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This one-day international research symposium will address current topics within smart city research. The symposium organizing committee invite abstracts from the humanities, social sciences, and the technical and natural sciences on the current state and future of smart cities research.
The symposium will take place in Stavanger, Norway on Wednesday September 22, 2021 and will be organized in conjunction with the Nordic Edge Expo - the largest smart cities conference in Northern Europe.
Important information about registration:
It is possible to attend the symposium in person or virtually. You will be asked to indicate how you will attend during registration.
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 resources and commodities, advocating the leap towards a more circular economy, clean mobility, all electric etc. This is reflected in the many and diverse ongoing research and innovation projects in Amsterdam.
The New European Bauhaus aims adds the perspectives aesthetics, beauty – and the aspect of humans (and others) who have to live in these cities. If we know how PED’s are possible technically and in terms of governance, what is needed to create built up areas to create liveable and attractive settings? How can attention for the connection between the physical and the social act as a bridge to frame the upcoming densifications of our cities as an opportunity to create both climate-proof and beautiful areas?
With this presentation, we aim to explore the possible potential of the New European Bauhaus in Amsterdam as a way to operate spatial projects as tangible building bricks to secure future social, climate and economic sustainability. In cooperation with the municipality and other stakeholders, we will make a step towards the operationalization of NEB principles as a guidance for research and innovation projects and for policy making and city planning.
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 knowledge through data mining strategies. The problem of this approach is that the human aspects like the perception of the space or the human interaction with technology have been not a focus point.
NordicPATH’s strategy focuses on bringing together a wide range of stakeholders in the process of socio-technological change required by planners and designers to provide the built environment and the services that will shape future sustainable cities with a human-centred approach. Exploring a living lab method, NordicPATH demonstrates that technologies can facilitate processes of collaborative co-design of solutions to shape sustainable cities.
Environmental co-monitoring using sensor systems and participatory urban planning using PPGIS engage citizens in the co-design of solutions. NordicPATH bridges the challenges of policy actors to rethink and redesign solutions for reducing urban pollution and negative impacts of climate change of cities with citizens and researchers by exploring urban living labs in Nordic cities (Aalborg, Gothenburg, Kristiansand, Lappeenranta) identifying a set of themes as wood burning, densification, mobility, and public shared spaces.
The outcomes of the Nordic Living Labs will provide insights on the challenges and opportunities for a participatory method and collaborative planning in the Nordic countries to create (more) healthy and people-centred cities.
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 within the planning and strategy-making processes and influences the design principles of buildings and urban spaces.
In parallel, and in partial conflict with the need of limiting urban sprawl and soil sealing, theories and practices related to zero carbon and Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) are currently considered as a possible response to the climate challenge. Indeed, these practices usually imply new constructions in available areas, green sites or spaces that could be transformed into environmental resources. Implementing PEDs in the contexts of our existing and consolidated built environments would be an ideal solution that combines sustainable interventions without increasing soil sealing. However, even if technically feasible, this is extremely challenging as it involves transformations which deeply affect the current patterns of existing spaces conceived and planned in a notably different epoch: most significantly, it affects the existing communities of citizens living in those environments. For this reason, there is a growing attention on developing a better understanding of people responses to renewable sustainable practices and energy related technologies.
Now the interactions of urban dwellers with buildings, open spaces, and the whole systems of interconnections - including transport, mobility, and accessibility between citizens and their neighbourhoods - need to be deeply re-thought from alternative perspectives.
The experience of design activities carried out by the University of Bologna in collaboration with the Municipality well represents the presented approach aimed at achieving neutral PEDs in inclusive sustainable cities.
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 have not understood health crises from the perspectives of traditional security paradigms, specifically exploring how both detection and deterrence play mutual roles in crises, whether health or security related. In the case of the MSTIS, exploitative marketing and mixed messaging from government organisations meant that companies sold thousands of units and, to this day, are able to carry on selling such systems.
The consequences of companies selling what have proved to be defective systems on the spread of the Covid-19 virus, is impossible to measure. The presentation explores how such problems can be avoided in future.
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 explores how data and information can be manipulated to turn negative conceptions of a sector/company/brand into a caricature of benevolent self-sacrifice.
Sunglasses recommended.
