David Ludlow

An Architecture for Integrated Intelligence in Urban Management Using Cloud Computing

With the emergence of new methodologies and technologies it has now become possible to manage large amounts of environmental sensing data and apply new integrated computing models to acquire information intelligence. This paper advocates the application of cloud capacity to support the information, communication and decision making needs of a wide variety of stakeholders in the complex business of the management of urban and regional development. The complexity lies in the interactions and impacts embodied in the concept of the urban-ecosystem at various governance levels. This highlights the need for more effective integrated environmental management systems. This paper offers a user-orientated approach based on requirements for an effective management of the urban-ecosystem and the potential contributions that can be supported by the cloud computing community. Furthermore, the commonality of the influence of the drivers of change at the urban level offers the opportunity for the cloud computing community to develop generic solutions that can serve the needs of hundreds of cities from Europe and indeed globally.

A healthy turn in urban climate change policies; European city workshop proposes health indicators as policy integrators

BackgroundThe EU FP6 HENVINET project reviewed the potential relevance of a focus on climate change related health effects for climate change policies at the city region level. This was undertaken by means of a workshop with both scientists, city representatives from several EU-countries, representatives of EU city networks and EU-experts. In this paper we introduce some important health related climate change issues, and discuss the current city policies of the participating cities.MethodsThe workshop used a backcasting format to analyse the future relevance of a health perspective, and the main benefits and challenges this would bring to urban policy making.ResultsIt was concluded that health issues have an important function as indicators of success for urban climate change policies, given the extent to which climate change policies contribute to public health and as such to quality of life. Simultaneously the health perspective may function as a policy integrator in that it can combine several related policy objectives, such as environmental policies, health policies, urban planning and economic development policies, in one framework for action. Furthermore, the participants to the workshop considered public health to be of strategic importance in organizing public support for climate change policies. One important conclusion of the workshop was the view that the connection of science and policy at the city level is inadequate, and that the integration of scientific knowledge on climate change related health effects and local policy practice is in need of more attention. In conclusion, the workshop was viewed as a constructive advance in the process of integration which hopefully will lead to ongoing cooperation.ConclusionsThe workshop had the ambition to bring together a diversity of actor perspectives for exchange of knowledge and experiences, and joint understanding as a basis for future cooperation. Next to the complementarities in experience and knowledge, the mutual critical reflection was a bonus, as ideas had the opportunity to be scrutinized by others, leading to more robustness and common ground. The structured backcasting approach was helpful in integrating all of this with one common focus, embracing diversity and complexity, and stimulating reflection and new ideas.

ICT enabled participatory urban planning and policy development: The UrbanAPI project

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to present the effectiveness of participatory information and communication technology (ICT) tools for urban planning, in particular, supporting bottom-up decision-making in urban management and governance. Design/methodology/approach – This work begins with a presentation on the state of the art literature on the existing participatory approaches and their contribution to urban planning and the policymaking process. Furthermore, a case study, namely, the UrbanAPI project, is selected to identify new visualisation and simulation tools applied at different urban scales. These tools are applied in four different European cities – Vienna, Bologna, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Ruse – with the objective to identify the data needs for application development, commonalities in requirements of such participatory tools and their expected impact in policy and decision-making processes. Findings – The case study presents three planning applications: three-dimensional Virtual Reality at neig...

Domain-specific languages for agile urban policy modelling

In this paper we present a new approach of performing urban policy modelling and making with the help of ICT enabled tools. We present a complete policy cycle that includes creating policy plans, securing stakeholders and public engagement, implementation, monitoring, and evaluating a particular policy model. ICT enabled tools can be deployed at various stages in this cycle, but they require an intuitive interface which can be supported by domainspecific languages (DSLs) as the means to express policy modelling aspects such as computational processes and computer-readable policy rules in the words of the domain expert. In order to evaluate the use of such languages, we present a real-world scenario from the urbanAPI project. We describe how DSLs for this scenario would look like. Finally, we discuss strengths and limitations of our approach as well as lessons learnt.

Evaluating a collaborative IT based research and development project

In common with all projects, evaluating an Information Technology (IT) based research and development project is necessary in order to discover whether or not the outcomes of the project are successful. However, evaluating large-scale collaborative projects is especially difficult as: (i) stakeholders from different countries are involved who, almost inevitably, have diverse technological and/or application domain backgrounds and objectives; (ii) multiple and sometimes conflicting application specific and user-defined requirements exist; and (iii) multiple and often conflicting technological research and development objectives are apparent. In this paper, we share our experiences based on the large-scale integrated research project - The HUMBOLDT project - with project duration of 54 months, involving contributions from 27 partner organisations, plus 4 sub-contractors from 14 different European countries. In the HUMBOLDT project, a specific evaluation methodology was defined and utilised for the user evaluation of the project outcomes. The user evaluation performed on the HUMBOLDT Framework and its associated nine application scenarios from various application domains, resulted in not only an evaluation of the integrated project, but also revealed the benefits and disadvantages of the evaluation methodology. This paper presents the evaluation methodology, discusses in detail the process of applying it to the HUMBOLDT project and provides an in-depth analysis of the results, which can be usefully applied to other collaborative research projects in a variety of domains.

