Significant societal challenges in the form of demographics, urbanisation, climate change, resource crises and global competition are driving profound changes within our cities. In order to cope, governments and businesses are turning to ‘smart city’ concepts with the aim to enhance the efficiency of key infrastructure, utilities and services to create a sustainable urban environment that improves the quality of life for its citizens and enhances economic development. Smart cities are essentially built by utilising a set of latest information and communication technologies (ICT), including Wi-Fi and mobile networks, wireless sensors, the Internet of things, big data analytic tools, cloud services, mobile devices, and mobile apps. In this context, ICT as an enabling Smart City technology will generate radically new “smart” services and facilities. The UK’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills values the smart city industry at more than $400 billion globally by 2020.
However, and despite the very attracting potential benefits and market opportunities, the roadmap towards the development of smart cities is in fact fraught with challenges and difficulties. In particular, the concept of ‘smart city’ is rather new and relatively ill-defined, e.g. is there any universally agreed definition of smart city? What is the optimal model for smart cities? In light of this discussion, cities in different countries across the world will have very diverse problems with different regional, political, legal, technical, and economic contexts – how to possibly apply the model and successful practices of one city into other cities with similar or different contexts? What is the current progress of smart city development in different parts of the world? Furthermore, smart city is a big umbrella that covers applications to support all services/areas of a city (e.g. transportation, healthcare, energy, public safety, education, waste management, food management, and many more). Given this wide coverage, it is clear that no city can be easily and dramatically transformed in one go. As such, smart city projects are usually kicked off by one department within a city, and move in phases, with progressive expansion of the functionality and degree of integration with different parts and areas of a city – which service area should receive the highest priority given resource constraints and specific needs of the city? How can various smart applications and services be properly integrated and so work together in a coherent way, with a high degree of data sharing to offer optimisation within the city? In addition, although the smart city concept is driven by advanced technologies, its success is highly dependent on the engagement of citizens. Historically, such engagement has been problematic especially considering individual differences (e.g. in age, education/skill/income levels, and past experience) – how to identify the needs of different groups of users in the city? How to make sure smart services can be adequately designed, developed and implemented to satisfy the various needs of local citizens? How to measure the level of user engagement in smart city services? How daily usage of smart services can lead to behaviour changes of citizens, and what are the economic and environmental impacts of such behaviour change?
It is obvious that the above challenging questions of smart cities cannot be easily answered from a single technical (e.g. computing and engineering) or non-technical (e.g. social, urban and business) perspective. In fact, due to the complexity of cities, no single effort will be sufficient in making the smart city vision become realistic. In order to transform cities into smarter and more liveable places, there is a strong need for more substantial collaboration among city leaders, ICT manufacturers, software companies, smart service providers, and academic research¬ers from all relevant disciplines.
This conference thus aims to provide a premier and exciting forum for the exchange of scientific ideas, research findings, and industrial practices among academics and practitioners, who are from different disciplines (e.g. information systems, computer science, telecommunication engineering, urban studies, and business and economics) but have common interests in smart cities. It welcomes all forms of relevant research, including conceptual, theoretical, quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method studies. Papers with an interdisciplinary nature are particularly encouraging. In order to offer wide-ranging discussion opportunities, the conference seeks the most recent and relevant research on a variety of topics.
Topics of Interest
Main topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Wireless Connectivity in Smart Cities
- Architectures for the Internet of Things (IoT)
- IoT technologies bridging the physical and virtual worlds
- Internet of Everything (connecting data, process and people)
- RFID and related technologies to deliver new and enhanced services in smart cities
- End to End / Machine to Machine (M2M) communication for real-time data collection in smart cities
- Mobile broadband technologies (3G/4G/5G) to support connectivity in smart cities
New Business Concerns in Smart Cities
- Emerging business models and services in smart cities
- Innovative economic models emerged in smart cities
- Market sizing and business opportunities in smart cities
- New market rules, legislation, incentive schemes, and tariffs for smart city services.
