A Smart City for the Blind

Author(s):  
Dago Schelin ◽  
Péricles Varella Gomes ◽  
Verônica Isabela Quandt

In this chapter, the authors present the German city of Marburg as an alternative model for the conception of a smart city. Marburg's historical relation with its visually impaired citizens has shaped not only its infrastructure but also its human framework. Generally, smart cities are equated with world-class major metropolitan areas, with international airports, use of high band internet, internet of things, and other IT infrastructures. However, Marburg might be considered a smart city according to other criteria. This case study articulates the uniqueness of what Marburg has been able to achieve using a diverse approach of cultural acceptance of the blind, becoming a world reference for other small cities. The authors suggest that Marburg can serve as a model for other cities. This hypothesis was reached through critical investigations into concepts of smartness and disability, intersected with the insights obtained in a focus group interview.

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-67
Author(s):  
Henrika Pihlajaniemi ◽  
Anna Luusua ◽  
Eveliina Juntunen

This paper presents the evaluation of usersХ experiences in three intelligent lighting pilots in Finland. Two of the case studies are related to the use of intelligent lighting in different kinds of traffic areas, having emphasis on aspects of visibility, traffic and movement safety, and sense of security. The last case study presents a more complex view to the experience of intelligent lighting in smart city contexts. The evaluation methods, tailored to each pilot context, include questionnaires, an urban dashboard, in-situ interviews and observations, evaluation probes, and system data analyses. The applicability of the selected and tested methods is discussed reflecting the process and achieved results.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Daria Uspenskaia ◽  
Karl Specht ◽  
Hendrik Kondziella ◽  
Thomas Bruckner

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.


i-com ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-193
Author(s):  
Daniel Wessel ◽  
Julien Holtz ◽  
Florian König

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.


Information ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Faber ◽  
Sven-Volker Rehm ◽  
Adrian Hernandez-Mendez ◽  
Florian Matthes

Smart mobility is a central issue in the recent discourse about urban development policy towards smart cities. The design of innovative and sustainable mobility infrastructures as well as public policies require cooperation and innovations between various stakeholders—businesses as well as policy makers—of the business ecosystems that emerge around smart city initiatives. This poses a challenge for deploying instruments and approaches for the proactive management of such business ecosystems. In this article, we report on findings from a smart city initiative we have used as a case study to inform the development, implementation, and prototypical deployment of a visual analytic system (VAS). As results of our design science research we present an agile framework to collaboratively collect, aggregate and map data about the ecosystem. The VAS and the agile framework are intended to inform and stimulate knowledge flows between ecosystem stakeholders in order to reflect on viable business and policy strategies. Agile processes and roles to collaboratively manage and adapt business ecosystem models and visualizations are defined. We further introduce basic categories for identifying, assessing and selecting Internet data sources that provide the data for ecosystem models and we detail the ecosystem data and view models developed in our case study. Our model represents a first explication of categories for visualizing business ecosystem models in a smart city mobility context.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Shelton ◽  
Thomas Lodato

In response to the mounting criticism of emerging ‘smart cities’ strategies around the world, a number of individuals and institutions have attempted to pivot from discussions of smart cities towards a focus on ‘smart citizens’. While the smart citizen is most often seen as a kind of foil for those more stereotypically top-down, neoliberal, and repressive visions of the smart city that have been widely critiqued within the literature, this paper argues for an attention to the ‘actually existing smart citizen’, which plays a much messier and more ambivalent role in practice. This paper proposes the dual figures of ‘the general citizen’ and ‘the absent citizen’ as a heuristic for thinking about how the lines of inclusion and exclusion are drawn for citizens, both discursively and materially, in the actual making of the smart city. These figures are meant to highlight how the universal and unspecified figure of ‘the citizen’ is discursively deployed to justify smart city policies, while at the same time, actual citizens remain largely excluded from such decision and policy-making processes. Using a case study of Atlanta, Georgia and its ongoing smart cities initiatives, we argue that while the participation of citizens is crucial to any truly democratic mode of urban governance, the emerging discourse around the promise of smart citizenship fails to capture the realities of how citizens are actually discussed and enrolled in the making of these policies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 10712
Author(s):  
Wilson Nieto Bernal ◽  
Keryn Lorena García Espitaleta

