1. Transition processes and digital
transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
TRANSFORM Series: Smart Cities and Communities
DCU Business School, Dublin/online
10.02.2021
Dr. Dirk Ahlers
Smart Sustainable Cities Group
NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology
https://www.ntnu.edu/smartcities
https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/dirk.ahlers

2. 2 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities

3. 3 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
[http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-11-
sustainable-cities-and-communities.html]

4. 4 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
UN SDGs – zoom out/in
[https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2016-06-14-how-food-connects-all-the-sdgs.html
https://www.globalgoals.org/11-sustainable-cities-and-communities]

5. 5 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Smart City Strategies
• Sustainable and livable urban futures
• Open Innovation and Co-creation
• Open ecosystem, not only driven by municipality
• Enabling urban change
– Environmental, economical, societal, technical challenges
– Increase sustainability, resilience, livability
– Improve services, enable new services
– Digital transformation, digitalization
– Real-time city understanding
• Scalable and transferable solutions
• Combination of low- and high-tech solutions
• Integrated solutions, not only ICT

6. 6 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Handling Complexity
• Smart City ➞ Smart City Development and Evolution
• Cities are complex
• Integrated interoperable solutions are hard
• Goal: Keep flexibility, enable experimentation

7. 7 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Smart City Evolution
City Evolution, City Systems Evolution
Technological
constraints
and
opportunities
City needs
and strategy
External and
internal
constraints,
options,
changes
[adapted from ITU-T, Setting the framework for an ICT architecture of a smart sustainable city (SSC-0345), 2015]
Architecture Evolution
and Adaptation,
Development and
Maintenance
Urban Renewal, City
Development, City
Redevelopment, Urban
Innovation
Smart City Co-Evolution
City ICT/EA
Smart Ci es
Enterprise
Architecture
Development
and
Evolu on

8. 8 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Stakeholders and context boundaries
Smart City
Company
1
Company
2
Company
4
Company
... Company
n
Municipality
National
Actors
City
networks
European
Actors
Company
3
Citizens
Technological solutions do
not operate in a vacuum.

9. 9 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Quadruple Helix Innovation Model
• Method used in Innovation,
Urban Planning/Development,
Citizen engagement
• Co-Creation and Open
Innovation
• Involvement and collaboration
of relevant actors
• Structural changes beyond any
one segment
• Smart city means involvement of
all stakeholders in urban
innovation, knowledge sharing,
collaboration
Participatory
Innovation
Industry
Academia
Civil Society
Government
[EU Digital Single Market: Open Innovation2.0 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/open-innovation-20]

10. 10 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Project Examples

11. Limerick · Trondheim · Alba Iulia · Písek · Sestao · Smolyan · Võru
+CityxChange
SCC1 Lighthouse Project for the
Development of Positive Energy Blocks
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824260.
http://cityxchange.eu/

14. Structure for urban
innovation spaces
• Activate the innovation potential &
innovation ecosystem of a city
• City as a living lab
• Innovation Playgrounds
• Innovation Labs & Citizen
Observatories
• Physical & virtual
• City & Areas & Labs
Example: Trondheim

15. +CityxChange Open Ecosystem concept
[A Smart City Ecosystem enabling Open Innovation. Dirk Ahlers, Leendert Wienhofen, Sobah Abbas
Petersen, Mohsen Anvaari. I4CS 2019, Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22482-0_9]

16. Bold City Vision Framework
[D3.1 Framework for Bold City Vision, Guidelines, and Incentive Schemes,
https://cityxchange.eu/knowledge-base/framework-for-bold-city-vision-guidelines-and-incentive-
schemes/ ]

17. 17
Wireless Trondheim / Mazemap
Living Lab
• Range of applications on WiFi network
– WLAN indoor coverage on campus
• ‘Campus Analytics’
– Mobility data with high spatial and temporal
resolution
– Passive location sensing
– Device positions as proxy for people’s locations
– Abstraction and processing layers
• Data cleaning/preprocessing
• Movement Extraction
• Building-graph extraction
• Visualization
[Visualizing a City Within a City – Mapping Mobility Within a University Campus. Dirk Ahlers, Kristoffer Gebuhr Aulie, Jeppe Eriksen, and
John Krogstie. Vol. 166 LNICS http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33681-7_41]

18. 18
CTT – Carbon Track and Trace: IoT emission sensor network
[https://www.ntnu.edu/ad/ctt]

19. TRD3.0 University-city
cooperation on smart
sustainable cities –
crossing silos
[https://sites.google.com/trondheim.kommune.no/universitetskommunen/]

20. 20 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
What next?

21. 21 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Known problem
[https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/]

22. 22 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Post crisis is during crisis
• What can we learn from Covid-19 response?
• What structures can be applied for climate action?
• Lockdowns barely bring emissions down
• How to link Climate Action & Covid-Recovery
• European Green Deal: Climate neutrality by 2050
• New role of livable urban spaces
• New thinking around mobility
• Push for digitalisation
• We have to build a better world with better structures

23. 23 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Action? Action!
Societal
Action
Individual
Action
Systemic
Action

24. 24 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Covid-19 brings a new focus on livability
Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City, Street Seating (50076249568), CC BY 2.0
Fabian Deter, Pop-up Radweg auf dem Kottbusser Damm in Berlin, CC BY-SA 4.0

25. 25 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Takeaways
• Smart City is a challenging interdisciplinary topic
• Smart City as an evolution and transition process
• Make cities more livable, sustainable, understandable
• New opportunities and requirements arising
• Sustainability & resilience as main imperatives
Smart Cities,
Sustainability,
Climate Action

26. 26 Transition processes and digital transformation in Smart Sustainable Cities
Q&A
Contact
Dirk Ahlers
search://Dirk Ahlers
@dirkahlers
dirk.ahlers@ntnu.no
https://www.ntnu.edu/smartcities
https://www.ntnu.edu/employees/dirk.ahlers
+CityxChange
Twitter @plusCities
Web: cityxchange.eu
KB: cityxchange.eu/knowledge-base/