scholarly journals Evaluating the Environmental Sustainability of Smart Cities in India: The Design and Application of the Indian Smart City Environmental Sustainability Index

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 327
Author(s):  
Shruti Shruti ◽  
Prabhat Kumar Singh ◽  
Anurag Ohri
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Environmental Indicators ◽  
Sustainable Cities ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Environmentally Sustainable ◽  
Sustainability Index ◽  
Environmental Sustainability Index

There is a growing consensus that the initiatives taken under the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) in India should be used as an opportunity to prepare models for Environmentally Sustainable Smart Cities (ESSC). While developed countries have earlier worked towards Sustainable Cities and now are moving towards Smart Sustainable Cities, the conditions in developing countries are different. In their current form, SCM guidelines appear to emphasize more on social and economic development along with governance issues using modern tools of information and communication technology (ICT). To ensure environmental sustainability of such large-scale development planning, after a two-stage screening process, 24 environmental indicators have been finalized (including 11 from the existing guidelines), which can be used to monitor various environmentally sustainable elements of smart cities. Accordingly, in the present study; a tentative framework has been developed using these indicators to arrive at a Smart City Environmental Sustainability Index (SCESI) on a 0–100 increasing scale, and the city’s environmental sustainability has been classified under five categories: Excellent; Good; Fair; Poor or Critically Low; based on decreasing SCESI. Using this framework, five Indian cities, which are currently being developed under SCM (Delhi; Patna; Allahabad; Varanasi; and Bhubaneswar), have been examined. The analyses indicate that while three of them (Delhi, Allahabad, and Bhubaneswar) are found in the Fair (SCESI = 40–60) category of environmental sustainability, two (Varanasi and Patna) are in the Poor (SCESI = 20–40) category. The SCESI developed may be used as a monitoring and diagnostic tool for planning and managing services connected with the environment surrounding human life.

scholarly journals Using multivariate statistical methods to assess the urban smartness on the example of selected European cities

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0240260
Author(s):  
Sławomira Hajduk
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Urban Sustainability ◽  
Environmental Indicators ◽  
Technology Infrastructure ◽  
Multivariate Statistical ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Communication And Technology

The growing importance of maturity smart cities is currently observed worldwide. The vast majority of smart city models focus on hard domains such as communication and technology infrastructure. Scientists emphasize the need to take into account social capital and the knowledge of residents. The smart cities invest in enhanced openness and transparency data. Mature smart cities use real-time evidences and information to citizens, businesses and visitors. The smart cities are characterized by bottom-down management and civil government. The paper aims to assess the urban smartness of selected European cities based on the ISO 37120 standard. Several research methods including the Multidimensional Statistical Analysis (MSA) were applied. Using the statistical analysis of European smart cities with the implemented ISO 37120 standard, the author tried to fill gaps in the knowledge and to evaluate maturity smart cities. The results of the research have shown that the smart city concept is a viable strategy which contributes to the urban sustainability. The author also found out that urban sustainability frameworks contain a large number of indicators measuring environmental sustainability, the smart city frameworks lack environmental indicators while highlighting social and economic aspects.

scholarly journals A novel model for data-driven smart sustainable cities of the future: the institutional transformations required for balancing and advancing the three goals of sustainability

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Elias Bibri
Keyword(s):  
Smart Cities ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Sustainable Cities ◽  
Sustainable Urbanism ◽  
The Future ◽  
Novel Model ◽  
Smart Urbanism

AbstractIn recent years, it has become increasingly feasible to achieve important improvements of sustainability by integrating sustainable urbanism with smart urbanism thanks to the proven role and synergic potential of data-driven technologies. Indeed, the processes and practices of both of these approaches to urban planning and development are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism, giving rise to a new phenomenon known as “data-driven smart sustainable urbanism.” Underlying this emerging approach is the idea of combining and integrating the strengths of sustainable cities and smart cities and harnessing the synergies of their strategies and solutions in ways that enable sustainable cities to optimize, enhance, and maintain their performance on the basis of the innovative data-driven technologies offered by smart cities. These strengths and synergies can be clearly demonstrated by combining the advantages of sustainable urbanism and smart urbanism. To enable such combination, major institutional transformations are required in terms of enhanced and new practices and competences. Based on case study research, this paper identifies, distills, and enumerates the key benefits, potentials, and opportunities of sustainable cities and smart cities with respect to the three dimensions of sustainability, as well as the key institutional transformations needed to support the balancing of these dimensions and to enable the introduction of data-driven technology and the adoption of applied data-driven solutions in city operational management and development planning. This paper is an integral part of a futures study that aims to analyze, investigate, and develop a novel model for data-driven smart sustainable cities of the future. I argue that the emerging data-driven technologies for sustainability as innovative niches are reconfiguring the socio-technical landscape of institutions, as well as providing insights to policymakers into pathways for strengthening existing institutionalized practices and competences and developing and establishing new ones. This is necessary for balancing and advancing the goals of sustainability and thus achieving a desirable future.