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, artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven systems to assess damage and inform targeted recovery pipelines are emerging. Just in the last decade, deep learning techniques that include convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have become popularized in research and real-life deployment. We developed CNNs trained on satellite imagery for the assessment of damage in buildings after extreme weather and seismic events like tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires, and earthquakes. Specifically, we utilized the ResNet50 CNN architecture with cross-entropy loss as the criterion for optimization. We trained on pairs of multitemporal images that captured the pre- and post-disaster situation. A key aspect of this research was also investigating the interpretability of the machine learning algorithms; it is crucial that end operators can trust the inner decision-making processes of the models and that they are not simply black boxes. Now, we seek to deploy such technologies in the context of humanitarian aid and disaster relief systems implemented robustly in cities. Alert systems that harness real-time satellite imagery, analyzed with our CNNs, can channel targeted resources and personnel to the affected locations. We particularly emphasize the need for coherent collaboration with local governments and nonprofit organizations.
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 creating an inclusive space that is safe, accessible and comfortable for a diverse group of citizens as it does on deploying “smart” technologies for energy efficiency or environmental protection. This is because citizens will be more likely to adopt technologies promoting sustainability if they are well-aligned with their lived needs and experiences. In this paper, we present the rationale behind an ongoing interdisciplinary research project that aims to address exactly the problem outlined above by using a participatory design approach. Focusing on a smart city test site in Sweden where sensors are currently being deployed to collect data on noise, particles, vehicle numbers and types (amongst other), the goal is to bring local residents and government representatives into dialogue with technical developers by adopting a “meet-in-the-middle” approach. This paper comprises a brief presentation of early findings and a reflection on this approach.
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 succeed in combatting the climate crisis, we cannot take the same “profits first” model and simply apply it to renewable industries. Our study explores how renewable energy projects can move forward with an integrated consideration of ecology, culture, and community while valuing transparency over profit.
Our team of international and interdisciplinary researchers have collaborated to present information in a novel way. Utilizing contemporary media tools, we have shown the dilemmas and complexities of just transitions in one of the largest green-energy projects in Norway – Fosen Vind - through a study of the Storheia windpark and the South Sami community it displaced. We presented direct source information from a South Sami reindeer herder, an industry worker, and a renewable energy expert in a documentary format utilizing interview and site visit footage, as well as background research from a literature review in an interactive website. Our study uses a journalistic lens to provoke discussion around how to create a lasting green economy that cooperates with and learns from indigenous communities.
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 construction of knowledge (Pellizzoni, 2021; Lakoff, 2017). The field of energy can be inquired as an exemplary sector in which both dimensions can be addressed. Energy raises fundamental questions of justice. It needs to be conceived as service, a fundamental part of everyday life, which should not be managed according to economic rationalities, in order to grant all citizens access to it (Collective Foundational Economy 2018). At the same time, it is structured as a complex infrastructure, that means it works through social and symbolic processes (Anand et al, 2018). Moreover, a just transition raises issues at the core of the debates about Anthropocene and it should conceive democratic control over the spatial distribution of energy infrastructures across the (un)opportunities related to them. What does it mean to rethink citizenship, emphasizing its performative nature (Isin, 2017), in relation to the themes of energy justice? What role do local communities, forms of self-organization play in reorganizing the relationship between citizens and energy infrastructures? The paper aims at providing a theoretical framework, based on a transdisciplinary exploration of these questions, intertwining it with the Green Deal policies, the mission 100 Climate Neutral Cities and the climate city contracts.
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 efficient, green and smart. They are, for example, in the background, forging their position in the functioning of cities by taking up space (land, water, bodies) for urban infrastructures such as data centers (Carr 2021). At the same time, they are also driving the production of what we refer to as their symbolic spaces. These are Amazon’s HQ2 and the digital city proposed by Sidewalk Labs Toronto (daughter of Alphabet Inc.)——projects that epitomised both their importance in the field and the height of their technological innovation. Yet, with the exception of the HQ2 in Arlington, these projects never materialized. We argue that this was not a coincidence. Rather, both LDCs effectively mobilized a strategy of policy failure. The lens of policy failure shows that LDC-led digital cities is less about flashy cities equipped with avant-garde technologies and more about post-political modes of governance that drain public institutions of time and resources, reconfiguring state-society relations. Practitioners need to understand and watch for the flags of this disingenuous behaviour.
