Smart Cities, Volume 4, Issue 2 (June 2021) – 25 articles

Behaviour change techniques are considered effective means for changing behaviour, and with an increase in their use the interest in their exact working principles has also expanded. This information is required to make informed choices about when to apply which technique. Computational models that describe human behaviour can be helpful for this. In this paper a few behaviour change techniques have been connected with a computational model of emotion and desire regulation. Simulations have been performed to illustrate the effect of the techniques. The results demonstrate the working mechanisms and feasibility of the techniques used in the model. Full article

The risk of theft of goods is certainly an important source of negative influence in human psychology. This article focuses on the development of a scheme that, despite its low cost, acts as a smart antitheft system that achieves small property detection. Specifically, an Internet of Things (IoT)-based participatory platform was developed in order to allow asset-tracking tasks to be crowd-sourced to a community. Stolen objects are traced by using a prototype Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-based system, which sends signals, thus becoming a beacon. Once such an item (e.g., a bicycle) is stolen, the owner informs the authorities, which, in turn, broadcast an alert signal to activate the BLE sensor. To trace the asset with the antitheft tag, participants use their GPS-enabled smart phones to scan BLE tags through a specific smartphone client application and report the location of the asset to an operation center so that owners can locate their assets. A stolen item tracking simulator was created to support and optimize the aforementioned tracking process and to produce the best possible outcome, evaluating the impact of different parameters and strategies regarding the selection of how many and which users to activate when searching for a stolen item within a given area. Full article

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. Full article

This paper introduces state-of-the-art possibilities for using smart contracts capabilities for governance. Assisted by blockchain, the use of these tools can provide a transition that society currently needs due the huge amount of information that reaches citizens. The core mechanism of this study lies within the scope of smart accounts and digital identities. These topics enclose smart cities trends that seek to increase citizens’ participation in the social decision making process, in a transparent way that is usually managed throughout decentralized systems. We define a set of available features that can automatically guide the flow of resources, after the conclusions of voting processes also conducted on trusted environments of distributed ledgers. By presenting innovative ideas and didactically describing the possibilities, we aim to promote awareness of blockchain capabilities among readers, students, decisions makers and, mainly, the younger generation. Full article

Binary logistic regression has been used to estimate the probability of lane change ($LC$) in the Cell Transmission Model (CTM). These models remain rigid, as the flexibility to predict $LC$ for different cell size configurations has not been accounted for. This paper introduces a relaxation method to refine the conventional binary logistic $LC$ model using an event-tree approach. The $LC$ probability for increasing cell size and cell length was estimated by expanding the $LC$ probability of a pre-defined model generated from different configurations of speed and density differences. The reliability of the proposed models has been validated with NGSIM trajectory data. The results showed that the models could accurately estimate the probability of $LC$ with a slight difference between the actual $LC$ and predicted $LC$ (95% Confidence Interval). Furthermore, a comparison of prediction performance between the proposed model and the actual observations has verified the model’s prediction ability with an accuracy of 0.69 and Area Under Curve ($AUC$) value above 0.6. The proposed method was able to accommodate the presence of multiple LCs when cell size changes. This is worthwhile to explore the importance of such consequences in affecting the performance of $LC$ prediction in the CTM model. Full article

Global warming contributes to the worldwide goal of a sustainable carbon-neutral society. Currently, hydroelectric, wind and solar power plants are the most competitive renewable technologies. They are limited to the primary resource availability, but while hydroelectric power plants (HPPs) can have storage capacity but have several geographical limitations, wind and solar power plants have variable renewable energy (VRE) with stochastic profiles, requiring a substantially higher investment when equipped with battery energy storage systems. One of the most affordable solutions to compensate the stochastic behaviour of VRE is the active participation of consumers with demand response capability. Therefore, the role of citizen energy communities (CECs) can be important towards a carbon-neutral society. This work presents the economic and environmental advantages of CECs, by aggregating consumers, prosumers and VRE at the distribution level, considering microgrid trades, but also establishing bilateral agreements with large-scale VRE and HPPs, and participating in electricity markets. Results from the case-study prove the advantages of CECs and self-consumption. Currently, CECs have potential to be carbon-neutral in relation to electricity consumption and reduce consumers’ costs with its variable term until 77%. In the future, electrification may allow CECs to be fully carbon-neutral, if they increase their flexibility portfolio. Full article