Data and Software Applications in Smart Cities
- Cloud computing and cloud-based data sharing solutions for smart cities
- Real-time decision analysis/support systems for monitoring and managing smart cities
- Big data analytics (concepts, methods, techniques and tools)
- Intelligent systems and machine learning approaches and algorithms for smart cities
- Open data usage, applications and services
- Mobile computing and app interaction
User-Centric Smart Cities
- Identification and exploration of the needs of citizens
- Public trust, user acceptance, and citizen engagement in smart services
- Behaviour changes led by the daily usage of smart city services and facilities
- Socio-technical challenges and barriers affecting the development and deployment of smart solutions in the contexts of specific cities
Security, Privacy and Identity Issues in Smart Cities
- New security, privacy and identify problems and risks in cloud-based and/or IoT applications of smart cities
- Security and privacy requirements in smart city applications and services
- Technologies and methods to protect data security and user privacy and identify in smart cities
- Risk identification, assessment and mitigation strategies to handle security and privacy concerns
Greenness and Sustainability of Smart Cities
- Green and sustainable requirements, features and strategies in smart cities
- Renewable energy models in smart cities
- Green computing and green IT solutions in smart cities
- Methods and metrics to measure the greenness and environmental impacts of smart city development
- Possible environmental issues and rebound effects (or take-back effects) caused by the large-scale deployment of smart city applications.
Smart City as an Integrated Ecosystem
- Approaches and techniques for integrating smart applications and services within the city
- Connecting infrastructure, applications and people into cities
- Data sharing difficulties across an integrated smart city ecosystem
- Integrated smart city solutions deployments, test-beds and field trials
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the smartness of cities
- Successful or failure cases of smart cities
Further to looking at smart city as a holistic ecosystem, this conference also welcomes recent research that focuses particularly on one of the main service areas of smart cities. Authors are encouraged to combine any of the above interested topics as relevant with a selected smart service area or application, such as:
| Key areas of Smart Services | Example Applications |
| Transportation | Smart car parking, bike sharing schemes, mobile connected vehicles, intelligent transportation systems, fleet management solutions |
| Healthcare | Mobile health or mHealth solutions, smart home caring systems, remote monitoring systems for disabled, chronically ill, or elderly patients |
| Energy | Smart meters for electricity, gas and water, home energy monitoring systems, smart grid services, decentralized energy ecosystems |
| Building and housing | Smart home systems using wireless sensors to connect heating, air-conditioning, lighting, security systems, and other appliances |
| Public safety | Smart surveillance using high-resolution and sensor-activated video cameras and video analytic tools |
| Education | Mobile learning or mLearning solutions, ID bracelets/cards that include GPS capabilities to track a student’s location |
| Waste management | Smart bins deployed in households, commercial buildings and public areas |
| Food management | Smart agriculture covering the entire life cycle of the agriculture process, RFID-enabled food safety and traceability systems |
The Conference will be composed of several types of contributions:
- Full Papers – These include mainly accomplished research results and have 8 pages at the maximum (5,000 words).
- Short Papers – These are mostly composed of work in progress reports or fresh developments and have 4 pages at maximum (2,500 words).
- Reflection Papers – These might review recent research literature pertaining to a particular problem or approach, indicate what the findings suggest, and/or provide a suggestion – with rationale and justification – for a different approach or perspective on that problem. Reflection papers might also analyze general trends or discuss important issues in topics related to the conference. These have 4 pages at maximum (2,500 words).
- Posters / Demonstrations – These contain implementation information or work-in-progress and have two pages at maximum (1,250 words) besides the poster itself (or demonstration) that will be exposed at the conference.
- Tutorials – Tutorials can be proposed by scholars or company representatives. A proposal of maximum 250 words is expected.
- Panels – Discussions on selected topics will be held. A proposal of maximum 250 words is expected.
- Invited Talks – These will be made of contributions from well-known scholars and company representatives. An abstract will be included in the conference proceedings.
- Panels – Discussions on selected topics will be held. A proposal of maximum 250 words is expected.
- Doctoral Consortium – A Doctoral Consortium will discuss in group, individual projects and on going work of PhD students. Prospective students should send a report of their PhD projects and work so far with a maximum of 4 pages (2,500 words).
- Corporate Showcases & Exhibitions – The former enables Companies to present recent developments and applications, inform a large and qualified audience of your future directions and showcase company’s noteworthy products and services. There will be a time slot for companies to make their presentation in a room. The latter enables companies the opportunity to display its latest offerings of hardware, software, tools, services and books, through an exhibit booth. For further details please contact the publicity chair – secretariat@smartcities-conf.org
This is a blind peer-reviewed conference.
Important Dates
– Submission Deadline (last call): 31 May 2019
– Notification to Authors (last call): 21 June 2019
– Final Camera-Ready Submission and Early Registration (1st call): Until 29 March 2019
– Late Registration (1st call): After 29 March 2019
– Conference: 17 – 19 July 2019