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

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.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 769
Author(s):  
Mona Treude

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.


The purpose of this chapter is to explore mechanisms and potentials for measuring ambient urbanities. This work advances the ambient metrics concept as a way of shedding light on the evolving nature of measures, standards, and indices required by more dynamic, adaptive, and aware environments, characteristic of smart and responsive cities. In the form of ambient metrics, measures are sought that support more informed city experiences, increased engagement and participation, and improved quality of urban life. The research literature for smart city metrics, standards, and indices is explored in this chapter enabling identification of issues, controversies, and problems. Using an exploratory case study approach, solutions and recommendations are advanced. This chapter makes a contribution to the research literature for smart city metrics, standards, and indices; the evolving of urban theory for 21st century cities; and urban theory in formulating a conceptual framework for rethinking measures for smarter urbanities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Indrawati . ◽  
Angdini Nurillaily ◽  
Husni Amani ◽  
S. K. B. Pillai

Government and private players started focusing on developing cities in to smart cities due to increased level of urbanization in most of the countries around the world, including in Indonesia, by focusing on developing new smart buildings and upgrading old ones. Present paper tried to find out the Smart Building Readiness Index (SBRI) of Bandung City for knowing the level of awareness among the general public based on an exploratory research, the result of which enables the authorities to take strategic initiatives for improving the smart buildings and then to smart city status. Required data was collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 30 respondents and the result of the qualitative data revealed that Bandung’s SBRI comes to only 64.39, which is not a good indicator but within the limits of fairness and needs lot of improvement in future. The result also can be considered as an indicator that annual energy consumption in Bandung city is still at a high level and needs to focus on improving the quality of buildings in and around Bandung city for the purpose of overall reduction in energy consumption and improvement in quality of environment as well as quality of life. Respondents are also not fully aware of the smart building concept. Much needs to be done for making the public aware of the concept of smart building and its usefulness along with strategically developing smart buildings so that in future Bandung city transforms into a smart city with smart buildings. Keywords— Smart City; Smart Building Readiness Index; Bandung.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Salma Mohamed Al Sulaiti

Various countries across the globe have implemented smart city initiatives to enhance the quality of living (QoL) for their citizens and other frequent users by offering smart services and innovative solutions. However, in many cases, end-users are often neglected during the planning, designing, and implementation phases of smart cities, which can impact the success of locally-based initiatives because their needs are not always fully taken into consideration. This research aims at exploring the approach of citizen-centricity in smart cities, define their key components, investigate the gap and challenges as perceived by citizens, users, and developers, and propose strategic recommendations for ways to enhance the QoL in Msheireb Smart City (MSC). The primary research was conducted to investigate citizens’ satisfaction, experience, usage of services, and to collect their feedback on areas of improvements in MSC. The results show that MSC’s users had low level of awareness about the smart services offered in the city, which resulted in less frequent use of the services. Based on this research, the strategic recommendations advise that smart city decision-makers should recognize citizens’ needs and preferences by implementing a customer relationship management strategy, promote citizens’ inclusion and engagement by establishing a citizen-centric inclusion strategy, and improve their awareness and usage of services by implementing a marketing campaign strategy.


Author(s):  
E. Farazdaghi ◽  
M. Eslahi ◽  
R. El Meouche

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10587
Author(s):  
Alina Irina Popescu

The main aims of this paper are to examine the technological trajectories of city innovation, to provide a picture of the current state in the most significant technologies, and to propose an explanation for the long-run evolutionary trajectories of technological developments that contribute to the quality of urban life through innovation. In the conceptual part of the paper, we develop the argument that the explanation may rest on the interrelationships between the concept of urban transformative capacity and the theory of path dependence. In the empirical part, we analyze patent data on city-related innovations to examine the trajectories of technological developments over the period 1980–2020. Our main findings at a technological field level (i) confirm the path dependence theory in general and the institutional approach in particular, (ii) acknowledge the rapid transformation towards ‘smart cities’ through the explosive growth of digital technologies, and (iii) confirm the environmental sustainability concerns when developing new technologies. In our study, we focus particularly on the technological sectors (‘clusters’) that provide a significant contribution to quality of urban life, namely environment, public services, and leisure and participation. Our findings provide theoretical, managerial, and policy implications for future research activities on the technological developments that benefit quality of urban life.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 765-779
Author(s):  
E.V. Popov ◽  
K.A. Semyachkov ◽  
K.V. Zhunusova

