Smart charles square: Modeling interconnections of basic building blocks in smart cities

Abstract

One of the basic ideas in the field of smart cities is interconnectivity. Proposed solutions must put together solutions from different fields (sensors, transportation, economy, legislation, energy, IT and many others) and integrate them in order to serve the citizens needs and to ensure sustainability. Additionally this is not done once by buying certain technological tools, but it must be an ongoing process. Thus, not only technological view, but also social aspects must be integrated into services aiming on improvement of the quality of life and sustainability. This is in general a very difficult task, not addressed well by existing methodologies or real world projects. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem. First, we propose an alternate way of demonstrating the expected outcome of a solution for smart cities. It aims at addressing scenarios from the perspective of the end users rather than “just” providing an overview of technology and its capabilities as it is mainly done in the technological companies serving as a solution provider. While this is a small change, it has big effect from the customer (municipality) perspective as they can better support the effects on the end users. Second, this paper demonstrates SMACEF — SMArt City Evaluation Framework. This is a modeling tool suitable for evaluation of Smart City Initiatives. On an example of an important square (Charles Square) in Prague, the capital city of the Czech republic, certain buildings blocks, and their interconnections and the possible effects are discussed.