courtesy  :  wikipedia

smart city

A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods, voice activation methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data is used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in return, that data is used to improve operations across the city. This includes data collected from citizens, devices, buildings and assets that is processed and analyzed to monitor and manage traffic and transportation systems, power plants, utilities, water supply networks, waste, crime detection,^[1] information systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services.^[2][3] Smart cities are defined as smart both in the ways in which their governments harness technology as well as in how they monitor, analyze, plan, and govern the city.^[4]

Due to the breadth of technologies that have been implemented under the smart city label, it is difficult to distill a precise definition of a smart city. Deakin and Al Waer^[12] list four factors that contribute to the definition of a smart city:

1. The application of a wide range of electronic and digital technologies to communities and cities.
2. The use of ICT to transform life and working environments within the region.
3. The embedding of such Information and Communications Technologies in government systems.
4. The territorialisation of practices that brings ICT and people together to enhance the innovation and knowledge that they offer.

Deakin defines the smart city as one that utilizes ICT to meet the demands of the market (the citizens of the city), and states that community involvement in the process is necessary for a smart city.^[13] A smart city would thus be a city that not only possesses ICT technology in particular areas, but has also implemented this technology in a manner that positively impacts the local community.

Alternative definitions include:

• Business Dictionary: “A developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and high quality of life by excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government. Excelling in these key areas can be done so through strong human capital, social capital, and/or ICT infrastructure.”^[14][when?]
• Caragliu and Nijkamp 2009: “A city can be defined as ‘smart’ when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic development and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory action and engagement.”^[15]
• Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, UK 2023: “The concept is not static, there is no absolute definition of a smart city, no end point, but rather a process, or series of steps, by which cities become more ‘liveable’ and resilient and, hence, able to respond more quickly to new challenges.”^[16]
• European Commission : “A smart city is a place where traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital solutions for the benefit of its inhabitants and business.”
• Frost & Sullivan 2014: “We identified eight key aspects that define a smart city: smart governance, smart energy, smart building, smart mobility, smart infrastructure, smart technology, smart healthcare and smart citizen.”^[17]
• Giffinger et al. 2007: “Regional competitiveness, transport and Information and Communication Technologies economics, natural resources, human and social capital, quality of life, and participation of citizens in the governance of cities.”^[18]
• Indian Government 2015: “Smart city offers sustainability in terms of economic activities and employment opportunities to a wide section of its residents, regardless of their level of education, skills or income levels.”^[19]
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers smart Cities: “A smart city brings together technology, government and society to enable the following characteristics: smart cities, a smart economy, smart mobility, a smart environment, smart people, smart living, smart governance.”^[when?]
• Smart Cities Council^[when?]: “A smart city is one that has digital technology embedded^[20] across all city functions.”^{[21][full citation needed]}

Characteristics[edit]

It has been suggested that a smart city (also community, business cluster, urban agglomeration or region) uses information technologies to:

1. Make more efficient use of physical infrastructure (roads, built environment and other physical assets) through artificial intelligence and data analytics in order to support a strong and healthy economic, social, cultural development.^[22]
2. Engage effectively with local governance officials by use of open innovation processes and e-participation, improving the collective intelligence of the city’s institutions through e-governance,^[8] with emphasis placed on citizen participation and co-design.^[23][24]
3. Learn, adapt and innovate and thereby respond more effectively and promptly to changing circumstances by improving the intelligence of the city.^[8][25]

They evolve towards a strong integration of all dimensions of human intelligence, collective intelligence, and also artificial intelligence within the city.^[26][27] The intelligence of cities “resides in the increasingly effective combination of digital telecommunication networks (the nerves), ubiquitously embedded intelligence (the brains), sensors and tags (the sensory organs), and software (the knowledge and cognitive competence)”.^[28]

These forms of intelligence in smart cities have been demonstrated in three ways:

