development ◽  
Heating And Cooling ◽  
Smart Healthcare

In a global world, the human population invariably increases while resources gradually decrease as cities and towns constantly consume resources to satisfy their needs and requirements. At this point, it is very necessary to focus on making these urban areas more sustainable and greener. The need for some advanced and automated systems improves the situation, which leads to the innovation of smart cities. Smart city is the concept that helps in developing sustainable cities via optimized resource utilization methods. In smart city development, various sensing technologies can be used that can sense and utilize natural resources in better ways, like storing rainwater to use afterward, intelligent and smart control system, smart infrastructure monitoring system, smart healthcare system, smart transportation system, and smart system for energy consumption and generation by various facilities. To make the city smart and sustainable with efficient energy consumption, we propose renewable solar and wind energy-enabled hybrid heating and cooling HVAC-DHW (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning-Domestic Hot Water) system in which energy consumption is evaluated using optimized NARX-ANN and fuzzy controller based on user needs, dynamic behavior of the atmospheric environment, and spatial distribution of energy supply. To achieve the proposed goal, first, via sensor, heating and cooling effect of environment and building is sensed and these sensed inputs are then fed into deep-learning-based NARX-ANN that forecast internal building temperature. This forecasted temperature is fed into a fuzzy controller for optimizing output based on user demand. This processed information leads to energy distribution based on their requirement using a smart energy sensing system. Based on the experimentation result and performance analysis, it was found that the proposed system is more robust and has a high control response in comparison to the existing systems with minimum energy consumption. The analytical results support the feasibility of the proposed framework architecture to facilitate energy conserving in smart city buildings.

scholarly journals Smart Energy Transition: An Evaluation of Cities in South Korea

Informatics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yirang Lim ◽  
Jurian Edelenbos ◽  
Alberto Gianoli
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
City Development ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Second Wave

One positive impact of smart cities is reducing energy consumption and CO2 emission through the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). Energy transition pursues systematic changes to the low-carbon society, and it can benefit from technological and institutional advancement in smart cities. The integration of the energy transition to smart city development has not been thoroughly studied yet. The purpose of this study is to find empirical evidence of smart cities’ contributions to energy transition. The hypothesis is that there is a significant difference between smart and non-smart cities in the performance of energy transition. The Smart Energy Transition Index is introduced. Index is useful to summarize the smart city component’s contribution to energy transition and to enable comparison among cities. The cities in South Korea are divided into three groups: (1) first-wave smart cities that focus on smart transportation and security services; (2) second-wave smart cities that provide comprehensive urban services; and (3) non-smart cities. The results showed that second-wave smart cities scored higher than first-wave and non-smart cities, and there is a statistically significant difference among city groups. This confirms the hypothesis of this paper that smart city development can contribute to the energy transition.

scholarly journals Smart City Governance in Developing Countries: A Systematic Literature Review

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 899 ◽  
Author(s):  
Si Tan ◽  
Araz Taeihagh
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
City Development ◽  
Basic Infrastructure ◽  
Infrastructure Maintenance

Smart cities that make broad use of digital technologies have been touted as possible solutions for the population pressures faced by many cities in developing countries and may help meet the rising demand for services and infrastructure. Nevertheless, the high financial cost involved in infrastructure maintenance, the substantial size of the informal economies, and various governance challenges are curtailing government idealism regarding smart cities. This review examines the state of smart city development in developing countries, which includes understanding the conceptualisations, motivations, and unique drivers behind (and barriers to) smarty city development. A total of 56 studies were identified from a systematic literature review from an initial pool of 3928 social sciences literature identified from two academic databases. Data were analysed using thematic synthesis and thematic analysis. The review found that technology-enabled smart cities in developing countries can only be realised when concurrent socioeconomic, human, legal, and regulatory reforms are instituted. Governments need to step up their efforts to fulfil the basic infrastructure needs of citizens, raise more revenue, construct clear regulatory frameworks to mitigate the technological risks involved, develop human capital, ensure digital inclusivity, and promote environmental sustainability. A supportive ecosystem that encourages citizen participation, nurtures start-ups, and promotes public–private partnerships needs to be created to realise their smart city vision.

scholarly journals Integrating Data-Based Strategies and Advanced Technologies with Efficient Air Pollution Management in Smart Cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7168
Author(s):  
Seunghwan Myeong ◽  
Khurram Shahzad
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
City Development ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Pollution Management