The smart city concept, in which data from different systems are available, contains a multitude of critical infrastructures. This data availability opens new research opportunities in the study of the interdependency between those critical infrastructures and cascading effects solutions and focuses on the smart city as a network of critical infrastructures. This paper proposes an integrated resilience system linking interconnected critical infrastructures in a smart city to improve disaster resilience. A data-driven approach is considered, using artificial intelligence and methods to minimize cascading effects and the destruction of failing critical infrastructures and their components (at a city level). The proposed approach allows rapid recovery of infrastructures’ service performance levels after disasters while keeping the coverage of the assessment of risks, prevention, detection, response, and mitigation of consequences. The proposed approach has the originality and the practical implication of providing a decision support system that handles the infrastructures that will support the city disaster management system—make the city prepare, adapt, absorb, respond, and recover from disasters by taking advantage of the interconnections between its various critical infrastructures to increase the overall resilience capacity. The city of Lisbon (Portugal) is used as a case to show the practical application of the approach. Full article

This work aims to monitor air quality in places where humans spend most of their time, such as workplaces and homes. Radon gas is a naturally occurring, colourless, odourless and tasteless gas that accumulates in enclosed spaces. It is a radioactive element produced by the decay of its natural parent elements, uranium and thorium, which is harmful to our respiratory system when inhaled. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the key to the problems of contemporary life; we are witnessing an emerging connected world, and these architectures have the potential by using sensors to take data from the physical world, transfer it over the network and store it for further decision making or action. The proposal of this work is based on a radon sensor connected to an IoT device, the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol (MQTT), the Node-RED for managing data flows and a database management system on a web server. The information collected by the sensor is sent by the IoT device to be processed by Node-RED. The obtained data is stored in a database to be represented on a web server. Therefore, this work includes a case study where the technologies involved in the indoor radon gas monitoring system are presented. It is a way to perform radon gas measurements automatically. The final application would allow: displaying radon concentrations on a map with placemarks and updating the information in real-time. The database could record data from other radon sensors that any user wants to associate with this website. Full article

Smart cities and communities (SCC) constitute a new paradigm in urban development. SCC ideate a data-centered society aimed at improving efficiency by automating and optimizing activities and utilities. Information and communication technology along with Internet of Things enables data collection and with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) situation awareness can be obtained to feed the SCC actors with enriched knowledge. This paper describes AI perspectives in SCC and gives an overview of AI-based technologies used in traffic to enable road vehicle automation and smart traffic control. Perception, smart traffic control and driver modeling are described along with open research challenges and standardization to help introduce advanced driver assistance systems and automated vehicle functionality in traffic. To fully realize the potential of SCC, to create a holistic view on a city level, availability of data from different stakeholders is necessary. Further, though AI technologies provide accurate predictions and classifications, there is an ambiguity regarding the correctness of their outputs. This can make it difficult for the human operator to trust the system. Today there are no methods that can be used to match function requirements with the level of detail in data annotation in order to train an accurate model. Another challenge related to trust is explainability: models can have difficulty explaining how they came to certain conclusions, so it is difficult for humans to trust them. Full article

This article addresses the challenges and capability gaps confronted by public administrations concerning digital transformation and the use of novel tools in the context of land use, facilities and urban services planning. The present state of planning and management processes in Finland is introduced and reflected through experimental piloting conducted in two Finnish cities. Participatory action research and design research methodology was utilised to identify the main challenges as well as unravel the possibilities of digital transformation in the context of public services planning. The resulting analysis revealed the critical importance of facilitating integrative policies and coordination when working across knowledge boundaries between administrative domains. The paper contributes to a wider theoretical and conceptual understanding, as it discusses the advantages and feasibility of digital tools as boundary objects for cross-sectoral work in smart, people-centred urban governance. The authors see this direction of research as a fruitful ground for further investigations within the interdisciplinary urban planning research context. Full article

