Renata Paola Dameri

Comparing Smart and Digital City: Initiatives and Strategies in Amsterdam and Genoa. Are They Digital and/or Smart?

The objective of this research is to investigate the relations between Smart city and Digital city concepts and strategies. The author examines the international literature about these topics, comparing smart city and digital city definitions, components and goals. This survey shows that a clear definition of both smart city and digital city still lacks and that these two topics are often overlapped or confused. The same thing happens in empirical implementation of smart and/or digital strategies in cities. The research methodology includes the study and comparison of two important empirical implementations of Smart/Digital strategies in Europe: Amsterdam and Genoa. The results show that smart city and digital city are not the same, even if they are strictly linked each other and sometimes merged in common initiatives. Moreover, this empirical research highlights the key role of players, programs and governance in realizing smart/digital cities really effective for a best quality of life in the urban space.

Smart city intellectual capital: an emerging view of territorial systems innovation management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how the intellectual capital (IC) approach and concepts could be fruitfully adapted to study the smart city phenomenon from a managerial point of view. Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a long-term, in-depth ethnographic exploration of the vast global community, which is created around the smart city movement. Findings – The analysis suggests that, in order to effectively analyse a smart city context through the IC lens, the traditional IC framework needs to be extended for: expected outcomes, which should also include sustainability, resilience and quality of life; categories of key resources, which should also include institutional capital and environmental capital; units of analysis, which should also include territorial systems, such as transportation or waste; and key managerial challenges implied. As a final result, a smart city intellectual capital (SC-IC) framework is proposed. Research limitations/implications – Most...

Smart City and Value Creation

During the latest five years, the label smart city has been spreading all over the world, impacting on urban strategies in both large and small towns. To face the increasing problems of urban areas, local public government, companies, not-for-profit organizations and the citizens themselves embraced the idea of a smarter city, using more technologies, creating better life conditions and safeguarding the environment. However, today the smart city panorama appears very confused. No acknowledged smart city definition exists till now and several cities defining themselves smart completely lack of a strategic vision about their smart future. This first chapter is the introduction of this book collecting several contributes from different academic studies all over Europe. The aim of this work is to offer a large vision about the smart city phenomenon and to compare researches and considerations regarding how to define a smart city, how to design a smart strategy and how to measure if smart actions really are able to create public value for citizens and a better quality of life in urban spaces. This chapter introduces the most important themes regarding the smart city and further deepened in the ten chapters of the book.

Smart Mobility in Smart City

Smart City is a recent topic, but it is spreading very fast, as it is perceived like a winning strategy to cope with some severe urban problems such as traffic, pollution, energy consumption, waste treatment. Smart City ideas are the merge of some other more ancient urban policies such as digital city, green city, knowledge city. A Smart City is therefore a complex, long-term vision of a better urban area, aiming at reducing its environmental footprint and at creating better quality of life for citizens. Mobility is one of the most difficult topic to face in metropolitan large areas. It involves both environmental and economic aspects, and needs both high technologies and virtuous people behaviours. Smart Mobility is largely permeated by ICT, used in both backward and forward applications, to support the optimization of traffic fluxes, but also to collect citizens’ opinions about liveability in cities or quality of local public transport services. The aim of this paper is to analyse the Smart Mobility initiatives like part of a larger Smart City initiative portfolio, and to investigate about the role of ICT in supporting smart mobility actions, influencing their impact on the citizens’ quality of life and on the public value created for the city as a whole.

Accounting Information Systems for Decision Making

This book contains a collection of research papers on accounting information systems including their strategic role in decision processes, within and between companies. An accounting system is a complex system composed of a mix of strictly interrelated elements such as data, information, human resources, IT tool, accounting models and procedures. Accounting information systems are often considered the instrument by default for accounting automation. This book aims to sketch a clear picture of the current state of AIS research, including design, acceptance and reliance, value-addeddecision making, interorganizational links, and process improvements.The contributions in this volume emphasizethat AIS has grown into a powerful strategic tool. The book provides evidence for this observation by examining a wide range of current issues ranging from theory development in AIS to practical applications of accounting information systems. In particular it focuses on themes of growing interest in the realm of XBRL and Financial Reporting, Management Information Systems, IT/IS Audit and IT/IS Compliance. The book will be of interest to financial and managerial accountants and IT/IS practitioners, including information systems managers and consultants.

