Fig. 70.1 shows a QOL perspective on of a Smart City and mentions the most important relationships between QOL, residents’ needs and available services. In this context, need is the goal, service is the method and QOL is the indicator of target achievement.
Fig. 70.1Magic triangle of a Smart City from the QOL perspective
A Smart City is one example of a complex ecosystem with numerous digital touch points between citizens, businesses, authorities and other service providers, powering exponential growth in global data generation. Rationalization as a main aspect of urbanization in all areas of citizens’ lives can, and should, be driven by these data.
Quantification of quality of life has become an important indicator for many cities. Its calculation by Mercer is well‐known [5]. The cities are evaluated by several factors grouped in 10 categories: 1) Political and social environment; 2) Economic environment; 3) Socio‐cultural environment; 4) Medical and health considerations; 5) Schools and education; 6) Public services and transportation; 7) Recreation; 8) Consumer goods; 9) Housing; 10) Natural environment.
Six dimensions of smartness defined by the EU operate in similar categories as shown in Table 70.1. This overlap roughly shows the link between quality of life and smartness of a city. Table 70.1Six dimensions of smartness and categories of QOL. (In dependence on European Parliament [3]; Mercer LLC [5])
Dimension/Area of QOL
Definition
Smart Economy/Areas of ‘Economic environment’, ‘Consumer goods’
E‐business and e‐commerce using ICT‐enabled manufacturing and service delivery as well as ICT‐enabled innovation, creation of new services and new business models
Smart Mobility/Area of ‘Public services and transportation’
ICT‐enabled transportation system including public transport, such as buses, trams, subways, cars, trains, cyclists as well as pedestrians using these modes of transport and businesses using them for their logistic needs
Smart Environment/Areas of ‘Natural environment’, ‘Housing’, ‘Medical and health considerations’
ICT‐supported energy solutions, ICT‐enabled smart grids, pollution monitoring, green urban planning and buildings, smart waste management and water resource systems, efficient street lighting and other services
Smart People/Area of ‘Schools and education’
People that possess various skills, enable them to use ICT‐based services and to work in such an environment, create new products and services and foster innovation
Smart Living/Areas of ‘Social‐cultural environment’, ‘Recreation’
Healthy and safe living, behavior and consumption habits of people that integrating ICT‐supported services and products into their everyday life
Smart Governance/Area of ‘Political and social environment’
City governance characterized by a high level of interaction with involvement of citizens, businesses, institutions and further stakeholders, enabling objective and transparent e‐government
Furthermore, definitions of “City as a Service” and “City On‐Demand” are being introduced to allow a new view of the Smart City and six dimensions of smartness.
The term “City as a Service” is relatively new. The main point is that cities are starting to apply service design to improve certain urban practices. Holistic approaches are being applied to different areas, such as management of public spaces, demand‐based parking, resident‐centered living concepts etc [6].
The existing studies on ‘User‐centric service composition’ should help to understand this approach: “A potential benefit of service composition is that it allows new services to be created rapidly, as a combination of existing basic services, instead of being developed from scratch … Dynamic orchestration of service composition activities enables true user‐centric service delivery” [7, 8].
Since no clear definition of “City as a Service” has been found, the following working definition is used in this article: City as a Service is a service‐oriented approach to urban development that considers the city as a service platform where different service providers (the city itself, further authorities, institutions, businesses as well as residents) can offer their services and interact in the most efficient way.
“City On‐Demand” is a new approach. No definition has been found, that we could use for our needs. Therefore, we propose the following working definition: City On‐Demand means Smart Cities, which already operate the City as a Service model AND allow the creation of new services in real‐time that probably did not exist before the request.
At this new meta‐level, existing services are considered to be resources for newly‐created ones. Residents’ needs, habits, and behavior, as well as availability and quality of resources and further constraints, are considered to fulfill all requirements in the most efficient way real‐time. For example, a citizen has a need – “recreation over the weekend”. When expressing this need to his personal digital butler a new service is created considering all information mentioned above with the goal of the best recreation value within the given period. In turn, this new service uses other services and data as resources. Resources used in the new service can be with costs or free of charge: health data from his smartwatch
his/her favorite sports and meals and other leisure preferences
his/her preferred social contacts (e. g. from his Facebook or Twitter account or personal phonebook)
weather forecast
details on events and what’s happening in the city over the weekend
traffic situation
information about current use of public places etc.
