Understanding Residents' Behavior for Smart City Management by Sequential and Periodic Pattern Mining

Understanding the residents’routine and repetitive behavior patterns is important for city planners and strategic partners to enact appropriate city management policies. However, the existing approaches reported in smart city management areas often rely on clustering or machine learning, which are ineffective in capturing such behavioral patterns. Aiming to address this research gap, this article proposes an analytical framework, adopting sequential and periodic pattern mining techniques, to effectively discover residents’routine behavior patterns. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is demonstrated in a case study of American public behavior based on a large-scale venue check-in dataset. The dataset was collected in 2020 (during the global pandemic due to COVID-19) and contains 257 561 check-in data of 3995 residents. The findings uncovered interesting behavioral patterns and venue visit information of residents in the United States during the pandemic, which could help the public and crisis management in cities. IEEE

Fulfilment of last-mile urban logistics for sustainable and inclusive smart cities: a case study conducted in Portugal

While industry tends towards mass personalisation and instant deliveries, the last mile of urban logistics is being challenged to decrease the number of vehicles in circulation and the distances they travel in city centres. The COVID-19 pandemic helped expose the inefficiency of cities in fulfilling citizens' real-time needs. Moreover, the first aim of this paper is to understand the barriers which policymakers face in providing a personalised response to citizens' needs and the second to ascertain how they can proactively serve their communities. In line with these concerns, empirical evidence was collected through a questionnaire to Portuguese policymakers, and the results were discussed in a focus group with experts. The results suggest a lack of tools to enable real-time visualisation and study of scenarios for implementing and organising means of delivery and storage. Moreover, although policymakers feel confident in their capacity to manage the last mile, they would struggle to operate autonomously. Therefore, this paper conceptualises an initial algorithm based on the dynamic collaboration of stakeholders and sharing of resources to guarantee fulfilment of citizens' necessities. Furthermore, future discussions shall emerge about the relationships and technical standards between stakeholders to provide the necessary logistical means for city management and operations.

Management of Smart and Sustainable Cities in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Lessons and Implications

Nowadays, the concept of smart sustainable governance is wrapped around basic principles such as: (i) transparency, (ii) accountability, (iii) stakeholders’ involvement, and iv) citizens’ participation. It is through these principles that are influenced by information and communication technologies (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence, that the practices employed by citizens and their interaction with electronic government (e-government) are diversified. Previously, the misleading concepts of the smart city implied only the objective of the local level or public officials to utilize technology. However, the recent European experience and research studies have led to a more comprehensive notion that refers to the search for intelligent solutions which allow modern sustainable cities to enhance the quality of services provided to citizens and to improve the management of urban mobility. The smart city is based on the usage of connected sensors, data management, and analytics platforms to improve the quality and functioning of built-environment systems. The aim of this paper is to understand the effects of the pandemic on smart cities and to accentuate major exercises that can be learned for post-COVID sustainable urban management and patterns. The lessons and implications outlined in this paper can be used to enforce social distancing community measures in an effective and timely way, and to optimize the use of resources in smart and sustainable cities in critical situations. The paper offers a conceptual overview and serves as a stepping-stone to extensive research and the deployment of sustainable smart city platforms and intelligent transportation systems (a sub-area of smart city applications) after the COVID-19 pandemic using a case study from Russia. Overall, our results demonstrate that the COVID-19 crisis encompasses an excellent opportunity for urban planners and policy makers to take transformative actions towards creating cities that are more intelligent and sustainable. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

OPTIMIZING THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC SERVICES BY LOCAL ADMINISTRATION AS A COMPONENT OF THE SMART CITY CONCEPT ON THE EXAMPLE OF ZABRZE

Surveys performed among the residents of Zabrze indicate that in 2021 the majority of respondents (67%), wishing to use public services provided by the local government, still preferred to visit the office in person. Residents noticed negative aspects of direct service, such as queues of people waiting for the case to be completed (26%), excessive bureaucracy (24%) or lack of parking spaces (18%). However, they counted on help in completing the necessary formalities by officials who should be: professional (20%), communicative (18%) and kind (17%). The use of the digital platform (ePUAP) dedicated to customer service was reported by 32% of respondents. At the same time, as much as 40% of the respondents, in order to save time and to simplify procedures, declared their will to use innovative methods of remote contact with public administration (e.g. via social media). The COVID-19 pandemic showed that it was possible to increase (even by 250%) the number of cases handled remotely, which with over 90% of households in Poland with access to a computer network creates opportunities for integrated development as part of the Smart City idea. The aim of the paper was to identify the residents' expectations related to the provision of public services by local administration. Precise determination of the ways of perception of both direct and remote customer service has not only an application value. It also allows for further research study on the management of local government, including the organization of management control, as well as social communication of local governments.