Smart City: A Shareable Framework and Its Applications in China

Abstract

Smart City is a new concept that uses information and communication technology (ICT) to promote the smartification of urban construction, planning and services. Currently, a number of cities have conducted studies on smart cities, but they have mostly focused on analyzing the conceptual connotations or applications in specific domains and lack a shareable and integrated framework, which has led to significant barriers for individual smart projects. By analyzing the framework and applications of Smart City, this paper proposes a common, shareable and integrated conceptual framework. Then, based on this framework, it further proposes a unified portal platform that can balance multiple stakeholders, including the government, citizens and businesses, as well as for common, custom and other application modes. Finally, the implementation of Smart Weifang based on this platform is discussed. The applications indicate that this shareable platform can effectively eliminate the data and technological barriers between different smart city systems while also avoiding redundant financial investments. The investigation of this proposed framework and platform is highly significant for the unified construction of smart cities and the intensification of the hardware environment, thus representing a true achievement in the transition from 'information islands' to 'information sharing and interconnection' for urban informatization.Sustainability 2019, 11, 4346 2 of 16 and services by using ICT, such as the Internet of things (IoT), cloud computing and geospatial information [9][10][11][12]. Based on research on the smart city conceptual framework and characteristics, practical studies on smart cities have been conducted, such as the smart e-government "I-Japan Strategy" in Japan, the intelligent transportation study in Sweden, the smart grid projects in the US, and the smart community in Germany.However, despite the large amount of research conducted by numerous countries and cities on the smart city and the substantial progress that they represent, they mostly focused on the analysis of the conceptual framework and applications in specific domains (e.g., smart transportation) and lack a common, shareable and integrated framework of understanding. A city is a giant complex system. To meet the ever-changing needs of its citizens, all systems within the city should communicate accurately with each other and share and utilize each other's resources in a timely and rapid manner [13]. Smart projects in specific domains usually have the characteristics of a resource monopoly and mutual independence, which leads to the following issues: (1) The inability to guarantee the consistency of public data and the spatial base for different smart projects in the same city; (2) the inability to achieve the sharing and integration of different smart systems or data in smart cities; (3) the inability to guarantee consistency across different smart project implementations due to different viewpoints of the project implementers or researchers; and (4) ...

Evaluation System: Evaluation of Smart City Shareable Framework and Its Applications in China

“…Research on smart city construction frameworks is important for guiding the establishment of evaluation systems. Smart city is a new concept and mode to promote the intellectualization of urban planning, management and services by using ICT, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and geospatial information [14][15][16][17][18][19]. Li et al (2011) believed that smart cities will change the interactions among governments, businesses, and the public by using a smart approach and involving new information technologies, with the IoT and cloud computing as cores, and this smart approach is actually an integrated system of multiple decision-making and service algorithms that play a foundational and pre-emptive role in the construction of smart cities [20].…”

“…The authors believed that smart city construction mainly covers four aspects: software and hardware infrastructure, spatial and temporal big data, cloud platforms, and applications. Based on this sharable framework, this paper establishes a common and highly scalable smart city construction evaluation system [14].…”

“…Although diverse and complex indicators are used, there are still shortcomings: (1) The indicators mostly focus on a certain aspect of smart cities, such as the evaluation of software and hardware infrastructure or applications. However, according to the elements in the common and shareable smart city framework proposed by Li et al (2019) [14], a smart city is a unified framework that covers infrastructure, data, cloud systems, and applications. Therefore, indicators measure merely one particular aspect, which cannot reflect the overall performance comprehensively and construction level of a smart city; (2) The one-sidedness of the aforementioned indicators limits the application scope of the evaluation systems, and these systems show distinct regional characteristics; there is a lack of a common and shareable comprehensive evaluation system; (3) Most research has focused on methodology, and research on the application and comparative analysis of multiple smart cities remains rare.…”

“…Based on the experience of leading the construction of 845 smart city or digital city platforms in China and writing 27 technical outlines and national standards, the core evaluation indicators with common characteristics in these cities were selected. Then, combing with the selection principle and the shared framework of smart city construction proposed by Li et al (2019) [14], seven first-level indicators and 41 second-level evaluation indicators for smart city shareable framework were finally determined. Figure 1 illustrated the relationships between the principles of indicator selection and the primary indicators.…”

“…Therefore, based on the common and shareable smart city framework proposed by Li et al (2019) [14] and the existing research on smart city construction evaluation [13], this paper proposes a universal and highly practical evaluation system that is well-integrated with a sharable smart city framework. Then, based on the proposed system, several smart city evaluations are conducted.…”