Table 6 The key benefits, potentials, and opportunities of the data-driven smart city and the environmentally data-driven smart sustainable city

Transport and traffic management

• Reducing energy usage and harmful emissions

• Providing the opportunity to alter demand for carbon-intensive vehicles using disincentives

• Increasing and maintaining safety for vehicle drivers by detecting accidents and responding timely to critical events through alerts

• Predicting traffic conditions for decreasing congestion by directing vehicles to alternative roads

• Reducing noise pollution through smart traffic lights and smart parking

• Improving the security and reliability of the overall transport system

• Encouraging and attracting people to cycle thanks to dynamic signage system, thereby reducing CO2 emissions resulting otherwise from more polluting forms of energy-intensive transport

• Enhancing mobility for citizens and thus increasing the level of their life satisfaction

• Providing the opportunity for contactless payment and thus minimizing environmental impacts

• Providing the opportunity for obtaining more detailed information on transport and mobility thanks to the unified public transport system

• Tracking traffic occupancy for planning public transport routes in a more flexible way

• Identifying the user priorities of public transport areas and developing new routes in response to new demands

• Improving, re–engineering, or developing transport infrastructure based on historical mobility and congestion data

• Decreasing the need for parking spaces on the streets through car sharing system

• Supporting equity and inclusion through socially sustainable public transport thanks to smart mobility apps

• Providing information to passengers about traffic occupancy/irregularities of public transport, which allows them to plan their way more efficiently

Smart power grid

• Improving the transmission efficiency of electricity

• Optimizing distribution networks in terms of energy demand/supply

• Restoring after and reacting timely to potential disturbances in power supply

• Reducing operation, maintenance, and management costs

• Integrating different systems of renewable energy

• Reducing electricity bills and thus saving money as well as balancing the electricity system through efficient electricity networks

• Making storage decisions based on the monitoring of power generation and power demands

• Helping governments to react promptly to emergencies, critical events, or natural disasters, e.g., severe storms, earthquakes, and large solar flares, through adding resiliency to large-scale power systems

• Curbing energy usage, conserving energy, reducing costs, and maximizing the transparency and reliability of the energy supply chain

• Avoiding potential power outages resulting from high demand on energy using dynamic pricing models for power usage by increasing charges during peak times to smooth out peaks and applying lower charges during normal times.

• Avoiding carbon–intensive peaks using new ways of coordination with regard to the overall ensemble of users and consumers.

• Supporting decision–making pertaining to the generation and supply of power in line with the actual demand of users and consumers

• Improving coordination and planning around power generation from renewable plants depending on wind or sun.

• Monitoring and analyzing energy consumption in real time across multiple spatial scales and over different temporal scales

Smart buildings

• Providing the potential for energy efficiency and GHG emissions reductions through such functions as:

 - Highly advanced automatic systems for efficient and natural lighting

 - Temperature control

 - Window and door operation

 - Smart appliances

• Keeping the building’s climate within a specified range

• Reducing energy consumption and energy costs

• Guaranteeing safety and security

• Providing the potential for decreasing heat demand and consequent GHG emissions by means of retrofitting residential buildings

• Assessing energy demand from large-scale retrofitting and exploring its impact on the supply side, thereby enabling more precisely targeted and better coordinated energy efficiency programs

Smart meters and energy monitors

• Allowing consumers to manage their energy usage based on what they actually need and afford by having access to live energy prices and adjusting their usage accordingly

• Enabling consumers to remotely control their home appliances and devices by means of such advanced functions as scheduling, programming, as well as reacting to contextual situations

• Allowing for self–optimization and self–control of energy consumption through integrating sensing and actuation systems in different kinds of appliances and devices for balancing power generation and usage

• Providing insights into how the energy flows can be influenced by the consumer behavior thanks to the in-house sensors that can report data on energy-using appliances

• Balancing electric loads and reducing power outages

• Allowing for dynamic pricing which lowers or raises the cost of electricity based on the current demand

