The term “Smart City” denotes a comprehensive concept to alleviate pending problems of modern urban areas which have developed into an important work field for practitioners and scholars alike. However, the question remains as to how cities can become “smart”. The application of information technology is generally considered a key driver in the “smartization” of cities. Detailed frameworks and procedures are therefore needed to guide, operationalize, and measure the implementation process as well as the impact of the respective technologies. In this paper, we discuss blockchain technology, a novel driver of technological transformation that comprises a multitude of underlying technologies and protocols, and its potential impact on smart cities. We specifically address the question of how blockchain technology may benefit the development of urban areas. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we present a framework and research propositions. We identify nine application fields of blockchain technology in the smartization of cities: (1) healthcare, (2) logistics and supply chains, (3) mobility, (4) energy, (5) administration and services, (6) e-voting, (7) factory, (8) home and (9) education. We discuss current developments in these fields, illustrate how they are affected by blockchain technology and derive propositions to guide future research endeavors.

Blockchain as a Driver for Smart City Development: Application Fields and a Comprehensive Research Agenda

The development of technologies enables the application of the Internet of Things (IoT) in urban environments, creating smart cities. Hence, the optimal management of data generated in the interconnection of electronic sensors in real time improves the quality of life. The objective of this study is to analyze global research on smart cities based on IoT technology applications. For this, bibliometric techniques were applied to 1232 documents on this topic, corresponding to the period 2011–2019, to obtain findings on scientific activity and the main thematic areas. Scientific production has increased annually, so that the last triennium has accumulated 83.23% of the publications. The most outstanding thematic areas were Computer Science and Engineering. Seven lines have been identified in the development of research on smart cities based on IoT applications. In addition, the study has detected seven new future research directions. The growing trend at the global level of scientific production shows the interest in developing aspects of smart cities based on IoT applications. This study contributes to the academic, scientific, and institutional discussion to improve decision making based on the available information.

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IoT Technology Applications-Based Smart Cities: Research Analysis

This study presents a systematic review of the literature of 84 articles and books (1997–2020) dealing with the concept and processes of Smart Cities worldwide. It identifies and analyses the three...

The Smart City journey: a systematic review and future research agenda

Sharing economy requires cities to redefine their management strategies. As a consequence of the development of new ideas, the main aim of modern cities should focus on achieving the sustainable use of resources. In the existing literature, only a partial analysis of resources management in cities can be found. For this reason, the authors decided to prepare the framework for empirical research about resources management in sharing economy in cities, especially in the urban logistics system. The main aim of the study is systematizing criteria related to the assessment of the management of urban resources in the era of sharing economy. To achieve the goal of the research, a systematic literature review was made according to chosen approaches and procedures. This resulted in creating a set of criteria for the analysis and evaluation of resources management in urban areas. It contains five areas with 26 criteria and a map of assumed correlations between them. Those outcomes can be used by local authorities or even other urban logistics stakeholders to define or improve their actions aimed at developing a sharing economy services portfolio on the local market. Additionally, they constitute a set of initial information for further scientific research.

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/9/9/113/pdf

Assessing Resources Management for Sharing Economy in Urban Logistics

This paper examines the changing industrial ecosystem of smart cities in Korea using both input–output and structural path analysis from 1960 to 2015. The industry type of the input–output tables used in the Bank of Korea was reclassified into nine categories: Agriculture and Mining, Traditional Manufacturing, IT Manufacturing, Construction, Energy, IT Services, Knowledge Services, Traditional Services and other unclassified. The paper identified the changing patterns of an industrial ecosystem of smart cities in Korea. The study found that smart industries such as smart buildings and smart vehicles are anchor industries in Korean smart cities, and they are positively correlated with three other industries: IT Manufacturing, IT Services and Knowledge Services. The results of the input–output and structural path analysis show that the conventional industrial structure of labor-intensive manufacturing and diesel and petroleum cars has been transformed to the emerging high-tech industries and services in smart cities. Smart industries such as IT Manufacturing, IT Services and Knowledge Services have led to sustainable national economic growth, with greater value-added than other industries. The underlying demand for smart industries in Korea is rapidly growing, suggesting that other industries will seek further informatization, automatization and smartification. Consequently, smart industries are emerging as anchor industries which create value chains of new industries, serving as accelerators or incubators, for the development of other industries.