Carr (2021) “Digital urban development—How large digital corporations shape the field of urban governance” https://orbilu.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/45932/1/DIGI-GOV%20Brochure%20January%202021.pdf
Temenos/Lauerman (2020) The urban politics of policy failure. Urban Geography, 41(9):1109-1118.
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 answer this, we perform a review of the smart city strategies of ten mid-sized cities of the Nordic Smart Cities Network, identifying smart mobility goals and considered, tested or implemented mobility measures. We evaluate them based on the S.M.A.R.T. goals concept, as well as on how they align with EU’s sustainable urban mobility planning (SUMP) objectives. In doing so, we assess two things: how different smart mobility measures contribute to achieving smart city goals, and how they contribute to sustainable urban mobility and development.
In our analysis, we find that only three cities have published an explicit smart mobility strategy document, while the others have smart city or mobility frameworks set only at a national level. Another finding is that smart mobility goals and ambitions are mainly stated conceptually and rarely measurable with specific indicators, i.e. not compliant with S.M.A.R.T goals. We also find that measures mainly address the SUMP-objectives relating to environment and efficiency, with little focus on inclusive and safe mobility planning that caters toward attractive cities and high quality of life.
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 say AVs will be part of our societies in the near future and hence, it is vital to be prepared for the emerging of AVs and their possible impacts on our urbans’ mobility before their widespread deployment.
Therefore, this study aims to disclose the affecting factors on social acceptability of AVs in Istanbul, a megacity of the developing world. In order to do so, a designed questionnaire which consisted of two main parts will be conducted in Istanbul. The first part includes questions related to respondents’ socio-demographic information and revealed preferences about their travel characteristics, while the second part investigates the perceptions of people and tries to examine the factors affecting individuals’ decisions toward AVs through stated preference questions.
The collected data from questionnaires will be analyzed by deploying qualitative and quantitative methods. In these methods it has been planned to analyze individuals’ behavior by referring to the answers to the revealed and stated preference questions. The estimated results of this study can be used by transport planners, stakeholders and decision makers to prepare and develop their urban mobility plans based on more realistic data.
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 infrastructure (e. g. position of pollards or height of curbs) as well as new control logics. In contrast to the usage of autonomous cars the usage of autonomous micro vehicles is much more complex and therefore still quite challenging. Applications of autonomous micro vehicles require high-quality multilayer maps and an automated processes needs to be set up to create these. An openly available data base can be provided by OSM. For now, these kinds of maps are not available.
We will introduce the concept of an “Autonomous Driveability Index (ADI)” that quantifies the usability of an edge for a certain autonomous micro vehicle in a traffic network but a toolchain for the calculation. The ADI indicates whether it is possible for a micro vehicle to use an edge or not and if the data is of sufficiently high quality. With this information it is possible to determine if a certain urban area can be used for applications of autonomous micro vehicles. However, it's necessary to gather more detailed data since the current data quality in OSM is mostly insufficient. We built on a layer architecture combining OSM and Lanelet.
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 urban planning theory and practice, such systematic efforts are collectively labelled under the holistic strategy of transit-orientated development (TOD); an approach that is strongly encouraged in Norway. However, Norwegian cities and regions define a challenging context for effective promotion of public transport due to the low-dense settlements' spatial structure and population's high income allowing it to overcome the monetary costs of employing private automobiles.
This study investigates the actual influence that the built environment has upon the efficiency of public transport on the metropolitan scale of Stavanger (Norway). The subject is explored through GIS-based methods of spatial analysis and network analysis, and space syntax. By applying this approach, the study aims to employ the advances in computing, information gathering, and data processing to compare the urban morphology with the structure and intensity of the public transport network. This allows us to draw assumptions regarding the characteristics of different built environments (traditional inner-city, suburban, rural, modernistic, etc.) and their influence on public transport performance.
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 module is introduced in the English school system within the secondary school context, however, it largely fails to capture spatial and emerging digital dimensions of citizenship. The Raynsford Review of Planning in England (TCPA, 2018) identifies planning education in secondary schools as one of the key factors for a better understanding of architecture and planning by the public and achieving active citizenship.