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that creative leadership based on data and citizen volunteers is more significant than vaccines themselves, so this study focuses on the collaboration of sophisticated technologies and human potential to monitor air pollution. Air pollution contributes to critical environmental problems in various towns and cities. With the emergence of the smart city concept, appropriate methods to curb exposure to pollutants must be part of an appropriate urban development policy. This study presents a technologically driven air quality solution for smart cities that advertises energy-efficient and cleaner sequestration in these areas. It attempts to explore how to incorporate data-driven approaches and citizen participation into effective public sector pollution management in smart cities as a major component of the smart city definition. The smart city idea was developed as cities became more widespread through communication devices. This study addresses the technical criteria for implementing a framework that public administration can use to prepare for renovation of public buildings, minimizing energy use and costs and linking smart police stations to monitor air pollution as a part of an integrated city. Such a digital transition in resource management will increase public governance energy performance and provide a higher standard for operations and a healthier environment. The study results indicate that complex processes lead to efficient and sustainable smart cities. This research discovered an interpretive pattern in how public agencies, private enterprises, and community members think and what they do in these regional contexts. It concludes that economic and social benefits could be realized by exploiting data-driven smart city development for its social and spatial complexities.

scholarly journals Challenges and Barriers for Net‐Zero/Positive Energy Buildings and Districts—Empirical Evidence from the Smart City Project SPARCS

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Daria Uspenskaia ◽  
Karl Specht ◽  
Hendrik Kondziella ◽  
Thomas Bruckner
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Positive Energy ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Net Zero ◽  
Multidimensional Representation

Without decarbonizing cities energy and climate objectives cannot be achieved as cities account for approximately two thirds of energy consumption and emissions. This goal of decarbonizing cities has to be facilitated by promoting net-zero/positive energy buildings and districts and replicating them, driving cities towards sustainability goals. Many projects in smart cities demonstrate novel and groundbreaking low-carbon solutions in demonstration and lighthouse projects. However, as the historical, geographic, political, social and economic context of urban areas vary greatly, it is not always easy to repeat the solution in another city or even district. It is therefore important to look for the opportunities to scale up or repeat successful pilots. The purpose of this paper is to explore common trends in technologies and replication strategies for positive energy buildings or districts in smart city projects, based on the practical experience from a case study in Leipzig—one of the lighthouse cities in the project SPARCS. One of the key findings the paper has proven is the necessity of a profound replication modelling to deepen the understanding of upscaling processes. Three models analyzed in this article are able to provide a multidimensional representation of the solution to be replicated.

scholarly journals Sustainable Smart City—Opening a Black Box

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 769
Author(s):  
Mona Treude
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Evolutionary Economics ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Smart Services ◽  
Underlying Processes

Cities are becoming digital and are aiming to be sustainable. How they are combining the two is not always apparent from the outside. What we need is a look from inside. In recent years, cities have increasingly called themselves Smart City. This can mean different things, but generally includes a look towards new digital technologies and claim that a Smart City has various advantages for its citizens, roughly in line with the demands of sustainable development. A city can be seen as smart in a narrow sense, technology wise, sustainable or smart and sustainable. Current city rankings, which often evaluate and classify cities in terms of the target dimensions “smart” and “sustainable”, certify that some cities are both. In its most established academic definitions, the Smart City also serves both to improve the quality of life of its citizens and to promote sustainable development. Some cities have obviously managed to combine the two. The question that arises is as follows: What are the underlying processes towards a sustainable Smart City and are cities really using smart tools to make themselves sustainable in the sense of the 2015 United Nations Sustainability Goal 11? This question is to be answered by a method that has not yet been applied in research on cities and smart cities: the innovation biography. Based on evolutionary economics, the innovation biography approaches the process towards a Smart City as an innovation process. It will highlight which actors are involved, how knowledge is shared among them, what form citizen participation processes take and whether the use of digital and smart services within a Smart City leads to a more sustainable city. Such a process-oriented method should show, among other things, to what extent and when sustainability-relevant motives play a role and which actors and citizens are involved in the process at all.

