This presentation critiques the role of mass screening thermal imaging systems (MSTIS) during the Covid-19 pandemic, questioning whether such systems were sold for the purpose of restoring consumer and staff confidence at business premises rather than truly limiting the spread of the virus.
While the strengths and weaknesses of artificial intelligence is widely documented, studies before...
Our European cities are on the eve of a new phase of intense compaction within the existing urban fabric. Amsterdam has adopted climate, energy and circularity goals that need to account for these developments.
In the last decade, much attention has been concentrated on the engineerable transitions and missions to mitigate climate change - and anticipate future shortages of essential...
The challenge of how cities can be designed and developed in an inclusive and sustainable direction is monumental. Smart city technologies currently offer the most promising solution for long-term sustainability. However, smart city projects have been criticised for ignoring diverse needs of the local population and increasing social divides. A sustainable urban environment depends as much on...
The smart city concept is being viewed as the urban future, integrating technological advances with strategic goals and ambitions to achieve sustainable urban development. Smart mobility is considered a vital element of the smart city, given that urban transport systems must become more efficient and sustainable. With this in mind, we raise the question: how sustainable is smart mobility?
To...
While different kinds of Automated Vehicles (AVs) are already running on the streets of developed countries, there is almost no officially commenced or announced AVs’ related projects in most of the developing countries, including Turkey. With regard to the enormous investments of automakers and technology leading companies on vehicles automation technologies, it is not far from the truth to...
Throughout the history of extractive industries, we’ve seen a “profits first” model that places profits over people and a livable planet. Often it is marginalized communities that bear the brunt of the negative impacts from these projects. Now, we are beginning to see similar conflicts not only within extractive industries, but within the transition to a green economy as well. If we are to...
Greenwashing could be understood as a practice that companies and organisations engage with when (re)branding ideas on the pretence that they contribute to environmentally friendly and sustainable practices. Usually, such organisations are hiding or distracting attention away from unsustainable operations.
This presentation identifies the extent of greenwashing in society. Specifically, it...
Nordic municipalities are providing policies for reducing pollution, building more healthy and liveable spaces and reducing climate change impacts. However, municipalities have limited resources and institutional hindrance for innovative policy approaches.
During the last decades, the main approach to tackle environmental challenges was to harness innovative technologies and to acquire...
More and more pilot projects are started which make use of autonomous cars. Not all challenges are overcome yet but a clear path to a use in versatile fields of application is foreseeable. Autonomous micro vehicles are suitable for various applications in last mile logistics. Operating across sidewalks and cycling paths and not only on roads requires more information regarding the...
The Covid-19 pandemic is exacerbating concerns about inequalities and life-threatening socio-ecological relationships, leading researchers to reconsider the meaning of justice. In general, this context forces us to take the concept of uncertainty as crucial: this dimension proves to be decisive both in relation to decision-making processes (Scoones, Stirling, 2020) and to the processes of...
Despite efforts to mitigate climate change, which are aided by the rise of smart and energy-optimal buildings and cities, the global phenomenon continues to accelerate. As a result, the frequency and intensity of natural disasters is only increasing year after year. In order to address these events that can have devastating impacts (loss of life and economic value) in cities especially,...
Urban spaces in cities are currently facing a dual challenge: on one side, a sustainable (re)-design of buildings and neighbourhoods for reducing energy consumption and carbon emission; on the other side, the restraint of soil sealing and urban sprawl for preserving the limited natural resources and the health of ecosystems. In this framework, the concept of densification plays a key role...
This paper draws on the policy mobilities literature in urban studies——policy failure (Temenos/Lauermann 2020) in particular——to understand the strategic practices of large digital corporations (LDCs) in urban development. While it is relatively new that LDCs are actors in urban development, their role has moved beyond being the producers of new technologies that claim to make cities more...
Urban densification in Norway is promoted as a critical planning policy for cities to comply with sustainable development goals. Numerous empirical studies suggest that the well-coordinated connection between spatial form, mixed-used land patterns, and public transport is fundamental in the pursuit of reducing energy consumption and achieving efficient utilisation of land in urbanised areas....