• Providing homeowners with convenience and cost savings

• Offering homeowners sophisticated level of preprogrammed preferences in terms of turning on some appliances based on the amount of the energy consumed within a day, week, or month

Smart environmental monitoring

• Reducing the time needed for waste collection as well as the operating time of disposal machines

• Curbing fuel consumption and costs

• Reducing the number of waste disposal vehicles and containers and related service costs

• Reducing the level of harmful emissions through route optimization

• Decreasing noise pollution generated by waste disposal vehicles

• Providing health benefits and decreasing health risks through preventing the accumulation of waste

• Using historical and movement data

• Using historical data on disposed waste (places and volumes) for installing new waste containers

• Distributing the resources and logistics more efficiency, thereby significantly reducing the operational and infrastructural costs of waste collection system

Smart management of waste collection

• Developing a variety of preventive systems and measures for environmental quality and implementing them in a timely manner

• Enabling public authorities to observe the condition of the air and to forecast about its pollution

• Enabling government and non-governmental bodies to take decisions based on a more informed understanding of the quality of the environment

• Complementing energy efficiency solutions with respect to GHG emissions reductions

• Informing citizens and other city stakeholders about GHG emissions

• Ensuring companies’ compliance with environmental regulations and evaluating the efficiency of the newly installed systems as well as the health of employees

• Evaluating the performance of environmental regulations and enforcements, whether they are working as anticipated, so that the government can take action to change the regulatory framework

• Stimulating research opportunities on the effects of certain pollutants on human, wildlife, or aquatic life so to create treatment procedures

• Finding risks to human and wildlife, scoping to population migration from high-density areas to low density areas, and restricting GHG emissions

• Identifying environmental stress, understanding environmental patterns, and assessing the effectiveness of strategies and programs

• Collecting critical information to make better policy decisions to reduce GHG emissions, as well as to guide citizens on making their own efforts in this regard

• Allowing the interpretation of the ambient air data based on the spatial and temporal representativeness of the data gathered and on the health risks involved in the exposure to the monitored levels

• Allowing the comparison of the different districts of the city in terms of various air pollutants

• Publishing hourly more detailed information for each pollutant in absolute value, and designing daily values for drawing a more complete picture at monitoring the level of pollution in the city

• Allowing users to explore the available information at maximum level due to the opportunity to gather information about the status of the atmosphere

• Allowing companies and enterprises in the industry to get an idea about the air quality, which makes it possible to make decision on the implementation of preventive measures for reducing pollution. This leads to the maximisation of their productivity in the long-term

• Allowing industries to access the air pollution forecasts, which simplifies the decision-making process in the manufacturing environment

• Predicting trends of the presence of air pollutants in the atmosphere

• Coping with the environment and lowering air and noise pollution levels to enhance the quality of life

Smart street lighting

• Facilitating many innovative applications related to traffic, mobility, air and noise pollution, parking, safety, and public Wi-Fi connectivity, just to name a few

• Enhancing the environmental performance and energy efficiency of the essential infrastructure of the city

• Optimizing the efficiency of the public-lighting installations in terms of operational and maintenance costs

• Reducing collision and the risk of collisions with cyclists and other vulnerable road users

Smart urban metabolism

• Providing holistic analysis of energy and material pathways to conceive of management systems and technologies that allow for the reintegration of natural processes, increasing the efficiency of resource use, and the conservation and production of energy

• Providing long–term opportunities in terms of enabling a new understanding of the causalities that govern urbanism

• Allowing citizens and city officials and stakeholders to receive real-time feedback on the consequences of their choices in a systematic way

• Understanding the GHG emissions resulting from the consumption of electricity, heat, water, and the production of waste

• Allowing the follow-up and evaluation of the evolution of urban metabolism, and facilitating the identification of the cause-and-effect relationships of the metabolic flows

