scholarly journals Digital transformation of urban governance in China: The emergence and evolution of smart cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
B. Qin ◽  
S. Qi

This research article contributes to the field of digital governance as it reviews the conceptual definition and practical application of “smart cities” in the context of urban development in China. By analyzing both firsthand interview data and secondary statistical and policy reports during the period between 2009 to 2019, we contend that the emergence of smart cities in China has evolved from a disorderly process to a more standardized one. During this process, cities made efforts to use digital technology — such as 5G, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things — in social governance, infrastructure, and industrial development. However, such rapid development also spawned a series of emerging legal issues, which had a huge impact on China’s legal system. The article seeks to holistically examine the discourse surrounding the concept of a “smart city” and its practical implementation by drawing attention to its promises as well as criticisms. The article also touches upon the challenges — such as “information islands” in construction, technology, and management — that confront the emerging smart cities, and emphasizes China’s need to further improve laws and regulations, build an integrated legal system, explore new regulation methods, shape a highly autonomous and refined governance order, and provide legal protection for the development of smart cities. The paper concludes by mentioning possible areas for further research to find a developmental path for “smart cities” that can realize resource integration and sharing.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip James ◽  
Ronnie Das ◽  
Agata Jalosinska ◽  
Luke Smith

This commentary describes the rapid development of a COVID-19 data dashboard utilising existing Urban Observatory Internet of Things (IoT) data and analytics infrastructure. Existing data capture systems were rapidly repurposed to provide real-time insights into the impacts of lockdown policy on urban governance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 301 ◽  
pp. 05003
Author(s):  
Wadim Strielkowski ◽  
Marina Faminskaya ◽  
Elena Potekhina

Our paper focuses on factors that help to successfully and efficiently manage urban infrastructure in large cities and centres using Big Data solutions. We explain the key points about urban Big Data approaches, including infrastructure that supports urban governance, public services and economic and industrial development, taking into account and supporting the central role of urban Big Data in urban intelligence with particular emphasis on the smart cities. Moreover, we want to add a third dimension to social urban data analysis by assessing the use of social, spatial, and temporal data for key issues to understand how it can influence human behaviour across time and space. Our results might have important implications for urban planners and policy-makers and contribute to the mitigating the regional inequalities as well as to improving urban infrastructure and making the cities of the future happier and healthier places for all their citizens.


Author(s):  
Li Zhou ◽  
Yingdong Yao ◽  
Rui Guo ◽  
Wei Xu

Modern cities are in an era of information fusion and knowledge explosion. With the rapid development of global information technology and the in-depth advancement of urbanization, urban informatization, especially smart city, will become the theme of urban development. The concept of smart city has many influences on the future development of the city. The application of the new generation of information technology will change the operation mode of the city, improve the management and service level of the city, trigger scientific and technological innovation and industrial development, and create a better city life. This chapter will introduce the core technologies to promote the development of smart cities, including big data, BIM, internet of things, cloud computing, and virtual reality technology, and on this basis introduce the typical industrial applications of various technologies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (3) ◽  
pp. 126-140
Author(s):  
Vera Zolotareva ◽  
Olesya Emelyanova

The article presents the author’s classification of the “catching-up modernization” models typical for Russia and Japan at the initial stage of acceleration of industrial development. The common features of the “state-national” model (Japan) and the “least resistance” model (Russia) are identified and characterized, and their comparative analysis is carried out. Particular attention is paid to the country features that have had a huge impact on the formation of national types of “catch-up modernization” model and their practical implementation. The role of the state, traditionally strong in Russia and Japan, is noted, and its change in the process of “catching up modernization” is traced. The degree of influence of endogenous and exogenous factors on the implementation of large-scale transformation of Russian and Japanese economic systems is analyzed. It is concluded that the development of national economies of the countries under consideration was a natural result and reflection of their types of the model of “catching-up modernization”.


Author(s):  
ARTAN QERKINI

The market economy and changes within Republic of Kosovo’s legal system, which imposed the need of legal changes within the field of contested procedure also, have caused this procedure to become more efficient vis-à-vis legal provisions which were in force until October 6th 2008. Through the Law on Contested Procedure (hereinafter “LCP”), the legislator has aimed, inter alia, to make the contested procedure more concentrated, and thus, more efficient. In this regard, the Kosovar legislator has determined that it is mandatory for the parties to present any and all relevant evidence for resolving the dispute until the preparatory session, and in the event that one was not held, until the first main hearing session. As an exception, the parties may present relevant evidence even after this stage of proceedings, provided that their failure to present said evidence no later than at the preparatory session, respectively first main hearing session, was through no fault of their own. I consider that these legislative amendments are vital to ensuring practical implementation of the principle of efficience in the contested procedure.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 434
Author(s):  
Qingqi Hong ◽  
Yiwei Ding ◽  
Jinpeng Lin ◽  
Meihong Wang ◽  
Qingyang Wei ◽  
...  

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and fifth-generation mobile network technologies, automatic instrument reading has become an increasingly important topic for intelligent sensors in smart cities. We propose a full pipeline to automatically read watermeters based on a single image, using deep learning methods to provide new technical support for an intelligent water meter reading. To handle the various challenging environments where watermeters reside, our pipeline disentangled the task into individual subtasks based on the structures of typical watermeters. These subtasks include component localization, orientation alignment, spatial layout guidance reading, and regression-based pointer reading. The devised algorithms for orientation alignment and spatial layout guidance are tailored to improve the robustness of our neural network. We also collect images of watermeters in real scenes and build a dataset for training and evaluation. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method even under challenging environments with varying lighting, occlusions, and different orientations. Thanks to the lightweight algorithms adopted in our pipeline, the system can be easily deployed and fully automated.


