Introduction to Smart Cities and a Vision of Cyber-Human Cities

Abstract

The ICT role in the current Smart City vision is mostly passive and focused on collecting and analyzing data, predicting and optimizing infrastructure utilization and facilitating communication between different city services. While the citizens are undeniably winners in this process as the beneficiaries of a more optimized and cheaper infrastructure they are not taking an active role in the development and daily management of the city. In this chapter we describe the vision of Cyber-Human Smart Cities, involving a rich and active interplay of different stakeholders (primarily citizens, local businesses and authorities). Realizing such complex interplay requires a paradigm shift in how the physical infrastructure and people will be integrated and how they will interact. At the heart of this paradigm shift lies the merging of two technology/research domains, Cyber-Physical Systems and Socio-Technical Systems, into the value-driven context of a Smart City. The architecture we propose puts value generation at the top of the pyramid and fuels the generation of novel values and enhancement of traditional ones. This effectively transforms the role and broadens the involvement and opportunities of citizen-stakeholders, but also promotes the ICT from passive infrastructure to an active participant shaping the city’s ecosystem.