An important requirement for enabling City On‐Demand is the city’s smartness at different socio‐technological levels – not only within the six dimensions of smartness defined above, but between these dimensions, too. The rationale is: the smarter particular parts of the whole are, the smarter the whole can be. This can only be achieved by stronger networking and interoperability between all relevant elements of a Smart City. That should take place along all dimensions of a Smart City as exemplary shown for enterprise [9] or government interoperability [10].
Please permit us to explain, using the following example. The working definition of Smart Mobility (s. Table 70.1) requires smart transportation systems that consist, among others, of smart components, such as autonomously driving cars and intelligent traffic lights. The working definitions of Smart People and Smart Living (s. Table 70.1) require e‐skills and the ability to integrate ICT‐supported services and products into everyday life. An interconnection between these three dimensions of smartness – smart mobility, smart people and smart living – can be shown as follows.
Autonomously driving cars need to have a well implemented collision detection for accident‐free traffic. This requires smart infrastructure, consisting of static and dynamic interactive elements. The interaction between cars and intelligent infrastructure will improve collision detection and reduce crashes [11, 12]. For this purpose, various types of data need to be exchanged – exact position, movement direction, speed, size, status of traffic lights, speed limitation, street signs etc.
External traffic participants (pedestrians, cyclists), as smart people, have to possess skills to integrate relevant devices into their everyday life. In particular, they should be willing to buy (consumption aspect) and to wear clothes (lifestyle and behavior aspects) equipped with sensors that interact with autonomously driving cars and other traffic participants and elements.
Therefore, the car does not have to be able to determine all necessary parameters itself, but it must be able to interact and to rely on data it gets from its environment. This new relationship between Smart Mobility, Smart People, and Smart Living improves quality of life by reducing crashes, but means a higher complexity of each part and of the whole.
70.2 Examples
There are several Digital City and Smart City initiatives, which were founded during the last 10 years. Based on a study by the European Union there are already 240 cities or 51% of all cities in EU‐28 with more than 100,000 residents, which have implemented or proposed Smart Cities. There are Smart Cities in all European countries, but they are unevenly distributed. Smart City characteristics are Governance, Economy, Mobility, Environment, People, and Living [3]. All initiatives with one or more projects in European Smart Cities cover at least one of those characteristics.
First, we will look at a few examples from Europe and also one international example to better understand the development of the existing Smart Cities today. The highest absolute number of Smart Cities in Europe are in the UK, Spain and Italy. Italy, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia and Slovenia have the highest share of Smart Cities.
Overall, Smart Cities are still at an early stage of development. The stage of development or the maturity level of a Smart City depends primarily on whether only one strategy or policy exists or initiatives have already been successfully launched and are available to the public or are implemented. Smart Environment and Smart Mobility have the largest share of the initiatives in a number of cities. Hamburg, Helsinki, Barcelona and Amsterdam were best ranked in assessing both the Smart City characteristics and performance. All Smart City initiatives share the vision of transforming the city into a place with a better quality of life.
Since a Smart City consists not only of components, but also people, it is also important to secure the participation of citizens and relevant stakeholders. The structure of knowledge management with access to relevant data, open standards and data privacy as well as data security is another success factor. The best‐ranked cities above fulfill most of these success factors.
70.2.1 Barcelona
The City of Barcelona, Spain ranked as number one Smart City globally [13] and has a wide range of Smart City initiatives [14].
With its Open Data initiative, the Barcelona City Council provides public data, so that a range of individuals and entities can easily access and reuse the data. This resulted in the creation of new companies, services and products, which has increased the city’s social and economic value and improved individuals’ lives.
With the Telecare service, Barcelona supports 70,000 elderly people 24 h a day 365 days per year. It offers appropriate response to users’ requests for assistance and takes preventative actions by maintaining frequent contact with individuals to prevent unsafe situations, isolation or loneliness. In this way, the domestic care service helps to improve the quality of life and independence of people who are elderly, disabled, or dependent on others, and those who live or spend many hours alone at home.
There are also more common initiatives, such as the Barcelona Wi‐Fi, which offers the largest free‐access, public Wi‐Fi network in Spain and one of the most advanced in Europe.
After starting Smart City initiatives in pilot projects Barcelona began to launch city‐wide services. Today a large number of Smart City initiatives are available as part of the Smart City strategy, for example control of lighting zones, smart parking or e‐governance.
Barcelona seems to be on a good way to offer connected services that help to achieve a City as a Service status by following a data‐driven approach but it requires a greater involvement of enterprise‐oriented initiatives [15].
70.2.2 Amsterdam
In Amsterdam, the Netherlands, several Smart City initiatives have been launched to achieve the goal of being part of the international top of sustainable cities in 2040 [16].