Triple Helix in Smart Cities: A Literature Review about the Vision of Public Bodies, Universities, and Private Companies

Smart city is a recent topic, aiming at improving the quality of life of citizens in urban areas. Born like a bottom-up trend, it is now becoming crucial in urban planning in large cities all over the world. The smart city success depends on the synergic action by the triple helix key actors: public bodies, universities, and private companies. However, not ever these actors share the same smart city vision. This paper aims at individuating similarities and differences in key actors smart city vision, by a large and deep literature review on both scientific papers and practitioner or institutional reports.

Governing Smart Cities

Smart cities (SCs) are a recent but emerging phenomenon, aiming at using high technology and especially information and communications technology (ICT) to implement better living conditions in large metropolises, to involve citizens in city government, and to support sustainable economic development and city attractiveness. The final goal is to improve the quality of city life for all stakeholders. Until now, SCs have been developing as bottom-up projects, bringing together smart initiatives driven by public bodies, enterprises, citizens, and not-for-profit organizations. However, to build a long-term smart strategy capable of producing better returns from investments and deciding priorities regarding each city, a comprehensive SC governance framework is needed. The aim of this paper is to collect empirical evidences regarding government structures implemented in SCs and to outline a framework for the roles of local governments, nongovernmental agencies, and administrative officials. The survey shows that no consolidated standards or best practices for governing SCs are implemented in the examined cities; however, each city applies its own governance framework. Moreover, the study reveals some interesting experiences that may be useful for involving citizens and civil society in SC governance.

Centralization vs. Decentralization of Purchasing in the Public Sector: The Role of e-Procurement in the Italian Case

In this work, we sought to better understand the possible role of e-procurement in the evolving strategies of centralization (and decentraliza- tion) of public purchase centres. We conducted an explorative research study in the Italian context, where both centralization and decentralization of e-procurement have been experimented. The analysis of the Italian case highlighted an aspect that has been overlooked in literature so far: the strong and sudden centralization of purchasing caused by e-procurement adoption may present problems, especially in complex contexts with a past tradition of wide-spread de-centralized purchasing powers. The Italian case suggests that a possible solution may be the adoption of a hybrid model, where a centralized structure coordinates a network made of regional semi-centralized e-procurement centres, which, in turn, mediate with local contexts and involve or control the smallest agencies. The main features, strengths and weaknesses of this emerging organizational model for e-procurement agencies are discussed.

Trends in accounting information systems

Most of the contents of this book is based on a selection of the research works presented at the track entitled ‘Accounting Information Systems’ of the 2012 Annual Conference of the Italian Chapter of AIS (ItAIS), which was held in Rome, Italy, in September 2012. The aim of the track was to sketch a clear picture of the current state of Accounting Information Systems (AIS) research in a broad sense, including design, acceptance and reliance, value added, decision making, interorganizational links, and process improvements. In particular, despite the fact that accounting information systems are often considered the instrument by default for accounting automation the track starts from a wide definition of the accounting information system, as a complex system composed of a mix of strictly interrelated elements (such as data, information, human resources, IT tools, accounting models and procedures), and basically involved in collecting, classifying, elaborating, recording, storing accounting data.

Looking for Synergies Between Accounting and Information Technologies

The research works published in this book are a selection of the papers submitted at the XI Annual Conference of the Italian Chapter of Association for Information Systems (ItAIS 2014), which was held in Genoa in November, untitled “Digital Innovation and Inclusive Knowledge in Times of Change”. The volume contains 17 research works that were accepted at the conference after a double-blind review, and were mainly presented at the Accounting Information Systems track.