Citizen Participation in Smart Sustainable Cities

2022 ◽  
pp. 967-987
Author(s):  
Ezgi Seçkiner Bingöl
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Sustainable Cities ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Participation Mechanisms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
City Literature

Citizen participation and sustainability are two main concepts used in the definitions in the smart city literature. Citizen participation is often used within the context of improving good governance in smart cities. Its relationship with sustainability is seldomly discussed. This study analyses the relationship between the concepts of smart city, smart sustainable city, and citizen participation, and discusses how citizen participation is shaped in smart sustainable cities. In light of this analysis, seven types of citizen participation mechanisms are studied. The findings of the study reveal that sustainability in smart cities is only considered within the framework of environmental matters, while citizen participation is only considered as a mechanism aimed at supporting good governance. The study recommends using these participation mechanisms to highlight other aspects of sustainability such as securing comprehensiveness, alleviating poverty, promoting gender equality and to focus on other aspects of citizen participation such as real participation and democratic effectiveness.

The Efficient and Viable Country-Oriented Attainment of Absolute Environmental Sustainability

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 60-104
Author(s):  
Tatiana Tambouratzis ◽  
Nikos Hatziefthimiou
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Evolution Strategy ◽  
Sustainability Index ◽  
Environmental Sustainability Index ◽  
Country Specific

A country-oriented methodology for attaining absolute environmental sustainability (ES) is proposed and demonstrated on the environmental sustainability index (ESI) 2002. The optimal means of deriving the ES levels/scores of the participating countries from the various ESI 2002 constructs is established and, subsequently, encoded in a real-valued evolution strategy (EvS) for the viable and flexible country-specific ES improvement towards maximal ES. The EvS employs: (a) constraints concerning the number and combinations of constructs that can be concurrently improved; (b) limited and progressively decreasing construct improvements expressing the escalating difficulty of improving any construct as the construct and/or overall ES approach(es) maximum. Demonstrations on countries with diverse characteristics and comparisons with alternative optimization methodologies highlight the versatility and applicability of the proposed procedure to any country with data that is compatible to that of the participating countries.

scholarly journals Environmentally data-driven smart sustainable cities: applied innovative solutions for energy efficiency, pollution reduction, and urban metabolism

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Elias Bibri ◽  
John Krogstie
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
Pollution Reduction ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Sustainable Cities

AbstractThe IoT and big data technologies have become essential to the functioning of both smart cities and sustainable cities, and thus, urban operational functioning and planning are becoming highly responsive to a form of data-driven urbanism. This offers the prospect of building models of smart sustainable cities functioning in real time from routinely sensed data. This in turn allows to monitor, understand, analyze, and plan such cities to improve their energy efficiency and environmental health in real time thanks to new urban intelligence functions as an advanced form of decision support. However, prior studies tend to deal largely with data-driven technologies and solutions in the realm of smart cities, mostly in relation to economic and social aspects, leaving important questions involving the underlying substantive and synergistic effects on environmental sustainability barely explored to date. These issues also apply to sustainable cities, especially eco-cities. Therefore, this paper investigates the potential and role of data-driven smart solutions in improving and advancing environmental sustainability in the context of smart cities as well as sustainable cities, under what can be labeled “environmentally data-driven smart sustainable cities.” To illuminate this emerging urban phenomenon, a descriptive/illustrative case study is adopted as a qualitative research methodology§ to examine and compare Stockholm and Barcelona as the ecologically and technologically leading cities in Europe respectively. The results show that smart grids, smart meters, smart buildings, smart environmental monitoring, and smart urban metabolism are the main data-driven smart solutions applied for improving and advancing environmental sustainability in both eco-cities and smart cities. There is a clear synergy between such solutions in terms of their interaction or cooperation to produce combined effects greater than the sum of their separate effects—with respect to the environment. This involves energy efficiency improvement, environmental pollution reduction, renewable energy adoption, and real-time feedback on energy flows, with high temporal and spatial resolutions. Stockholm takes the lead over Barcelona as regards the best practices for environmental sustainability given its long history of environmental work, strong environmental policy, progressive environmental performance, high environmental standards, and ambitious goals. It also has, like Barcelona, a high level of the implementation of applied data-driven technology solutions in the areas of energy and environment. However, the two cities differ in the nature of such implementation. We conclude that city governments do not have a unified agenda as a form of strategic planning, and data-driven decisions are unique to each city, so are environmental challenges. Big data are the answer, but each city sets its own questions based on what characterize it in terms of visions, policies, strategies, pathways, and priorities.

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