1. Orchestration intelligence:^[8] Where cities establish institutions and community-based problem solving and collaborations, such as in Bletchley Park, where the Nazi Enigma cipher was decoded by a team led by Alan Turing. This has been referred to as the first example of a smart city or an intelligent community.^[29]
2. Empowerment intelligence: Cities provide open platforms, experimental facilities and smart city infrastructure in order to cluster innovation in certain districts. These are seen in the Kista Science City in Stockholm and the Cyberport Zone in Hong Kong. Similar facilities have also been established in Melbourne and Kyiv.^[30]
   

   Hong Kong Cyberport 1 and Cyberport 2 Buildings

3. Instrumentation intelligence: Where city infrastructure is made smart through real-time data collection, with analysis and predictive modelling across city districts. There is much controversy surrounding this, particularly with regards to surveillance issues in smart cities. Examples of Instrumentation intelligence are those implemented in Amsterdam.^[31] This is realized through:^[8]
   1. A common IP infrastructure that is open to researchers to develop applications.
   2. Wireless meters and devices transmit information at the point in time.
   3. A number of homes being provided with smart energy meters to become aware of energy consumption and reduce energy usage.
   4. Solar power garbage compactors, car recharging stations and energy saving lamps.

Some major fields of intelligent city activation are:

Innovation economy	Urban infrastructure	Governance
Innovation in industries, clusters, districts of a city	Transport	Administration services to the citizen
Knowledge workforce: Education and employment	Energy / Utilities	Participatory and direct democracy
Creation of knowledge-intensive companies	Protection of the environment / Safety	Services to the citizen: Quality of life

According to David K. Owens, the former executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, two key elements that a smart city must have are an integrated communications platform and a “dynamic resilient grid.”^[32]

Data collection[edit]

Smart cities have been conceptualized using the OSI model of ‘layer’ abstractions. Smart cities are constructed by connecting the city’s public infrastructure with city application systems and passing collected data through three layers, the perception layer, the network layer and the application layer. City application systems the use data to make better decisions when controlling different city infrastructures. The perception layer is where data is collected across the smart city using sensors. This data could be collected through sensors such as cameras, RFID, or GPS positioning. The perception layer sends data it collects using wireless transmissions to the network layer. The network layer is responsible for transporting collected data from the perception layer to the application layer. The network layer utilizes a city’s communication infrastructure to send data meaning it can be intercepted by attackers and must be held responsible for keeping collected data and information private. The application layer is responsible for processing the data received from network layer. The application layer uses the data it processes to make decisions on how to control the city infrastructure based on the data it receives.^[33][34]

Frameworks[edit]

The creation, integration, and adoption of smart city capabilities require a unique set of frameworks to realize the focus areas of opportunity and innovation central to smart city projects. The frameworks can be divided into 5 main dimensions which include numerous related categories of smart city development:^[35]

Technology framework[edit]

A smart city relies heavily on the deployment of technology. Different combinations of technological infrastructure interact to form the array of smart city technologies with varying levels of interaction between human and technological systems.^[36]

• Digital: A service oriented infrastructure is required to connect individuals and devices in a smart city. These include innovation services and communication infrastructure. Yovanof, G. S. & Hazapis, G. N. define a digital city as “a connected community that combines broadband communications infrastructure; a flexible, service-oriented computing infrastructure based on open industry standards; and, innovative services to meet the needs of governments and their employees, citizens and businesses.”^[37]
• Intelligent: Cognitive technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, can be trained on the data generated by connected city devices to identify patterns. The efficacy and impact of particular policy decisions can be quantified by cognitive systems studying the continuous interactions of humans with their urban surroundings.[1]
• Ubiquitous: A ubiquitous city provides access to public services through any connected device. U-city is an extension of the digital city concept because of the facility in terms of accessibility to every infrastructure.^[38]
• Wired: The physical components of IT systems are crucial to early-stage smart city development. Wired infrastructure is required to support the IoT and wireless technologies central to more interconnected living.^[39] A wired city environment provides general access to continually updated digital and physical infrastructure. The latest in telecommunications, robotics, IoT, and various connected technologies can then be deployed to support human capital and productivity.^[40][41]
• Hybrid: A hybrid city is the combination of a physical conurbation and a virtual city related to the physical space. This relationship can be one of virtual design or the presence of a critical mass of virtual community participants in a physical urban space. Hybrid spaces can serve to actualize future-state projects for smart city services and integration.^[42]
• Information city: The multiplicity of interactive devices in a smart city generates a large quantity of data. How that information is interpreted and stored is critical to Smart city growth and security.^[43]