This paper draws on the experience of a research-led courses based on urban planning and architecture, designed as part of the Brilliant Club programme, and delivered in secondary schools across the West Midlands by the doctoral researcher. In total, more than fifty students took part in six different interactions of the course entitles ‘Can youth plan the Future ‘Smart City’?’ with three submissions by secondary school students published in the Brilliant Club Journal (Aksu, 2019; Alkatheri, 2019 and Maan, 2020). This paper unpicks the role of urban-led research in secondary education and the challenges, trade-offs, and opportunities it presents to participants on all sides. It presents key themes that emerged from the young people’s understanding of smart cities and their role as citizens in the future city.
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 disingenuously. Contending that there is room for plurality in the definition of “citizen participation”, this paper proposes a terminology capable of distinguishing different interpretations with the hope of preventing the umbrella term of “citizen participation” from conflating incommensurable approaches during future debates.
Methodologically, this study builds upon empirical material collected during a roundtable discussion on “citizen participation” in the 2021 annual seminar of the University of Stavanger’s Research Network for Smart Sustainable Cities. Diverse experiences and perspectives of participation advocated by different stakeholders are assessed along the axes of “temporality of participation”, “magnitudes of citizen agency” and “tech-ladenness”. The aim of the article is to make tacit conceptualizations of expert vs. non-expert citizenship in the Smart city explicit and to identify the opportunities and challenges attributed to different current modes of participation.
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 1 and Group 2. volunteers in group 1 received sufficient training in data collection, tools, and metrics, but Group 2 participated in the citizenship project without any training. Validation of the data of both groups showed that the quality of data collected by the volunteers who received basic training was 30% higher than the volunteers who did not receive any training. The results of this study show that educating citizens is an important and essential element before entering citizen science projects. To improve the quality and validity of citizens data, volunteers should be taught guidelines, guidelines, tools, methods, techniques, and practices.
Citizen science, participatory science, education, credibility, quality, data
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 will be investigated. The use case of the 5G-MODaNeI project will be briefly overviewed. Finally, a short preview of the sixth generation (6G) of mobile networks will be given.
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 obvious advantages associated with blockchain in areas such as, decentralization, disintermediation, replication, timestamping, immutability, digital signatures, automation and smart contracts, transparency and censorship resistance, especially in relation with the financial sector. However, there are also noticeable challenges, for instances, scalability and performance, energy consumption, security and privacy. Many popular applications are cloud related. These advances are now not just limited to the financial sector, but also new internet applications can harness these building blocks to empower users to take control of their online footprint, such as in healthcare, social media and other digital services. We are building an open source hub for a secure and source-controlled blockchain ecosystem, as the gathering place for academic researchers, practitioners and business innovators alike, where they may meet and work together online to embrace, promote and enhance blockchain technologies and their applications. This will bring us to new platform, new business model and new ecosystem.
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 platform, we designed and implemented for this testbed a light-weight middleware. Using it to enable computation at the edge, we are able to provide privacy-preserving information retrieval, while at the same time setting trade-offs between the data transmitted and the age of the information. In this presentation, we discuss how the requirements arising from different use cases involving traffic monitoring set the frequency with which data is collected and transmitted and the impact this has on edge local storage and processing. We then focus on a scenario where the aim is to collect sound from the audible spectrum to derive information about the street conditions, and how our situational awareness can be enhanced combining this data source with additional sources of information.
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), sensor fusion and big data technologies.
With regards to vehicular communication, upcoming 5th generation cellular networks (5G) is deemed a promising technology for providing connectivity and interactivity between different agents on the road network – e.g., road users, central traffic center, infrastructure and emergency responders. 5G's ultra-reliable and low latency (URLLC) service category is expected to be a key enabler for transport and mobility use-cases – e.g., as a scalable V2X communication approach for C-ITS. On the other hand, employing multiaccess edge computing (5G MEC) techniques can reduce the communication and processing latency to the level required for latency-sensitive and interactive C-ITS use-cases.
While C-ITS and 5G V2X have been mostly discussed in the context of general road networks, limited attention has been given to road tunnels in particular for safety and rescue services in case of incidents in such challenging environments. This talk will therefore present how newly emerging 5G-based V2X communication services and paradigms can be exploited to provide safer road tunnels using state-of-the-art C-ITS services and applications using a generic 5G-based system architecture.
