This paper elaborates on the importance of a user-driven approach in the design and development of innovative services and applications for smart cities. By reporting on two case studies situated in the city of Ghent (Belgium), that are part of larger projects, we illustrate how we have applied different user-centred innovation development methods and strategies in order to generate and evaluate innovative concepts and ideas for smart city applications. This paper discusses and compares the work conducted in these case studies by documenting for each case study (a) the policy context and strategy, (b) the problems addressed and the solutions achieved, and (c) the (e-)deliberation (2.0) approaches used. Furthermore, we assess the effectiveness and impact of both approaches and report on the results and the lessons learned.

E–deliberation 2.0 for smart cities: a critical assessment of two 'idea generation' cases

The invention comprises a method of locating a vehicle, comprising: a) connecting a removable locator device to the vehicle, said locator device automatically noting when it has been connected to the vehicle and then using locating technology to retrieve, at regular intervals, location coordinates for the current location of said locator device, said location coordinates approximating the location of the vehicle; b) sensing a loss of connection between the locator device and the vehicle; c) automatically storing, as a waypoint on the locator device, the last location coordinates retrieved prior to sensing said loss of connection; and, d) removing the locator device from the vehicle to enable use of the locator device to return to the stored waypoint, wherein the stored waypoint represents the approximate location of the vehicle.

System and method for locating a vehicle

This paper elaborates on the first results of an ongoing living lab project on ‘smart’ city engagement and offers a theoretical, methodological and empirical contribution to the field of user-driven innovation by describing a crowdsourcing experiment conducted in collaboration with the city of Ghent (Flanders).
Our presented living lab approach has a double goal. First, it wants to empower citizens by systematically transforming the relationship(s) between citizens and between citizens (as service users) and local city-related governmental institutes (as service providers) by offering smart city applications. Second, it has the ambition to go beyond reactively studying information systems as change agents and wants to pro-actively improve engineering systems that can contribute to the desired changes in city engagement. Supporting citizens as self-actuating sensors to open up more innovative ways of collecting data is an important boundary of the research within a living lab context. We aim for user-driven innovation by involving citizens in the co-production of new electronic public services. Therefore we choose to go through a co-design process (Sanders & Stappers, 2008) with citizens defining the smart engagement applications that most probably will be developed and implemented in a living lab setting.
Today, various innovation companies and organizations envision a central role for the user when looking for innovations. The attention for participation of the user is growing since the 80’s, although that the meaning of the concept ‘participation’ is not stable. Different people have used ‘participation’ in a wide variety of different situations and the widespread use of the term has tended to mean that ‘participation’ is used to refer to a wide variety of different situations by different people (Pateman, 1972). Therefore some point to participation as an empty signifier (Carpentier, 2007). The history and origin (and radicalism) of the concept as related to power issues is fading away under the diversity of its different meanings. Recently different participative methods were developed and are used to learn about users and their needs. Some known user-centered methods within industry are working with living labs (Niitamo, Kulkki, Eriksson, & Hribernik, 2006) and crowdsourcing (Hudson-Smith, Batty, Crooks, & Milton, 2009). Although participative methods were initially mainly focused on handing over the power to the user, currently much more attention is given to usability of applications and market forecasting when in the context of user involvement or co-creation. The analysis of power relations is fading slowly away. In our research the notion of participation is used in two ways: as a political phrase, referring to users who are gaining more power and impact on societal changes, and as a practical phrase referring to the forecasting of the success of urban smart engagement apps. 
This paper is structured in four parts. The first part of the paper introduces the concepts of engagement and ‘smartness’. The second part of the paper introduces crowdsourcing and also elaborates on the related concepts of ‘Web 2.0”, ‘collective intelligence’ and ‘wisdom of crowds’. The third part of the paper describes our methodology, introduces the online crowdsourcing enabler ‘mijndigitaalideevoorgent’, and presents the first, preliminary results of our crowdscourcing experiment. The fourth and last part of the paper formulates a conclusion and discussion of the results.

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1887102/file/2951841.pdf

Crowdsourcing for smart engagement apps in an urban context: an explorative study

The availability of high-sensitivity GNSS receivers coupled with newly developed signal processing and sensor fusion has enabled a new, robust solution to measuring vehicle location in urban areas. This, in turn, enables a reliable, wireless, location anonymous, data service for metering road use so that “same-trip = same charge” can now be guaranteed. This same technology can now meter a parked car to its exact lot/spot, exact time and exact per-minute price. As cities and regions begin to deploy congestion pricing systems, there will be a ready-made opportunity for municipalities and private operators to use this same metering and payment service architecture to manage wide-area, infrastructure-free, hands-free parking. On this same data aggregation platform it is possible to layer services for pay-as-you-drive insurance. Such a combined payment services platform reduces parking transaction costs virtually to zero and reduces marginal management costs per spot so dramatically as to allow municipalities and private operators to bring far more parking inventory under profitable management. Interest in parking demand management as a critical transportation demand management tool is increasing. With the publication of Donald Shoup's work [7] comes an increasing realization that underpriced parking can be a direct contributor to CBD congestion and an invitation to bring private vehicles into the centers of such cites, thereby contributing to interurban and exurban congestion, as well. This paper will detail how parking management can become a critical lever in the fight against urban traffic congestion, as well as briefly discuss the technical innovation that makes this possible. (4 pages)

/pdf/why-and-how-high-sensitivity-gnss-receivers-will-make-2kctib6s4v.pdf

Bern Grush

Papers

Why and how high-sensitivity GNSS receivers will make parking the dominant new transport demand management tool