The Utrechtsestraat Climate Street is one of these initiatives with the aim of realizing CO2 reduction and environmental saving [17]. The Utrechtsestraat Climate street is to become the first living sustainable showroom in the world to determine which technologies, cooperative agreements and approaches are the most successful to make the city’s (shopping) streets more sustainable on a large scale. At a later stage, this concept is planned to be rolled out to the rest of the Netherlands.
As part of the Ship‐to‐Grid project in Amsterdam IBM and Cisco partnered with Dutch utility companies to provide energy management systems and smart meters to about 500 households [18]. Via utility‐side data management and analysis, the households themselves and the city as a whole are able to optimize their energy consumption and reduce waste. It is also possible to predict peaks and coordinate energy generation and consumption in a more sustainable way.
A similar environment‐focused initiative is the ITO Tower Project [19]. In this project intelligent technology collects, monitors and analyzes the building’s programing and utility data to identify energy consumption inefficiencies and lower the building’s carbon footprint.
The Health Lab initiative is linked to the people and their living characteristics [20]. Health Lab focuses on increased care efficiency resulting in greater end‐user independence. This initiative is intended to support and stimulate Digital Health developments in the Amsterdam metropolitan area. Innovation in care needs the cooperation of many different organizations especially in order to produce technologies, service the market, educate on use new technologies and adapt them.
The focus of Amsterdam lays on environment‐oriented initiatives. More mobility and economy‐oriented initiatives and connecting those services via extending and connecting the open data hub would help to achieve the status of a City as a Service [21].
70.2.3 Hamburg
For its Smart City strategy the City of Hamburg focused on environment, people and economy [22]. With its rapidly growing urban population, the Hamburg government recognizes the need to answer the questions about mobility, public infrastructure, service, energy consumption, emissions and quality of life. Therefore, the Smart City, as a connected and intelligent city, is the ideal strategic solution to improve the quality of life. The city aims to achieve this goal through intelligent, innovative infrastructures, which help to make mobility more efficient, to conserve resources and reduce negative environmental impacts. Sensors and information technologies thereby will continue to gain importance in the future.
The harbor is the heart of Hamburg’s economy. The government does not want to build unlimited roads, railways and waterways. Therefore, the Port of Hamburg is planned to be developed into a smartPORT in the coming years to increase the efficiency of the existing lines, and thus the quality of its services [23].
In addition, an intelligent infrastructure in Hamburg should be established which includes, among other things, an intelligent control of traffic signals. Traffic lights recognize how many people wait and traffic signals switch accordingly, while sensors in streetlights measure the outside light so that they only light up when it is really dark.
Another initiative is the virtual citizens’ stand. Pressing a button in a small kiosk at malls or libraries allows citizens to make video calls to an administrative assistant via Internet. The kiosk is equipped with a small desk with a monitor showing a touch tablet to display documents and allow inputs or video presentations. In addition, citizens can immediately print forms via the connected printer [24].
Hamburg just started its way to become a City as a Service. The currently available services and initiatives are not well connected and some areas are not well represented. For example Hamburgs Open data service is more a content search engine than a data hub [25].
70.2.4 New York
For the City of New York, USA a Smart City means an equitable city. To guide connected devices and Internet of Things (IoT) implementation, serve as the coordinating entity for new technologies across all city agencies and foster collaboration with academia and the private sector are important tasks to better the lives of all New Yorkers [26].
Especially data and analytics are the main pillars fo
r New York’s Smart City strategy. Real‐time information enables a more responsive government and better data generates cost savings and increased impact. Additionally, enhanced analytics allow for increased equity in the delivery of services while sensors and digital tools allow for more efficient use of city infrastructure and resources.
One concrete example is the Community Air Survey, which uses approximately 100 monitors installed throughout NYC to study how pollutants from traffic, buildings and other sources impact air quality in different neighborhoods. This includes monitoring fine particles, nitrogen oxides, elemental carbon, sulfur dioxide, and ozone, which can cause health problems. This project focusses on people, environment and living characteristics.
The same characteristics are important in the Vision Zero View project [27], which has the goal to eliminate deaths and serious injury from traffic crashes. Vision Zero View displays the location of every traffic fatality and serious injury within the last 5 years in an innovative presentation of data relating to crashes, serious injuries, deaths, safety improvement projects and public outreach efforts.
Other projects, such as MyNYCHA, establish new services via smartphone applications [28]. The MyNYCHA mobile application from the New York City housing authority allows public housing residents to manage maintenance service requests, view alerts and outages related to their developments and view their scheduled inspections via smartphones and tablets. This empowers residents to create service requests 24/7 and reduces the need for individual calls.
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