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, delineated and benchmarks could be set. These perspectives serve different research and innovation questions and bring different insights for replication and city planners.
Climate change mitigation serves a global goal. After effort sharing to individual countries, national mitigation targets are adopted for sectors and regions. PEDs targets can only be set after optimalisation mitigation in a broader regional and cross sectoral context.
PEDs are often driven by local initiatives; either by citizens, local entrepreneurs or local project developers. They can set their own objectives and targets for their neighborhood, which may not be the same as from an optimised mitigation perspective.
PEDs provide a context and eco-system for research and innovation, for instance on smart grids, local energy markets and communities. For effective R&I, the specific innovations require a specific scope.
Finally, individual components of a PEDs are subject to different policy and regulatory regimes, such as building codes, with different accountability structures and scopes. This leads to a complex process in benchmarking the PED performance.
In our contribution, we will illustrate the different perspectives for a selection of PED demonstrators, including in Amsterdam.
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 covering few hectares. The definition of such projects in spatial terms as Positive Energy Districts and indeed as vehicle towards smart and sustainable cities, arguably leads to some deliberation as to their preferred structural and organizational layouts, though there is general agreement in terms of their objectives regarding related energy aspects. The proposal will revisit this terminology and proceed to offer case studies from the Cypriot regional context in the form of a comparative analysis of SNDs, categorized according to how each specific case study compares against another under certain sustainability principles. The general principles for SND span across a range of strategies, from environmentally-sustainable design of individual buildings to the impact of neighborhoods or districts on the surrounding regional environment. Neighborhood sustainability assessment (NSA) tools such as LEED-Neighborhood Development, the Eco-District framework and BREEAM Communities integrating social, economic, and environmental dimensions at the neighborhood level will be relied upon, with varying priorities. Their thematic categorization – as exemplified by Bottero et al. in 2019 – may then be split into the (a) energy and natural resources dimension; (b) the socio-economic dimension; (c) the mobility dimension; and (d) the urban design dimension.
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 within cities' strategic energy, mobility, climate and urban plans to foster the local urban energy transition and optimise the potential for positive change towards climate-neutral, livable cities.
This contribution will explore some of the technical challenges in implementing and scaling up PEDs, and will focus mainly on organisational structures and changes. Topics are quadruple helix collaboration, open innovation, building local partnerships, needed technical expertise, planning support, multi-stakehiolder innovation, partnerships around real estate and energy, stakeholder and citizen engagement, contractual needs, new business models; and the challenges associated with them in a complex smart city projects.
The contribution will be informed by experiences in the EU H2020 Lighthouse Project +CityxChange, with insights from cities and projects across Europe.
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 platforms are reshaping urban mobility practices in the smart cities of the future. To address this question, it combine insights from the literature on Smart Cities, Sociotechnical Transition and Social Practice Theory. As part of the analytical framework, it will study the co-evolution between different institutional elements (regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive) to enable individuals, organisations and government bodies in the case study areas to achieve a low-carbon mobility transition.
A qualitative case study is applied to analyse the phenomenon of sustainable mobility in the particular context of the case study areas. Miles and Huberman (1994:25) define a ‘case’ as “a phenomenon of some sort occurring in a bounded context”, and Yin (2009:18) defines a ‘case study’ as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”. Here, sustainable mobility is defined as the ‘main unit of analysis’ and the planning policy to create positive energy districts in Freiburg and Bergen as the ‘embedded unit of analysis’. Both units are studied within the socio-spatial context of Freiburg and Bergen and in relation to other infrastructure for land use planning, housing and digitalisation.
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 in other contexts, there has been little study on how various factors relate to the adoption of new technology in smart mobility. This study applies a mixed-method approach to qualitative and quantitative data produced from a case study of the city of Stavanger in Norway. It draws on literature review, qualitative analysis, and quantitative analysis with urban dwellers to develop a theoretical model integrating variables related to the user's intention to use smart mobility. The aim is to understand relationships that predict user's intention to use smart mobility. The research shows that trust and perceived risk of location information directly affect users' intention to use.
