Cities around the world are investing heavily in the design and implementation of Smart City Initiatives. A lot of public money goes into the smart city approach. Not only on the public side, but also for companies, smart city business models in this context are interesting. Global high-tech companies such as IBM, Cisco, SAP Research and Mitsubishi Electric work in large projects in Asia and Arabia. In Germany, there are also large telecommunications companies, mobile companies but also companies close to the city, such as energy suppliers or local IT companies with important knowledge of locality trying to enter the field. The global Corona Pandemic 2020 is accelerating this path too. Various efforts have been made to assess the results of these projects and initiatives. This study offers an analysis of the economic benefits of smart city initiatives. The main drivers and evaluation criteria will be examined to identify and to examine their potential contribution to the development of smart city. This article deals with the economic benefits of Smart City Initiatives. An attempt is made to develop and describe the most important economic benefits as categories from the literature analysis.

The LoRaWAN technology is repeatedly mentioned in connection with smart city initiatives, as it moves in the field of connectivity and IoT environment. This paper examines the role of LoRaWAN in smart city strategy and what vulnerabilities are known in the project using LoRaWAN. With help of a concrete use case of the city of Pforzheim (Germany), a SWOT model is set up and tested with experts. From this it can be deduced that the LoRaWAN technology is currently undergoing an interesting development but also has to overcome any hurdles in the urban environment.

The major European Smart City Lighthouse Projects have gained a lot of attention and importance from the designers of Smart City Initiatives (SCI) since 2014. The EU Commission's funding under the Horizon 2020 program is significant. The supported cities include the European metropolises but also several smaller cities. All these cities are repeatedly named Smart City pioneers. However, the research still has a gap when it comes to value generation. This article deals with the economic benefits of these Lighthouse projects. The own developed categories are applied and proved with Lighthouse projects. The range of economic benefits is shown and evaluated using the qualitative content analysis of the data from the EU - CORDIS database. The sustainability in the Smart City Initiatives is showcased as economic benefit is prioritized higher than cost saving or efficiency.