Practice Report “Smart Disaster Management” — Combining Smart City Data and Citizen Participation to Increase Disaster Resilience

i-com ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-193
Author(s):  
Daniel Wessel ◽  
Julien Holtz ◽  
Florian König
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Mutual Support ◽  
The Everyday

Abstract Smart cities have a huge potential to increase the everyday efficiency of cities, but also to increase preparation and resilience in case of natural disasters. Especially for disasters which are somewhat predicable like floods, sensor data can be used to provide citizens with up-to-date, personalized and location-specific information (street or even house level resolution). This information allows citizens to better prepare to avert water damage to their property, reduce the needed government support, and — by connecting citizens locally — improve mutual support among neighbors. But how can a smart city application be designed that is both usable and able to function during disaster conditions? Which smart city information can be used? How can the likelihood of mutual, local support be increased? In this practice report, we present the human-centered development process of an app to use Smart City data to better prepare citizens for floods and improve their mutual support during disasters as a case study to answer these questions.

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 Smart cities IOT & Digital network connectivity devices: Optimization on business in Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 064-071
Author(s):  
Makeri Yakubu Ajiji ◽  
Xi’an Jiaotong Victor Chang ◽  
Targio Hashem Ibrahim Abaker ◽  
Uzorka Afam ◽  
T Cirella Giuseppe
Keyword(s):  
Internet Of Things ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
The Internet ◽  
City Development ◽  
Short Article ◽  
The Internet Of Things

Today the world is becoming connected. The number of devices that are connected are increasing day by day. Many studies reveal that about 50 billion devices would be connected by 2020 indicating that Internet of things have a very big role to play in the future to come Considering the perplexing engineering of Smart City conditions, it ought not to be failed to remember that their establishment lies in correspondence advancements that permit availability and information move between the components in Smart City conditions. Remote interchanges with their capacities speak to Smart City empowering advancements that give the open door for their fast and effective execution and extension as well. The gigantic weight towards the proficient city the board has triggered various Smart City activities by both government and private area businesses to put resources into Information and Communication Technologies to discover feasible answers for the assorted chances and difficulties (e.g., waste the executives). A few specialists have endeavored to characterize a lot of shrewd urban areas and afterward recognize openings and difficulties in building brilliant urban communities. This short article likewise expresses the progressing movement of the Internet of Things and its relationship to keen urban communities. Advancement in ICT and data sharing innovation are the drivers of keen city degree and scale. This quick development is changing brilliant city development with the beginning of the Internet of Things (IoT). This transformation additionally speaks to difficulties in building (Kehua, Li, and Fu ,Su et al.1). By knowing the attributes of specific advances, the experts will have the occasion to create proficient, practical, and adaptable Smart City frameworks by actualizing the most reasonable one.

scholarly journals Erősítik-e a társadalmi kirekesztést a smart cityk?

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
László Gere ◽  
Ráhel Czirják
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Development Policy ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Competition ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
City Development ◽  
The One

A fejlesztéspolitikában ma a „smart” címkével minden vonzóbb, eladhatóbb, a kifejezés sokszor a ’környezetbarát’ vagy ’fenntartható’ szinonimájaként is használatos. A városfejlesztésben az utóbbi idők egyik legfelkapottabb paradigmája, globális szintű versengést indítva mind a városok, mind az érdekelt vállalatok között a kölcsönösen hasznosnak vélt előnyök reményében. A szerzők egyrészt annak jártak utána, miért éppen most virágzott fel a smart city mint fejlesztési paradigma, és milyen tényezők indukálták gyors előretörését. Másrészt a nemzetközi példák bemutatásán keresztül arra a kérdésre keresik a választ, milyen társadalmi hatásokkal járnak ezek a fejlesztések, milyen kihívásokkal kell szembenézni a smart city fejlesztések kapcsán, és vajon a jövőben a fejlesztési szereplők képesek lesznek-e tanulni hibáikból, és tudatosan tervezni a hatások összességével. --- Do smart cities intensify social exclusion? In development policy everything seems to be more attractive and marketable when labelled ‘smart’; the expression is often used even as a synonym for ‘environmentally-friendly’ or ‘sustainable’. Considering urban development projects, smart city development is one of the most popular paradigms, triggering global competition between cities as well as the interested companies, both expecting mutual benefits from the co-operation. The article, on the one hand, tries to reveal, why the smart city paradigm has now started to thrive, and what factors played a part in its rapid development. On the other hand, through the presentation of international practices, the authors intend to answer what social impacts these developments have had, what challenges have the smart city developments met, and whether in the future the actors could learn from their mistakes and consciously take into account the complexity of impacts.

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