In comparison, privacy concerns have much less implication on user's intention to use smart mobility. Instead, perception of trust is the crucial determinant of their willingness to use. In particular, trust is fundamental to smart mobility service presents a pivotal driver to accelerate the digitalized transition in urban mobility. Hence, the study suggests that building up a trust mechanism may be cost-efficient to accelerate the transition. Norway can serve as a prototype to study the trust mechanism. The instruments and model developed in this study can help advance such a purpose.
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 several additional rounds of surveys primarily among residents of 17 metro regions in the United States and Canada, building a longitudinal dataset with information from before and during the various phases of the pandemic. So far, more than 10,000 respondents have participated in the study. Additional information on this project can be found at the website: https://postcovid19mobility.ucdavis.edu/. In this presentation, I will present summary results from this project focusing in particular on (1) the adoption of telecommuting, among various groups of workers, and the likelihood these might continue to work remotely (even if on a part-time basis) in the future, (2) the impacts of COVID-19 on the use of various travel modes, including the use of private vehicles as well as public transportation, (3) the adoption of e-shopping and of app-based mobility services, and the temporary vs. longer-term nature of these changes as economic activities reopen, and (4) the changes in the ownership and use of privately-owned vehicles, and the attitudes towards car ownership (and car-less/car-light lifestyles), and the implications these might have in the medium term on transportation, among various segments of the population.
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, which propagate reproductive/caretaking and earning responsibilities respectively. This paper is based on the evaluation of mental maps of migrant women developed from using public transport in Coventry, the birthplace of the British automotive industry. The research aims to identify the physical and socio-cultural impediments that impact women’s experiences of public transport and is grounded in the intersectional feminist discourse to offer a critical understanding of their lived experiences. The research thus attempts to understand how the discourses on mobility and gender can restrict migrant women’s use of public spaces by mapping and looking at their gendered, aged and sexualized geographies of fear. Two key findings emerged from the study; firstly, the asymmetrical power relations between genders pose unique challenges for women, e.g. fear and estrangement on transport due to the social norms, secondly, there is an overwhelming focus on British families when it comes to spatial accessibility to services/activities which results in unwilling dependence of migrant women on their male counterparts. It concludes that urban policies can play a key role in improving migrants' inclusion by bringing in racialised gendered migrant perspectives in the study of mobility justice, environmental awareness and equal citizenship.
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 opportunities for grassroots creativity and engagement to coalesce towards urban transformation projects.
Early experiences show a whole array of governance arrangements from totally autonomous grassroots initiatives to various degrees of support by local government, as in the cases of London and Milan, where the Local Authorities stepped in not only to co-fund the selected projects but also to support nascent initiatives, helping with training, capacity building and support networks.
More recent experiments show an increasingly sophisticated ability to exploit the potential of digital technologies by both citizen groups and local bodies; at the same time, however, the growing confidence in the use of digital platforms does not appear to directly correlate with a more mature and critical approach towards the role such interfaces play at the individual as well as a collective level.
Building on evidence from recent practices in European cities, including completed and ongoing initiatives, the paper will thus critically reflect on gaps, contradictions, and issues for further research emerging from empirical cases.
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 future urban scenarios that tackle challenges and problems mobilizing the agency of inhabitants through experimentation. In doing so, Who decides, who does and on whom the experiment is developed is critical beyond the techno-scientific operationalization because those processes structure collective urban governance that could address local democracy and the right to the city. The presentation will explore traditions and connections between urban experimentation and participatory cities that might shed light on alternative urban futures to the corporate Smart City.
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 geography body of work and the level of abstractness proposed by Bratton (2016), in ‘the stack,’ which are entry points to define any kind of digital platform. On one hand, there are platforms who use the city to extract profit, and on the other, platforms which are of and for the city and its inhabitants. Global and for-profit digital platforms exploit density, size, and diversity, extracting resources into a data-driven form of governance and computational production of space. By contrast, UDPs benefit from the urban as a front to (re)organise citizen-based, mutual-aid initiatives, and solidarity actions. The core of the UDP concept lies in the ambiguity of the role of the urban government, media literacy, and techno-biases as basic requirements for citizens to access the platform, its services, and goods. Those claims are supported by instances and empirical findings of two analysed platforms in Milan and Amsterdam. Two different types of UDPs are analysed to grasp differences and similarities, as well as to move forward from the critique of platform urbanism.