The challenge of social networking in the field of environment and health

BackgroundThe fields of environment and health are both interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary, and until recently had little engagement in social networking designed to cross disciplinary boundaries. The EU FP6 project HENVINET aimed to establish integrated social network and networking facilities for multiple stakeholders in environment and health. The underlying assumption is that increased social networking across disciplines and sectors will enhance the quality of both problem knowledge and problem solving, by facilitating interactions. Inter- and trans-disciplinary networks are considered useful for this purpose. This does not mean that such networks are easily organized, as openness to such cooperation and exchange is often difficult to ascertain.MethodsDifferent methods may enhance network building. Using a mixed method approach, a diversity of actions were used in order to investigate the main research question: which kind of social networking activities and structures can best support the objective of enhanced inter- and trans-disciplinary cooperation and exchange in the fields of environment and health. HENVINET applied interviews, a role playing session, a personal response system, a stakeholder workshop and a social networking portal as part of the process of building an interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary network.ResultsThe interviews provided support for the specification of requirements for an interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary network. The role playing session, the personal response system and the stakeholder workshop were assessed as useful tools in forming such network, by increasing the awareness by different disciplines of other’s positions. The social networking portal was particularly useful in delivering knowledge, but the role of the scientist in social networking is not yet clear.ConclusionsThe main challenge in the field of environment and health is not so much a lack of scientific problem knowledge, but rather the ability to effectively communicate, share and use available knowledge for policy making. Structured social network facilities can be useful by policy makers to engage with the research community. It is beneficial for scientists to be able to integrate the perspective of policy makers in the research agenda, and to assist in co-production of policy-relevant information. A diversity of methods need to be applied for network building: according to the fit-for-purpose-principle. It is useful to know which combination of methods and in which time frame produces the best results.Networking projects such as HENVINET are created not only for the benefit of the network itself, but also because the applying of the different methods is a learning tool for future network building. Finally, it is clear that the importance of specialized professionals in enabling effective communication between different groups should not be underestimated.

Using Space-Based Downstream Services for Urban Management in Smart Cities

Data collected through remote sensing (for instance geo-satellite) provides necessary stimulus for developing smart solutions for climate change & public health, energy efficiency and land monitoring in an urban environment. The velocity, variety, volume and veracity of high resolution data produced by geo-satellites provide big opportunity for planning and decision making in a smart city context. However, processing and integrating remote sensing data with auxiliary data sources require proper data management and elastic computational resources to derive necessary information intelligence (or knowledge) for decision making. This paper presents prototype of selected Decumanus services and highlights strengths & weaknesses of climate change, energy efficiency and land monitoring applications for the different European cities. The analysis of the early results indicate that the amount of computation resources required to process data for above applications make cloud computing a suitable technology but also face challenges in adopting it due to its recency, impact on green computing and reluctance to transform from legacy computing systems to new paradigms like cloud computing. We critically discuss these challenges and suggest possible solutions.

Participatory governance in smart cities: the urbanAPI case study

This paper presents some results from an EU FP7 RTD project urbanAPI, in which three ICT applications target different aspects of participatory urban governance. The 3D Scenario Creator allows urban planners to visualise urban development proposals in three dimensions, share them with different stakeholders and obtain their feedback. The Mobility Explorer allows urban land use and transport planners to visualise and analyse population distribution and mobility patterns in the city. Finally, the Urban Development Simulator simulates socio-economic activity in response to alternative planning scenarios. These urbanAPI ICT applications are implemented in four pilot cities; Vienna (Austria), Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain), Bologna (Italy) and Ruse (Bulgaria), and evaluated with respect to their various requirements. Results show that the applications are useful tools, enhancing spatial planning assessements, and enabling public participation, communicating proposed plans to different stakeholders and identifying key development issues which can provide crucial inputs in planning and decision making processes.

From top-down land use planning intelligence to bottom-up stakeholder engagement for smart cities - a case study: DECUMANUS service products

Intelligence delivered by earth observation (EO) satellites performs a vital role in supporting ICT enabled urban governance, and the creation of decision making tools delivering integrated urban planning. This paper reviews the DECUMANUS project experience, detailing the development of the EO derived tools, and evaluating the service products that facilitate the deployment of top-down expertise in land use planning. The central purpose of the paper is to assess the potential for use of these DECUMANUS high resolution EO images and data, also to support bottom-up participatory planning, promoting co-design. It is concluded: 1) EO derived images and associated data offer great opportunity to deliver top-down decision making tools, which combined with auxiliary data, including participatory sensing data, effectively support integrated urban planning; 2) EO derived images also offer substantial potential as communication tools, enabling citizens to make more informed and responsible choices and participate in co-designed urban planning.

Smart City: Challenges and Opportunities' Experiences from European Smart Cities Projects

Smart City: Challenges and Opportunities-Experiences from European Smart Cities Projects Cities globally embody the challenge of how to improve competitiveness while achieving social cohesion and environmental sustainability. Cities are fertile ground for science and technology, innovation and cultural activity, but at the same time, they are also places where problems such as environmental pollution, unemployment, segregation and poverty are concentrated. Complex problems like these require a holistic approach to urban development, together with an assessment of urban policies in terms of a comprehensive set of socio-economic and environmental indicators. Smart city governance innovations are redefining the options and opportunities for city governance and planning globally. The interplay of societal and technological innovation provides a universal dynamic that is driving the generation of new models of integrated and participatory, inclusive and open governance. This dynamic is impacting and disrupting the existing orthodoxies of governance, and raising numerous questions for urban planning. What is the defining architecture of open, co-created and inclusive urban governance? What are the most effective transition pathways to this new urban governance? To what extent can common solutions and models of urban governance be applied universally and effective globally, defining a new industry business model? The presentation will draw upon extensive experience of EU funded research and innovation projects (FP7 and Horizon 2020) concerning open smart city governance. A principal point of reference and input aises from the Smarticipate ongoing experiment in the development of open governance solutions for urban planning in collaboration with the partner cities of Rome, London and Hamburg. Similarly practical city planning solutions supporting smart open governance will be showcased from a number of projects including urbanAPI, URBIS, and DECUMANUS, involving the development and implementation of smart city governance applications in major European cities including Helsinki, London, Antwerp, Milan, Bologna and Madrid, Amiens and Osnabruck.