The location placement of pick-up/drop-offs of ride hailing usually only considers spatial distribution within a certain area. Previous studies often mapped out the potential hotspots for pick-up/drop-offs, benefitting the ride-hailing company and not considering the passengers. Therefore, in this study, we incorporated the spatiotemporal distribution of mobility-on-demand on generating pick-up/drop-off location placement using a genetic algorithm considering the walking distance and minimum demand data served within the radius. The data collected are analyzed through the clustering method, and the resulting cluster centers are fed into the location optimization algorithm. The genetic algorithm is used to optimize the location placement with the consideration of the user’s walking distance and demand. The algorithm is able to find an appropriate placement and determine reliable pick-up/drop-off stations within the study area based on observed spatiotemporal demand despite the difference in demand distribution through different time periods. Full article

Nowadays, many urban areas are developing projects that are included within the area of smart cities. These systems tend to be highly heterogeneous and involve a large number of different technologies and participants. In general, cities deploy systems to integrate data and to provide protocols to ease interconnectivity between different subsystems. However, this is not enough to build a completely interoperable smart city, where control fully belongs to city administrators and citizens. Currently, in most cases, subsystems tend to be deployed and operated by providers creating silos. Furthermore, citizens, who should be the center of these systems, are often relegated to being just another participant. In this article, we study how smart cities can move towards decentralized and user-centric systems relying on distributed ledger technologies (DLT). For this, we define a conceptual framework that describes the interaction between smart city components, their participants, and the DLT ecosystem. We analyze the trust models that are created between the participants in the most relevant use cases, and we study the suitability of the different DLT types. Full article

On-demand microtransit services are frequently seen as an important tool in supporting first and last mile operations surrounding fixed route high frequency transit facilities, but questions remain surrounding who will use these novel services and for what purposes. In November 2019, the Utah Transit Authority launched an on-demand microtransit service in south Salt Lake County in partnership with a private mobility operator. This paper reports the results of an expressed preferences survey of 130 transit riders in the microtransit service area that was collected before and immediately after the service launched. There is not a clear relationship between current transit access mode and expressed willingness to use microtransit, although some responses from new riders indicate the novel service competes most directly with commercial transportation network company operations. The survey responses also reveal younger passengers express a more than expected willingness to use microtransit, middle-aged passengers a less than expected willingness, and older passengers neutral or no expressed opinion. The results suggest additional relationships between household size and transit use frequency, but further research is necessary. The effect of other user characteristics, including income and automobile availability, is less statistically clear and requires further research. Full article

The digital transformation supports many cities on the way to becoming smarter cities, enabling them to enhance digital processes, care about climate-friendly goals, or improve the quality of life of their citizens. However, such changes usually take place step by step and not in a big-bang approach. In order for the direction of the digital transformation to be defined, it is necessary to know and understand the needs and requirements of all relevant stakeholders who will be affected or are intended to use the new digital solutions. As our environment, a smart city district, is currently under construction, we do not know most of the future stakeholders yet. Therefore, we had to find new ways of eliciting the needs and requirements for digital solutions without knowing, e.g., the citizens who will live in the future district. We show a framework of the procedures we followed, classified into (a) vision and concepts, (b) smart city district digital ecosystem, and (c) dissemination and events. We substantiate the processes with example results and provide a discussion on how we evaluate our solutions with respect to future applicability. Because evaluations are only very limited in our setting right now, we focus on four lead questions to argue why the procedures and results are adequate and share the lessons we learned on this path towards a digital smart city district. Full article

Under present-day practices, the vehicles on our roadways and city streets are mere spectators that witness traffic-related events without being able to participate in the mitigation of their effect. This paper lays the theoretical foundations of a framework for harnessing the on-board computational resources in vehicles stuck in urban congestion in order to assist transportation agencies with preventing or dissipating congestion through large-scale signal re-timing. Our framework is called VACCS: Vehicular Crowdsourcing for Congestion Support in Smart Cities. What makes this framework unique is that we suggest that in such situations the vehicles have the potential to cooperate with various transportation authorities to solve problems that otherwise would either take an inordinate amount of time to solve or cannot be solved for lack for adequate municipal resources. VACCS offers direct benefits to both the driving public and the Smart City. By developing timing plans that respond to current traffic conditions, overall traffic flow will improve, carbon emissions will be reduced, and economic impacts of congestion on citizens and businesses will be lessened. It is expected that drivers will be willing to donate under-utilized on-board computing resources in their vehicles to develop improved signal timing plans in return for the direct benefits of time savings and reduced fuel consumption costs. VACCS allows the Smart City to dynamically respond to traffic conditions while simultaneously reducing investments in the computational resources that would be required for traditional adaptive traffic signal control systems. Full article