Subject. This article explores the basic elements of the engineering infrastructure of smart cities. Objectives. The article aims to systematize theoretical descriptions of the engineering infrastructure of a smart city. Methods. For the study, we used a logical analysis and systematization. Results. The article highlights the main areas of infrastructure development of smart cities. Conclusions. Improving process management mechanisms, optimizing urban infrastructure, increasing the use of digital technologies, and developing socio-economic innovation improve the quality of the urban environment in a digitalized environment. And improving the efficiency of urban planning and security, studying its properties and characteristics, and forming an effective urban information system lead to its functional transformations.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 724
Author(s):  
Alicja K. Zawadzka

The paper presents the results of a study on the attractiveness to tourists and natives of the cultural qualities of coastal towns on The Pomeranian Way of St. James that are members of the Cittaslow network. Attention to the quality of urban life is inscribed in the development policies of towns applying to join the Cittaslow movement. In order to join the network (apart from the size criterion), towns need to meet a minimum of 50% plus one of the 72 criteria grouped into seven categories. One of the category is Quality of Urban Life Policy, so the towns applying to join Cittaslow commit themselves to actions aimed at improving the quality of urban life. The study on the attractiveness of cultural qualities of towns to tourists and natives was conducted using the author’s BRB method, whose added value is its universality and the possibility to study small towns regardless of their membership in the Cittaslow network. BRB is an acronym that stands for BUILDINGS, RELATIONSHIPS, BALANCE, and comprises three scopes of activities: BUILDINGS (iconic building and important sites where the inhabitants and the tourists are present); RELATIONSHIPS (the visual effects of the relations between the inhabitants and the town) and BALANCE (solutions that implement modern technologies). This method enables identification of places that are important to the inhabitants, where urban life takes place and which are often created with the involvement of the inhabitants. These are often the same spaces as those that attract tourists and perhaps stimulate them the desire to visit the town again (BRB—be right back). The aim of the BRB method is shown the attractiveness of small towns. The study has shown that the characteristic feature of Polish Cittaslow towns is their diversity: the architectural attractiveness of three towns is high both to tourists and natives. On the other hand, the urban attractiveness of the examined towns is an insufficient.


Work ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Zhang Mengqi ◽  
Wang Xi ◽  
V.E. Sathishkumar ◽  
V. Sivakumar

BACKGROUND: Nowadays, the growth of smart cities is enhanced gradually, which collects a lot of information and communication technologies that are used to maximize the quality of services. Even though the intelligent city concept provides a lot of valuable services, security management is still one of the major issues due to shared threats and activities. For overcoming the above problems, smart cities’ security factors should be analyzed continuously to eliminate the unwanted activities that used to enhance the quality of the services. OBJECTIVES: To address the discussed problem, active machine learning techniques are used to predict the quality of services in the smart city manages security-related issues. In this work, a deep reinforcement learning concept is used to learn the features of smart cities; the learning concept understands the entire activities of the smart city. During this energetic city, information is gathered with the help of security robots called cobalt robots. The smart cities related to new incoming features are examined through the use of a modular neural network. RESULTS: The system successfully predicts the unwanted activity in intelligent cities by dividing the collected data into a smaller subset, which reduces the complexity and improves the overall security management process. The efficiency of the system is evaluated using experimental analysis. CONCLUSION: This exploratory study is conducted on the 200 obstacles are placed in the smart city, and the introduced DRL with MDNN approach attains maximum results on security maintains.


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