• Providing rich datasets on energy and material flows at the city level in terms of both production- and consumption-based approaches

Smart management of urban infrastructure

• Improving incident management

• Enhancing emergency response coordination

• Mitigating risks and responding timely to critical events or unfavourable conditions

• Enhancing safety and service quality

• Reducing operational and maintenance costs

• Improving resources and logistics efficiency

• Reducing negative impacts on the environment

• Identifying, predicting, and responding to longer-term urban infrastructure needs

Smart citizens: participation and consultation

• Empowering citizens for community engagement and co-creation

• Improving the level of satisfaction and increasing the level of confidence and trust among citizens in the city administration

• Promoting widespread participation through new technologies that are essentially network-based and enable extensive interactions across many urban domains as well as spatial scales

• Enhancing equity and fairness and attaining a better quality of city life through new technologies that offer the prospect of ending the digital divides

• Enabling the citizenry to blend their personal knowledge with the knowledge of technology experts

• Informing political participation at all levels

• Engaging the citizenry in city planning, development, and governance

• Making it easier for citizens to find out about planning issues and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of local planning

• Enabling the planning service to perform better with fewer resources for property developers, architects, surveyors, and planning consultants

• Improving the transparency of the city management

• Providing the opportunity to track the quality of work of the management companies and contractors engaged in the provision of urban amenities and services, and to perform corrective actions in the work of local authorities

• Enabling citizens to participate in the technology and policy of the city through various platforms, such as classrooms for leaning, spaces for innovation, co-innovation centers, and participatory and democracy platforms

• Providing services by public agencies remotely and mobile kiosks, such as receiving certificates, publishing complaints, and obtaining necessary information. This improves the convenience of public services

• Determining trends in public opinion to be considered when forming urban development programs and initiatives

Smart public safety

• Empowering decision-makers to prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters

• Increasing safety by identifying risks, threats, and vulnerabilities and providing early warnings

• Preventing adverse effects on public health by notifying citizens to evacuate or avoid certain urban areas

• Enhancing risk assessment and hazard identification to provide immediate responses

• Improving security by allowing or denying access to certain individuals to public places, as well as preventing potential unrest

• Providing the opportunity for increasing urban resilience

• Informing the responsible public and private actors of transportation–related safety and health issues to make improvements

Smart healthcare

• Electronization of medical services:

 - Making medical services more accessible to the public

 - Accelerating the process of customer services

 - Allowing more flexible arrangement of visits to doctors and obtaining the right specialist

 - Enabling physicians to get rid of paper routine and to always have access to data about patients, the history of their diseases, and the medicines they take

 - Providing the municipal administration with reliable and efficient tools for analysis of medical institutions activities

 - Providing the administration with the opportunity of managing resources more efficiently

 - Enabling transparent reporting and planning for future purchases and saving costs for the city budget.

• Large-scale electronization system:

 - Improving the comfort of using public medical services

 - Optimizing the availability and workload of physicians in medical institutions

 - Enabling managing flows of patients and outpatient integrated medical records

 - Keeping consolidated management records and personalised accounts of medical assistance

 - Making online and rescheduling appointments

 - Checking-in without preliminary cancellation and obtaining medical certificates online

 - Finding the nearest clinic nearby place of residence

 - Gathering information about the workload of medical institutions and the demand for doctors

 - Managing medical registers and solving medical and organisational tasks relating to different categories of citizens, those with certain diseases.

• Enhancing diagnosis and treatment processes and tailoring care services

• Providing precautionary and proactive care services

• Prolonging human life and promoting human well-being

• Enabling remote services such as diagnosis and telemedicine

• Improving the quality of recommendations and reducing the time spent on making them as well as on diagnostics

• Providing accurate, appropriate, and history-aware responses to health problems

• Flagging potential health issues frequently or on a demand basis by monitoring, processing, and analyzing complex occurrences

• Predicting and responding to disease outbreaks, critical events, and new trends