Many smart city applications have been proposed and demonstrated over the years; however, moving to large-scale deployment is still scarce. A contributing factor to this scarcity is the lack of well-established engineering methodologies for large-scale smart city applications. This paper addresses engineering methodologies and tools for large-scale smart city application engineering, implementation, deployment, and evolution. A model-based engineering approach based on IoT, SOA, and SysML is proposed and applied to a smart streetlight application. Engineering considerations for streetlight area enlargement and updated technology generations with additional capabilities are discussed. The proposed model-based engineering approach provides considerable scaling simplifications and opportunities for considerable savings on engineering costs. The model-based engineering approach also provides good documentation that enables technology evolution specifications that support both maintenance and emerging behaviours. Full article

The Internet of Things (IoT) has come of age, and complex solutions can now be implemented seamlessly within urban governance and management frameworks and processes. For cities, growing rates of car ownership are rendering parking availability a challenge and lowering the quality of life through increased carbon emissions. The development of smart parking solutions is thus necessary to reduce the time spent looking for parking and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The principal role of this research paper is to analyze smart parking solutions from a technical perspective, underlining the systems and sensors that are available, as documented in the literature. The review seeks to provide comprehensive insights into the building of smart parking solutions. A holistic survey of the current state of smart parking systems should incorporate the classification of such systems as big vehicular detection technologies. Finally, communication modules are presented with clarity. Full article

The compliance of IoT platforms to quality is paramount to achieve users’ satisfaction. Currently, we do not have a comprehensive set of guidelines to appraise and select the most suitable IoT platform architectures that meet relevant criteria. This paper is a tentative response to this critical knowledge gap where we adopted the design science research approach to develop a novel evaluation framework. Our research, on the one hand, stimulates an unbiased competition among IoT platform providers and, on the other hand, establishes a solid foundation for IoT platform consumers to make informed decisions in this multiplicity. The application of the framework is illustrated in example scenarios. Moreover, lessons learned from applying design science research are shared. Full article

Despite immense efforts to realize diverse visions of the ‘smart city,’ municipalities still face manifold uncertainties of how governance and the tools of governance can best support public and regional value creation for achieving urban sustainability. To this end, Urban Living Labs have become a known enabling mechanism. In this paper, we extend the lab idea and formulate the concept of Urban Experimentation Platform that focuses on developing urban innovation ecosystems for urban sustainability. We use action design research and participant observation across multiple case studies enacting Urban Experimentation Platforms in order to investigate how the tie-in between governance and the local lab’s innovation process unfolds. Our analysis distills three facets that are instrumental in institutionalizing these platforms as resilient organizational models. With the help of the case studies, we illustrate the three facets, concerning issues of urban ecosystem governance, empowering co-creation, and qualifying local innovation. The facets reinforce the roles of digital instruments and digital capabilities for effective urban governance and platform management. We draw some conclusions for future research and formulate policy recommendations for implementing and operating Urban Experimentation Platforms. Full article

The smart grid is enabling the collection of massive amounts of high-dimensional and multi-type data about the electric power grid operations, by integrating advanced metering infrastructure, control technologies, and communication technologies. However, the traditional modeling, optimization, and control technologies have many limitations in processing the data; thus, the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in the smart grid are becoming more apparent. This survey presents a structured review of the existing research into some common AI techniques applied to load forecasting, power grid stability assessment, faults detection, and security problems in the smart grid and power systems. It also provides further research challenges for applying AI technologies to realize truly smart grid systems. Finally, this survey presents opportunities of applying AI to smart grid problems. The paper concludes that the applications of AI techniques can enhance and improve the reliability and resilience of smart grid systems. Full article

Connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology, along with advanced traffic control systems, cannot ensure congestion-free traffic when the number of vehicles exceeds the road capacity. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose a dynamic ride-sharing system based on incentives (for both passengers and drivers) that incorporates travelers of similar routes and time schedules on short notice. The objective is to reduce the number of private vehicles on urban roads by utilizing the available seats properly. We develop a mobile-cloud architecture-based system that enables real-time ride-sharing. The effectiveness of the proposed system is evaluated through microscopic traffic simulation using Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) considering the traffic flow behavior of a real smart city. Moreover, we develop a lab-scale experimental prototype in the form of Internet of Things (IoT) network. The simulation results show that the proposed system reduces fuel consumption, CO${}_2$ and CO emissions, and average waiting time of vehicles significantly, while increasing the vehicle’s average speed. Remarkably, it is found that only 2–10% ride-sharing can improve the overall traffic performance. Full article