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 tackling air quality. However, current systems based on expensive and scarce air quality monitoring stations are not capable to offer information at the level of detail municipalities need.
Air quality sensor technologies have significantly lower investment costs than traditional instrumentation, but the generated data are often of questionable quality. To take full advantage of these technology, we have developed a novel ICT infrastructure capable to handle large amounts of heterogeneous data, including sophisticated machine learning methods for real-time data quality assurance and data assimilation methods for merging sensor data with other already existing data to determine air quality at a particular location and time with high accuracy. The primary innovation of the sensor infrastructure is in enabling a seamless use of sensing and ICT technologies to increase sensor data quality and provide locally specific environmental data for the municipalities and for citizens.
The infrastructure has been successfully piloted in five municipalities: Bergen, Bærum, Drammen, Kristiansand and Oslo, where a variety of environmental sensors have been connected for supporting environmental management.
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 fruitful method to analyse urban form in a systematic, quantitative, exploratory, multi-dimensional and context-sensitive manner; thus, providing valuable insights into specific planning practices.
This study emphasises on the exploration and identification of the established and emerging spatial forms within the metropolitan area of Stavanger. The applied method combines a multivariate approach towards urban densities and statistical analysis techniques to measure similarities across the concrete case of Stavanger. In this manner, the study defines the density-typomorphological structure of the the whole metropolitan area. Furthermore, the study interrelates the defined profiles with the accessibility and intensities of key urban services. By doing so, the study explores the practical relationship between spatial densities and the distribution of urban amenities and concludes by outlining specific research assumptions in this respect.
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 record. For example, aerial imagery has revealed that the eastern shoreline of the lake has artificially prograded about 100 m since the mid-1930s.
Urban landscape affects species of plants and animals. Therefore, urban planning of smart cities contributes to preserving wildlife and biodiversity within those urban areas. The Stavanger municipality plans to extend the Mosvatnet islet by one third to provide a larger habitat for migrating birds. The project requires conducting advanced geotechnical investigations in the surface and subsurface to analyse feasible and cost-effective technical solutions.
The present study delivers a geological model of Mosvatnet subsurface and provides a basis for further geotechnical studies. However, modelling natural geological structures in this area is challenging due to environmental restrictions, lack of natural rock exposures, and the presence of artificial infill material added by anthropogenic activities over time.
To generate the model, we employed non-invasive and environmentally-friendly techniques that were combined with public data collected by the Norwegian government. This interdisciplinary study involves geomatics, geotechnics, geophysics, and geology. It integrates historical aerial imagery, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), on- and off-shore ground penetrating radar (GPR), geotechnical boreholes, and geological field mapping.
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 which part of their work, training, learning shall be augmented or assisted with mixed reality features. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present a workflow and worksheet that can be used to prioritise working or training tasks that should be augmented, determine the most critical ones and identify the technical specifications to augmentation and create a new mixed environment. The workflow and worksheet have been developed and validated in a case study where safety training for wind turbine technicians is provided. The developed workflow has shown the capability to enable the training provider to identify the four training tasks out of fourteen as highly critical to be assisted with MR technology and determine the required hardware, software and tracking technology.
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 as well as how the adoption of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) business strategies is useful to encourage those practices and technology which are useful in transforming the logistic infrastructure into an eco-friendly environment. The DIY focuses on purposely utilising digital technologies to increase the engagement and involvement of customers in businesses. Moreover, DIY enables organisations to produce products and services that are highly demanded and have high acceptability. After doing an extensive literature review the enablers of DIY are identified and empirical investigation has been conducted. The analysis of the study provides a business strategies framework of DIY which would help the logistics managers in the proper implementation of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) practices to minimize negative environmental impact and improve business performance.
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 road infrastructure, e.g. traffic lights). However, due to the complexity in the zoning plans and cost cuts, the BRT infrastructure project is subject to several changes and uncertainties regarding possible decisions are needed to be explored and studied. One approach to get a good insight into the behaviour of any operating system under a specific scenario (operating policy) is the modelling and simulation approach. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present a simulation model that represents and mimic the behaviour of the Bus Rapid Transit between Stavanger and Sandnes.