Human framework[edit]

Smart city initiatives have measurable positive impacts on the quality of life of its citizens and visitors.^[44] The human framework of a smart city – its economy, knowledge networks, and human support systems – is an important indicator of its success.^[45]

• Creativity: Arts and culture initiatives are common focus areas in smart city planning.^[46][47] Innovation is associated with intellectual curiosity and creativeness, and various projects have demonstrated that knowledge workers participate in a diverse mix of cultural and artistic activities.^[48][49]
• Learning: Since mobility is a key area of Smart city development, building a capable workforce through education initiatives is necessary.^[45] A city’s learning capacity includes its education system, including available workforce training and support, and its cultural development and exchange.^[50]
• Humanity: Numerous Smart city programs focus on soft infrastructure development, like increasing access to voluntary organizations and designated safe zones.^[51] This focus on social and relational capital means diversity, inclusion, and ubiquitous access to public services is worked in to city planning.^[41]
• Knowledge: The development of a knowledge economy is central to Smart city projects.^[52] Smart cities seeking to be hubs of economic activity in emerging tech and service sectors stress the value of innovation in city development.^[41]

Institutional framework[edit]

According to Moser, M. A.,^[50] since the 1990s, the smart communities movement took shape as a strategy to broaden the base of users involved in IT. Members of these Communities are people that share their interest and work in a partnership with government and other institutional organizations to push the use of IT to improve the quality of daily life as a consequence of different worsening in daily actions. Eger, J. M.^[53] said that a smart community makes a conscious and agreed-upon decision to deploy technology as a catalyst to solving its social and business needs. It is very important to understand that this use of IT and the consequent improvement could be more demanding without the institutional help; indeed institutional involvement is essential to the success of smart community initiatives. Again Moser, M. A.^[50] explained that “building and planning a smart community seeks for smart growth”; smart growth is essential for the partnership between citizen and institutional organizations to react to worsening trends in daily issues like traffic congestion, school overcrowding and air pollution. However, it is important to note that technological propagation is not an end in itself, but only a means to reinventing cities for a new economy and society. To sum up, it is possible to assert that any smart city initiatives necessitate the government’s support for their success.

The importance of these three different dimensions is that only a link among them can make possible the development of a real smart city concept. According to the definition of smart city given by Caragliu, A., Del Bo, C., & Nijkamp, P., a city is smart when investments in human/social capital and IT infrastructure fuel sustainable growth and enhance quality of life, through participatory governance.^[54]

Energy framework[edit]

Smart cities use data and technology to create efficiencies, improve sustainability, create economic development, and enhance quality of life factors for people living and working in the city. It also means that the city has a smarter energy infrastructure. More formally, a smart city is: “… An urban area that has securely integrated technology across the information … and Internet of Things (IoT) sectors to better manage a city’s assets.”^[55] Employment of smart technologies enables the more efficient application of integrated energy technologies in the city allowing the development of more self-sustaining areas or even Positive Energy Districts that produce more energy than consume.^[56]

A smart city is powered by “smart connections” for various items such as street lighting, smart buildings, distributed energy resources (DER), data analytics, and smart transportation. Amongst these things, energy is paramount; this is why utility companies play a key role in smart cities. Electric companies, working partnership with city officials, technology companies and a number of other institutions, are among the major players that helped accelerate the growth of America’s smart cities.^[57]

Data Management framework[edit]

Smart cities employ a combination of data collection, processing, and disseminating technologies in conjunction with networking and computing technologies and data security and privacy measures encouraging the application of innovation to promote the overall quality of life for its citizens and covering dimensions that include: utilities, health, transportation, entertainment and government services.^[58]