This paper evaluates the status quo of modern society and identifies the neglect of humanism as the root cause of many of today’s global challenges. Note that “smart cities” are not excluded from this indictment. The “Ptolemaic Universe” offers a means to restore our symbiosis with the environment. The ReSeT model is proposed as a tool to analyze the Ptolemaic Universe. Using ReSeT: Homo Sapiens becomes dependent on AI resulting in Homo Digitalis, with further evolution in concert with AI resulting in Homo Digitus. All of these stages are then analyzed in the context of global trusted dependability (GTD). The wellness domain, provides the design specification framework for Homo Digitus’ human-centered and resilient “smart city” ecosystem. This ultimately leads to a better world of increased wellness for Homo Hominus, with better smart cities emphasizing education and science, promoting wisdom and common sense, and rejecting violence. In summary, humanity has generated diverse social structures with erratic outcomes. On the other hand, technology provides a successful foundation for modern society especially in the Pandemic Era. However, technology’s contributions are generally not publicly acknowledged. The paper concludes with several initiatives designed to establish a trusted and resilient society. Full article

This paper develops an enhanced inverse filtering-based methodology for drive-by frequency identification of bridges using smartphones for real-life applications. As the vibration recorded on a vehicle is dominated by vehicle features including suspension system and speed as well as road roughness, inverse filtering aims at suppressing these effects through filtering out vehicle- and road-related features, thus mitigating a few of the significant challenges for the indirect identification of the bridge frequency. In the context of inverse filtering, a novel approach of constructing a database of vehicle vibrations for different speeds is presented to account for the vehicle speed effect on the performance of the method. In addition, an energy-based surface roughness criterion is proposed to consider surface roughness influence on the identification process. The successful performance of the methodology is investigated for different vehicle speeds and surface roughness levels. While most indirect bridge monitoring studies are investigated in numerical and laboratory conditions, this study proves the capability of the proposed methodology for two bridges in a real-life scale. Promising results collected using only a smartphone as the data acquisition device corroborate the fact that the proposed inverse filtering methodology could be employed in a crowdsourced framework for monitoring bridges at a global level in smart cities through a more cost-effective and efficient process. Full article

The issue of how to power the deployed Internet of Things (IoT) nodes with ubiquitous and long lasting energy in order to ensure uninterruptible optimisation of smart cities is of utmost concern. This among other challenges has continued to gear efforts toward energy harvesting research. With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown that nearly paralysed activities of everyday living in many nations of the world, option of human remote interaction to enforce social distancing became imperative. Hence, the world is witnessing a renewed awareness of the importance of IoT devices, as integral components of smart city, especially for the essence of survival in the face of lockdown. Energy harvesting is a possible solution that could enable IoT nodes to scavenge self-sustaining energy from environmental ambient sources. In this paper, we have reviewed most sources within city that energy could be harvested from, as reported by researchers in literature. In addition, we have submitted that energy sources can be application specific, such that, since there are many free sources in the city as presented in this review, energy should be scavenged within close proximity of need for various IoT devices or wireless sensor networks (WSNs), for smart city automation. Full article

Internet of Things (IoT) is a system that integrates different devices and technologies, removing the necessity of human intervention. This enables the capacity of having smart (or smarter) cities around the world. By hosting different technologies and allowing interactions between them, the internet of things has spearheaded the development of smart city systems for sustainable living, increased comfort and productivity for citizens. The IoT for Smart Cities has many different domains and draws upon various underlying systems for its operation. In this paper, we provide a holistic coverage of the Internet of Things in Smart Cities. We start by discussing the fundamental components that make up the IoT based Smart City landscape followed by the technologies that enable these domains to exist in terms of architectures utilized, networking technologies used as well as the Artificial Algorithms deployed in IoT based Smart City systems. This is then followed up by a review of the most prevalent practices and applications in various Smart City domains. Lastly, the challenges that deployment of IoT systems for smart cities encounter along with mitigation measures. Full article