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.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1407-1427
Author(s):  
Carlo Francesco Capra

Smart cities are associated almost exclusively with modern technology and infrastructure. However, smart cities have the possibility to enhance the involvement and contribution of citizens to urban development. This work explores the role of governance as one of the factors influencing the participation of citizens in smart cities projects. Governance characteristics play a major role in explaining different typologies of citizen participation. Through a focus on Amsterdam Smart City program as a specific case study, this research examines the characteristics of governance that are present in the overall program and within a selected sample of projects, and how they relate to different typologies of citizen participation. The analysis and comprehension of governance characteristics plays a crucial role both for a better understanding and management of citizen participation, especially in complex settings where multiple actors are interacting.


Author(s):  
Vrushali Gajanan Kadam ◽  
Sharvari Chandrashekhar Tamane ◽  
Vijender Kumar Solanki

The world is growing and energy conservation is a very important challenge for the engineering domain. The emergence of smart cities is one possible solution for the same, as it claims that energy and resources are saved in the smart city infrastructure. This chapter is divided into five sections. Section 1 gives the past, present, and future of the living style. It gives the representation from rural, urban, to smart city. Section 2 gives the explanations of four pillars of big data, and through grid, a big data analysis is presented in the chapter. Section 3 started with the case study on smart grid. It comprises traffic congestion and their prospective solution through big data analytics. Section 4 starts from the mobile crowd sensing. It discusses a good elaboration on crowd sensing whereas Section 5 discusses the smart city approach. Important issues like lighting, parking, and traffic were taken into consideration.


Author(s):  
Rajan R. ◽  
Venkata Subramanian Dayanandan ◽  
Shankar P. ◽  
Ranganath Tngk

A smart city aims at developing an ecosystem wherein the citizens will have instant access to amenities required for a healthy and safe living. Since the mission of smart city is to develop and integrate many facilities, it is envisaged that there is a need for making the information available instantly for right use of such infrastructure. So, there exists a need to design and implement a world-class physical security measures which acts as a bellwether to protect people life from physical security threats. It is a myth that if placing adequate number of cameras alone would enhance physical security controls in smart cities. There is a need for designing and building comprehensive physical security controls, based on the principles of “layered defense-in-depth,” which integrates all aspects of physical security controls. This chapter will review presence of existing physical security technology controls for smart cities in line with the known security threats and propose the need for an AI-enabled physical security premise.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 204-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Argento ◽  
Giuseppe Grossi ◽  
Aki Jääskeläinen ◽  
Stefania Servalli ◽  
Petri Suomala

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of performance measurement systems as technologies of government in the operationalisation of smart city programmes. It answers the research question: how do the development and use of performance measurement systems support smart cities in the achievement of their goals? Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a longitudinal case study that uses an interventionist approach to investigate the possibilities and limitations of the use of performance measurement systems as technologies of government in a smart city. Interpretations are theoretically informed by the Foucauldian governmentality framework (Foucault, 2009) and by public sector performance measurement literature. Findings The findings address the benefits and criticalities confronting a smart city that introduces new performance measurement systems as a technology of government. Such technologies become problematic tools when the city network is characterised by a fragmentation of inter-departmental processes, and when forms of resistance emerge due to a lack of process owners, horizontal accountability and cooperation among involved parties. Research limitations/implications This paper is based on a case study of a single smart city, and outlines the need for both comparative and multidisciplinary analyses in order to analyse the causes and effects of smart city challenges. Originality/value This paper offers a critical understanding of the role of accounting in the smart city. The ineffectiveness of performance measurement systems is related to the multiple roles of such technologies of government, which may lead to a temporary paralysis in the achievement of smart city goals and programmes.


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