In his book ‘Smart City Citizenship’, Calzada (2021) proposes a fifth helix in the multi-stakeholder framework of innovation in the smart city, including activists as key drivers. This paper will look to one such demographic that has rediscovered activism in large numbers recently – young people. The paper will examine how young people envision the future ‘smart city’.
Citizenship as a...
Emerging technologies bundled within "smart mobility" represent a new transformation of urban mobility, the practitioners and policymakers must act pro-actively to increase its acceptance among citizens. Smart mobility, largely reliant on — vast numbers of IoT devices, communication technology (ICT), and personal data — can raise privacy concerns. Despite increased studies on privacy concerns...
Positive Energy Districts (PED) are increasing getting attention as an instrument towards climate neutral, smart and inclusive cities. There is much ongoing debate on how to set the scope, boundaries and benchmarks of PEDs. For many local project partners this is confusing. This discussion could be structured by differentiating between four main perspectives from which a PED could be scoped,...
Wireless communications are one of the main technologies that enable the smart cities. How will the future wireless communication technologies impact the future smart cities? First, the current wireless communication technologies will be briefly presented. Then, the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks will be introduced and the potential impacts and challenges of 5G on future smart cities...
Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), through recent development, have not only enabled simple transactions, but also complex computation on a network where parties are geographically distant or have no particular trust in each other to interact and exchange value and information on a fully distributed basis with fewer to non-existent central intermediaries. There are...
The terms sustainable neighborhoods, eco-neighborhood or eco-districts are often used interchangeably regarding an approach that deals with sustainable neighborhood developments (SNDs) and communities. This proposal aims to examine the great variety of examples that can range greatly in land area from the footprint of complex made up from a small number of buildings to a larger development...
The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily disrupted activities over the past 1.5 years, with huge impacts on transportation. Our research team has launched a large behavioral study to investigate the evolving nature of the impacts of the pandemic, and its temporary vs. longer-term effects on society and transportation. Building on previous data collections from before the pandemic, we administered...
Smart city roadmaps in Scandinavia are actively building upon the keywords of “citizen participation”. Despite the term’s overarching claim to reinvigorate democracy, the introduction of digital technology has, in some contexts, destabilized the definitions of both “citizenship” and “participation” and caused these keywords to be interpreted and implemented vaguely and sometimes...
Positive Energy Blocks are a localised response to the European Energy Transition and the next step beyond zero-energy buildings. They combine local renewable energy generation with energy efficiency measures and a holistic approach to urban energy, including strong stakeholder integration, informed by an ambition towards smart sustainable cities.
Furthermore, they should be well embedded...
Testbed Kungsgatan is an open IoT platform for research and experimentation originally deployed in a commercial street at the center of Norrköping in Sweden. Designed with a focus on supporting a digital twin of the mobility of the street, the Testbed has had to address multiple technical and non-technical problems. With a focus on the flexibility of services that can be supported by our...
Novel cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) have emerged in recent years, in part thanks to rapid and ubiquitous deployment of information and communication (ICT) technologies including on the public road networks. This has been accompanied by significant progress in the field of vehicular automation (e.g., autonomous and self-driving cars), vehicular communication (e.g., V2X),...
There is a widespread acceptance and shift towards sustainable, active and smart mobility solutions in the United Kingdom. However, it cannot be assumed that sustainable solutions are always socially inclusive which often causes social exclusion of minority groups and communities. Moreover, in many migrant families, essentialist gendered views about the role of women and men still prevail,...
This study will do a comparative analysis of mobility transition pathways and practices in the city-districts of Dietenbach in Freiburg (Germany) and Zero Village Bergen (Norway) characterised by different territorially-bounded factors, e.g. planning policy framework, institutional arrangements and actor constellation. The research question is: if and how infrastructural artefacts and digital...
One way to get people involved in citizen science projects is to educate them. Without sufficient training, volunteers will not be able to play an effective role in a citizen science project. The data collected by them will not have enough credibility and quality. For this purpose, in a study, education as an intervening variable was examined. The volunteers were divided into two groups. Group...