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 ICT tools designed to assist network operators, flexibility suppliers, and market operators, and make the flexibility markets both efficient and attractive. These tools utilize innovative models and algorithms to facilitate network-aware flexibility market-clearing while giving Distribution System Operators (DSOs) in cities an intelligent prognosis for improved grid operation and investment planning, functionalities provide value to DSOs that can be exploited in today’s electricity system landscape, while the value propositions delivered by the ICT services can increase significantly as flexibility markets mature and are deployed in wide-scale commercial operations. A unique approach to constructing business models and various novel service designs is presented in order to capture flexibility value for market actors and technology providers alike. Finally, a methodology for assessing the impact of these ICT tools is discussed using the 5 helices approach involving multi-actor stakeholders of a sustainable society.
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 efficiency and sustainable actions and in involving citizens in the urban energy transition process. Integrated energy plans, such as Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs), are considered effective strategies adopted by municipalities to coordinate medium-long terms initiatives and maximize the positive consequence of shared processes. Within the energy planning activities, the citizens’ engagement can be supported by the creation of energy citizenship communities, considering as fundamental implementation action to reach the energy goal. The present study, carried out in the framework of the H2020 project GRETA - GReen Energy Transition Actions (GA101022317), identifies structural and dynamic aspects of energy citizenship emergence at different geographical levels, analyzing relevant factors such as planning, climate, demography, renewable energy technologies, built environment morphology, funded project and initiatives. In particular, the study is applied to the Roveri-Pilastro district, a mixed-use area located in the north-east part of Bologna, with the aim of investigating its specific factors for the energy citizenship institution. Energy communities supported by an active citizens’ participation can contribute to the increase of flexibility in the electricity system and of the local prosumers’ number.
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 multi-disciplinary knowledge partner in many of these projects.
Bridging the gap between R&I and city policy makers and planning, as well as other stakeholders that are involved in policy design (informed policy making) has always been a challenge. The increasing complex multi-domain and multi-disciplinary character of R&I makes this gap even more stringent. Policy makers need to understand not only what the contribution of innovations could be towards public policy objectives in the different domains, but also have inisght the interaction, synergy and trade-offs between the domains. In particular, this concerns the technological climate change mitigation innovations, on the one hand, and social policies, on the other. Often, policy makers do not even have a structured overview of everything that is happening in the city in R&I.
We will explore different qualitative and quantitative approaches, including mapping approaches, theories of change, integrative urban models and other meta-level methodologies to address this gap. This will include the 2050 City Vision as a synthesis method that will be developed in Amsterdam’s ongoing project on positive energy districts. Experiences from other cities will be collected. These approaches will consider the information needs of the city planners and policy makers.
Keynote by Professor Jennifer Clark, Knowlton Scool of Architecture at Ohio State University and Professor to at the Centre for Innovation Research at the University of Stavanger.
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 problems don’t necessarily require new technology.
What is clear is that technology companies are increasingly taking on administrative and infrastructure responsibilities that governments have long fulfilled. If smart cities are to avoid exacerbating urban inequalities, we must understand where these projects will create new opportunities and problems, and who may lose out as a result. And that starts by taking a hard look at how cities have fared so far.
Jennifer Clark is Professor and Head of the City and Regional Planning Section at the Knowlton School of Architecture in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University and Adjunt Professor at the Centre of Innovation Research at the University of Stavanger. She specializes in urban and regional economic development planning.
Dr. Clark's most recent book is Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities (Columbia University Press, 2020) won the 2021 Best Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association. She is also the author of Working Regions: Reconnecting Innovation and Production in the Knowledge Economy (Routledge, 2013) and Remaking Regional Economies: Power, Labor, and Firm Strategies in the Knowledge Economy (with Susan Christopherson) (Routledge, 2007) winner of the Best Book Award from the Regional Studies Association in 2009.
Dr. Clark teaches courses on urban and regional economic development theory, analysis, and practice and research design and methods. She has provided expert testimony before the US Congress and policy advice and consulting to the OECD, the Canadian, UK, and US governments as well as serving on nongovernmental policy commissions and committees. Before joining the Knowlton School, Dr. Clark taught at Cornell University and the Georgia Institute of Technology where she was also the Director of the Center for Urban Innovation.
Reception