Margarita Angelidou, Artemis Psaltoglou, Nicos Komninos, Christina Kakderi, Panagiotis Tsarchopoulos and Anastasia Panori
This paper investigates the potential contribution of smart city approaches and tools to sustainable urban development in the environment domain. Recent research has highlighted…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper investigates the potential contribution of smart city approaches and tools to sustainable urban development in the environment domain. Recent research has highlighted the need to explore the relation of smart and sustainable cities more systematically, focusing on practical applications that could enable a deeper understanding of the included domains, typologies and design concepts, and this paper aims to address this research gap. At the same time, it tries to identify whether these applications could contribute to the “zero vision” strategy, an extremely ambitious challenge within the field of smart cities.
Design/methodology/approach
This objective is pursued through an in-depth investigation of available open source and proprietary smart city applications related to environmental sustainability in urban environments. A total of 32 applications were detected through the Intelligent/Smart Cities Open Source (ICOS) community, a meta-repository for smart cities solutions. The applications are analyzed comparatively regarding (i) the environmental issue addressed, (ii) the associated mitigation strategies, (iii) the included innovation mechanism, (iv) the role of information and communication technologies and (v) the overall outcome.
Findings
The findings suggest that the smart and sustainable city landscape is extremely fragmented both on the policy and the technical levels. There is a host of unexplored opportunities toward smart sustainable development, many of which are still unknown. Similar findings are reached for all categories of environmental challenges in cities. Research limitations pertain to the analysis of a relatively small number of applications. The results can be used to inform policy making toward becoming more proactive and impactful both locally and globally. Given that smart city application market niches are also identified, they are also of special interest to developers, user communities and digital entrepreneurs.
Originality/value
The value added by this paper is two-fold. At the theoretical level, it offers a neat conceptual bridge between smart and sustainable cities debate. At the practical level, it identifies under-researched and under-exploited fields of smart city applications that could be opportunities to attain the “zero vision” objective.
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Nicos Komninos, Bernard Musyck and Alasdair Iain Reid
The purpose of this paper is to assess how national and regional authorities in south-east Europe in a period of crisis perceive and set in motion research and innovation…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess how national and regional authorities in south-east Europe in a period of crisis perceive and set in motion research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3) and the options that these strategies offer to overcome the current fiscal and development crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper starts with a literature review on the guiding principles of smart specialisation strategies and the differences from previous rounds of regional innovation strategies. Evidence on smart specialisation efforts is provided by cases studies in Greece, Slovenia, and Cyprus, focusing on the elaboration of such strategies in three countries with precarious innovation systems under severe conditions of crisis. The case studies are organised around key aspects of the smart specialisation logic, such as the selection of specialisation priorities, bottom-up governance, private sector leadership, and engines of innovation and competitiveness.
Findings
The paper explores the obstacles encountered in running effective RIS strategies under crisis conditions. The paper highlights the main challenges to address, such as the readiness and credibility of public authorities to design and implement sound RIS3 strategies, the willingness of companies to be involved in strategic planning, the availability of private investment funds, innovation and diversification during a crisis, and the drivers of specialisation that could lead to competitiveness and growth. In the conclusions the paper identifies three routes towards smarter productive diversification and five critical stages in the entrepreneurial discovery process.
Originality/value
The paper has both practical and theoretical significance. It focuses on the main challenges of smart specialisation and offers guidance in the elaboration of RIS3 in peripheral EU economies. On the other hand, it proposes a model for the entrepreneurial discovery process, based on the assessment of areas and futures of productivity and added-value increase, as productive diversification and crisis exit route.
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Anna Visvizi, Miltiadis D. Lytras, Ernesto Damiani and Hassan Mathkour
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the research trends in smart cities (SCs) in order to demonstrate the most and the least active fields, researchers, institutions, frontier…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the research trends in smart cities (SCs) in order to demonstrate the most and the least active fields, researchers, institutions, frontier active centers/authors and funding institutions, as well as drawing the map of the most active countries in this scope.
Design/methodology/approach
Bibliometric data of 4,696 scientific works were collected from Web of Science, one of the most authentic bibliometric databases, within 1970–2018. The data were analyzed using scientometrics and content analysis methods and visualized by tables, charts and atlases.
Findings
The results showed an increasing trend in these studies mostly published as conference papers during 48 years. In this period, 0.6 percent of the papers got more than ten citations. Highly cited fields in the area of SCs were orderly smart IT infrastructure, smart government, smart environment, smart mobility, smart energy, smart economy and smart citizen. The geographic atlas of SC studies showed that the frontier countries in SCs were China, Spain and Italy, orderly. China’s main focus was on smart infrastructure while Spain’s focus was smart citizens and smart energy. Italy’s studies were mostly concentrated on smart government, smart mobility and smart environment. In general, it can be concluded that “smart IT infrastructure” was the most noted among the other components of SCs.
Originality/value
The scientometrics of SC literature has been conducted for the first time.
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Francesco Bifulco, Marco Tregua, Cristina Caterina Amitrano and Anna D'Auria
Contemporary debate is increasingly focused on ICT and sustainability, especially in relation to the modern configuration of urban and metropolitan areas in the so-called…
Abstract
Purpose
Contemporary debate is increasingly focused on ICT and sustainability, especially in relation to the modern configuration of urban and metropolitan areas in the so-called smartization process. The purpose of this paper is to observe the connections between smart city features as conceptualized in the framework proposed by Giffinger et al. (2007) and new technologies as tools, and sustainability as the goal.
Design/methodology/approach
The connections are identified through a content analysis performed using NVivo on official reports issued by organizations, known as industry players within smart city projects, listed in the Navigant Research Report 2013.
Findings
The results frame ICT and sustainability as “across-the-board elements” because they connect with all of the services provided to communities in a smart city and play a key role in smart city planning. Specifically, sustainability and ICT can be seen as tools to enable the smartization process.
Research limitations/implications
An all-in-one perspective emerges by embedding sustainability and ICT in smart interventions; further research could be conduct through direct interviews to city managers and industry players in order to understand their attitude towards the development of smart city projects.
Practical implications
Potential approaches emerging from this research are useful to city managers or large corporations partnering with local agencies in order to increase the opportunities for the long-term success of smart projects.
Originality/value
The results of this paper delineate a new research path looking at the development of new models that integrate drivers, ICT, and sustainability in an all-in-one perspective and new indicators for the evaluation of the interventions.
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The purpose of this paper is to focus on the distinction between smart specialisation and smart specialisation policy and it studies under what conditions a smart specialisation…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the distinction between smart specialisation and smart specialisation policy and it studies under what conditions a smart specialisation policy is necessary.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual framework is built based on historical evidence of successful dynamics of structural changes at regional level qualified as “smart specialisation”. The identification of market and coordination failures that are likely to impede the occurrence of spontaneous process of smart specialisation makes a good case for a smart specialisation policy.
Findings
The paper highlights important design principles for the policy process that should help to minimise potential risks of policy failures and policy capture.
Research limitations/implications
The paper does assess the effect of smart specialisation on innovation and growth at regional level because it is too early to observe and measure effects. The paper confines itself to conjectures about the effects of such a policy.
Practical implications
The paper makes recommendations and explains some of the practicalities about the implementation of the policy at regional level.
Originality/value
The paper is one of the first dealing with the topic of smart specialisation policy.