The future of smart cities depends upon an efficient and flexible energy system. In order to enable an increasing role of energy flexibility, several Integrated ICT tools are proposed to support the exchange of information and innovative services that support the operation of the electricity network in a context of high penetration of intermittent renewable energy supply. This paper discusses...
Many European cities experience substantial air pollution. In Norway, air pollution causes around 2.000 premature deaths every year and the external costs related to these health effects amounts to 8-13 billion Euros per year.
Municipalities need real-time environmental data at high spatial and temporal resolution in order to design effective plans, prioritize and monitor actions for...
Mixed reality produces new environments and visualizations to facilitate remote working, training and learning. Several industrial and public sectors search how to utilise MR technology to reduce human errors and cognitive workload. However, the work process to design mixed reality application fit to the purpose is still lacking, and partitioners still find several difficulties to determine...
The proposed paper aims to investigate the evolving role of digital technologies in relation to citizen-led urban activism in European cities, focusing on the evolution of civic crowdfunding initiatives in European cities.
An increasing number of digital platforms underpinned the growth of civic crowdfunding initiatives in European cities in the last few years, creating increased...
The use of typologies to better understand metropolitan areas has a long tradition within the field of urban studies, but they traditionally focus on separate elements. Thus, typology-based approaches tend to provide a greater depth regarding tangible differences of one spatial feature but cannot capture the interrelation between elements. Recently, various studies suggest typomorphology as a...
The transportation sector is consuming a high quantity of oil and producing air pollution, CO2, allergies, as well as promoting the storage of goods in traditional warehouses. It’s creating not only waste and polluted the environment but also increase the temperature, air pollution, and low rainfall. The present study intends to uncover and understand the challenges of logistic infrastructure...
In recent years, smart city strategies have increasingly incorporated urban experiments as a core part of Smart and involving citizens in it. Indeed, urban experimentation enacts new forms of governance, from top-down techno-scientifical to bottom-up participation of different stakeholders. Beyond the understanding of other contexts and shared learnings, there is a potential to co-produce...
The Green Deal promotes climate neutrality in Europe by 2050. According to the European Mission “100 climate-neutral cities by 2030 – by and for the citizens”, this ambitious goal cannot be reached without making an ecological and cultural transformation in our cities, engaging the widest range of stakeholders. The public administrations play a central role in planning and implementing energy...
Mosvatnet is a lake located within Stavanger, Norway, and it is considered a national bird sanctuary. In the eastern side of the lake lies an islet that acts as a bird nesting ground. The expansion of Stavanger has forced more construction of important transport infrastructure. Such urban developments have altered the lake footprint and the surrounding landscape along with the geological...
The linear city (Stavanger-Sandnes) has a plan to transform the mixed-traffic bus routes into bus rapid transit (BRT) systems, to provide frequent high and punctual transportation, increase passenger satisfaction (wait time, travel time), citizen satisfaction (integrity with public cars and other vehicles) and achieve higher sustainable measures (CO2 emission, road deterioration, energy for...
To fully grasp platform urbanism, we must broaden our scope as urban scholars to include the vast undergrowth of ‘other’ platforms and study how they intersect with the social and material fabric of cities. Drawing from media and internet studies, urban sociology, and digital geography, I introduce the novel concept of ‘urban digital platform’ (UDP). I do so theoretically by using a digital...
Many cities, including Amsterdam, have adopted the mission towards climate-neutral and socially innovative cities. To this purpose, Amsterdam funds, supports and participates in many research and innovation (R&I) projects across the city. These projects address a wide variety of innovations in different domains (technical, economic, social, governance and planning). AUAS is involved as...
Keynote: The city is not the customer
After a decade of pilot projects and flashy demonstrations, it’s still not clear whether smart city technologies can actually solve or even mitigate the challenges cities face. A lot of progress on our most pressing urban issues—such as broadband access, affordable housing, or public transport—could come from better policies and more funding. These...