Smart Cities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 894-918
Author(s):  
Luís Rosa ◽  
Fábio Silva ◽  
Cesar Analide

The evolution of Mobile Networks and Internet of Things (IoT) architectures allows one to rethink the way smart cities infrastructures are designed and managed, and solve a number of problems in terms of human mobility. The territories that adopt the sensoring era can take advantage of this disruptive technology to improve the quality of mobility of their citizens and the rationalization of their resources. However, with this rapid development of smart terminals and infrastructures, as well as the proliferation of diversified applications, even current networks may not be able to completely meet quickly rising human mobility demands. Thus, they are facing many challenges and to cope with these challenges, different standards and projects have been proposed so far. Accordingly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been utilized as a new paradigm for the design and optimization of mobile networks with a high level of intelligence. The objective of this work is to identify and discuss the challenges of mobile networks, alongside IoT and AI, to characterize smart human mobility and to discuss some workable solutions to these challenges. Finally, based on this discussion, we propose paths for future smart human mobility researches.


Author(s):  
Guangchao Zhang ◽  
Xinyue Kou

In recent years, with the rapid development of VR technology, its application range gradually involves the field of urban landscape design. VR technology can simulate complex environments, breaking through the limitations of traditional environmental design on large amounts of information processing and rendering of renderings. It can display complex and abstract urban environmental design through visualization. With the support of high-speed information transmission in the 5G era, VR technology can simulate the overall urban landscape design by generating VR panoramas, and it can also bring the experiencer into an immersive and interactive virtual reality world through VR video Experience. Based on this, this article uses the 5G virtual reality method in the new media urban landscape design to conduct research, aiming to provide an urban landscape design method with strong authenticity, good user experience and vividness. This paper studies the urban landscape design method in the new media environment; in addition, how to realize the VR panorama in the 5G environment, and also explores the image design of each node in the city in detail; and uses the park design in the city As an example, the realization process of the entire virtual reality is described in detail. The research in this article shows that the new media urban landscape design method based on 5G virtual reality, specifically to the design of urban roads, water divisions, street landscapes, and people’s living environment, makes the realization of smart cities possible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-222
Author(s):  
Karima Kourtit

AbstractThe contemporary ‘digital age’ prompts the need for a re-assessment of urban planning principles and practices. Against the background of current data-rich urban planning, this study seeks to address the question whether an appropriate methodological underpinning can be provided for smart city governance based on a data-driven planning perspective. It posits that the current digital technology age has a drastic impact on city strategies and calls for a multi-faceted perspective on future urban development, termed here the ‘XXQ-principle’ (which seeks to attain the highest possible level of quality for urban life). Heterogeneity in urban objectives and data embodied in the XXQ-principle can be systematically addressed by a process of data decomposition (based on a ‘cascade principle’), so that first, higher-level urban policy domains are equipped with the necessary (‘big’) data provisions, followed by lower-ranking urban governance levels. The conceptual decomposition principle can then be translated into a comprehensive hierarchical model architecture for urban intelligence based on the ‘flying disc’ model, including key performance indicators (KPIs). This new model maps out the socio-economic arena of a complex urban system according to the above cascade system. The design of this urban system architecture and the complex mutual connections between its subsystems is based on the ‘blowing-up’ principle that originates from a methodological deconstruction-reconstruction paradigm in the social sciences. The paper advocates the systematic application of this principle to enhance the performance of smart cities, called the XXQ performance value. This study is not empirical, although it is inspired by a wealth of previous empirical research. It aims to advance conceptual and methodological thinking on principles of smart urban planning.


Еnzymes are able to effectively interact with various organophosphorus compounds (OPC), entering into (bio)chemical reactions with them. Changes in the initial activity of enzymes as a result of their inhibition by OPC, the formation of OPC degradation products under the action of hydrolytic enzymes, etc. can be determined using different physical and chemical methods and used in bioanalytic systems to determine the concentrations of OPC. The purpose of the review is to analyze the main scientific results achieved over the past 10 years in the development of analytical systems based on enzymes intended for the determination of OPC. It is shown in the article, that the requirements for the sensitivity of biosensors are based on the norms of the content of the analyzed substances detected in/at the objects of mandatory control. The cholinesterases compose a basis for the development of the largest number of ultra-sensitive biosensors, although other enzymes can be successfully used as a biosensitive element. The most technologically advanced solution that is close to the practical implementation seems to be bioanalytical systems using immobilized enzymes. Improving the detection limits of the OPC can be achieved by using nanoobjects together with modern methods of signal transducers, for example, with nanomechanical detectors and signal converters. This combination of technical solutions ensures the sensitivity of the OPC analysis up to pg/l. At present, «reagentless» systems have received significant development, which have become the basis for the production of a large number of commercially available strips for the express determination of OPC. Modern demands stimulate the rapid development of portable and, especially, wearable biosensors that can be attached to various surfaces, including a clothing. The progress in the development of affine amino acid sequences, in the future, will allow the creation of enzyme biosensors on any surface.


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