Sustainable Smart Cities and Industrial Ecosystem: Structural and Relational Changes of the Smart City Industries in Korea

Given the continuous development of urban areas, integrated policies are needed to improve the lives of urban residents by implementing integrated, interoperable and secure electronic services. Public administrations recognize the potential of blockchain in solving the problems of local communities. Blockchain, initially perceived through its association with cryptocurrency bitcoin, offers an innovative perspective on how smart cities can be organized and a more transparent economic model for resource management. This study analyses how blockchain technology-based services can contribute to the development of smart cities and proposes a Smart City ecosystem model based on SSI (Self-Sovereign Identity) authentication model and smart contracts between entities, citizens and administrations. It also overviews the domains in which this technology can be used. The results can be a starting point for the development of local initiatives for using the blockchain as a platform for communications and transactions in the public sector.

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Smart City Ecosystem Using Blockchain Technology

Smart city represents an emerging topic because efficient city management is beneficial for both government and private sector businesses. IoT envisions to connect billions of sensors to the Internet and expects to use them for efficient and effective resource management in Smart Cities. An organisation collects data analyses it and uses the results as an input for decision making processes. The paper provides an overview of the smart city concept relying on IoT and Big Data technologies, an overview on Smart City development in Romania and describes four Smart City national solutions. Their benefits are efficient resource utilization, increased quality of life, higher levels of transparency and openness towards citizens. A smart city uses digital technologies or information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance quality and performance of urban services to make lives of citizens better. It becomes easier to navigate for visitors, and more serendipitous for locals. City officials and municipal governments are provided with a completely new way to connect with citizens and visitors and a city that is more connected to its people works and feels better.

http://www.ecoforumjournal.ro/index.php/eco/article/download/711/443

Smart city applications built on big data technologies and secure iot

The Once-Only Principle states that citizens and businesses provide data only once in contact with public administrations. So far, many European countries have started to implement the Once-Only Principle at national level, but its cross-border implementation is still fragmented and limited. This paper presents the development of a Reference Architecture for the Once-Only Principle in Europe. The case study, stemming from the EU-funded Once-Only Principle project (TOOP) highlights the challenges faced by the architecture team when developing the Reference Architecture that tackles the Once-Only Principle across different countries and policy domains. The architecture is not built from scratch, but re-uses and enhances already available building blocks in order to seamlessly preserve interoperability and to comply with regulations and existing technical standards, leaving at the same time enough space for vendors and open source developers to propose their compliant solutions, whatever is their business model.

Towards a Cross-Border Reference Architecture for the Once-Only Principle in Europe: An Enterprise Modelling Approach

An important percentage of the projects undertaken at EU level are mainly set up in view of creating strategies, methods and models for developing the digital infrastructure of the Member States, but also to ensure sustainable development at national, European and international level. The European Sustainable Development Network has set priorities that need to be and are addressed within the framework of the majority of the projects aforementioned.

European Sustainable Development Through Networked Electronic Services

The Once-Only Principle requires the public administrations to ensure that citizens and businesses supply the same information only once to the Public Administration as a whole. Widespread use of the Once-Only Principle has the potential to simplify citizens’ life, make businesses more efficient, and reduce administrative burden in the European Union. The Once-Only Principle project (TOOP) is an initiative, financed by the EU Program Horizon 2020, to explore the possibility to enable the cross-border application of the Once-Only Principle by demonstrating it in practice, through the development of selected piloting applications for specific real-world use cases, enabling the connection of different registries and architectures in different countries for better exchange of information across public administrations. These piloting ICT systems are designed as a result of a pan-European collaboration and they adopt a federated model, to allow for a high degree of independence between the participating parties in the development of their own solutions. The main challenge in the implementation of an OOP solution is the diversity of organizations, procedures, data, and services on all four main levels of interoperability: legal, organizational, semantic, and technical. To address this challenge, TOOP is developing and testing the TOOP Reference Architecture (TOOPRA) to assist organizations in the cross-border implementation of the OOP. The paper outlines the TOOPRA users, principles, and requirements, presents an overview of the architecture development, describes the main views of TOOPRA, discusses architecture profiling, and analyses the TOOPRA sustainability issues.

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Carmen Rotuna

Papers

Smart City Ecosystem Using Blockchain Technology

Smart city applications built on big data technologies and secure iot

Towards a Cross-Border Reference Architecture for the Once-Only Principle in Europe: An Enterprise Modelling Approach

European Sustainable Development Through Networked Electronic Services

The Technical Challenges in OOP Application Across the European Union and the TOOP OOP Architecture