This paper highlights the concepts behind the Valletta Travel Information Service (VaTIS) Project, an intelligent information system capable of harvesting data from a road pricing system using... Show More

This paper highlights the concepts behind the Valletta Travel Information Service (VaTIS) Project, an intelligent information system capable of harvesting data from a road pricing system using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology and low cost sensors installed throughout the city of Valletta, Malta. In this paper, we describe the different elements of VaTIS and report on the first phase of the system, which has already been implemented using data from the camera system in place in Valletta and secondary data on travel behaviour to the city. Both authors act as observers, having been involved in the design and subsequent operational procedures of the road pricing system. The initial evaluation of phase 1 shows the potential benefits of smart applications and sensors for the management of travel demand and effective use of limited infrastructure and provides opportunity for further development of such applications to include user engagement and potential behaviour change.

Since the amount of people living in cities is expected to increase to 70% by 2050, cities will face many social and urbanisation challenges, and they will need to operate with reduced budgets and... Show More

Since the amount of people living in cities is expected to increase to 70% by 2050, cities will face many social and urbanisation challenges, and they will need to operate with reduced budgets and limited number of staff. The productivity of computers offers means to address city challenges and do more with less. In this paper, two Smart City projects carried out in Birmingham UK are presented. Firstly, in the Innovation Engine project, conceptual graphs were used to translate innovation experts' ideas into the specification of an open innovation model that may address the needs of large organisations with the capabilities of SMEs and citizens. Secondly, we present results of the pilot evaluation of the Digital Log Book, a smart web portal that enables citizens to access a whole range of public and private services including social housing, universal job match and jobseeker's allowance benefits. We can conclude that smart applications can be very useful to produce better public services and to support cities in the co-creation of new tools that empower citizens and organisations.

Parks and green spaces have been allocated for city residents to offer them healthier natural environments. However, people living in cities may have less opportunity to engage with the natural... Show More

Parks and green spaces have been allocated for city residents to offer them healthier natural environments. However, people living in cities may have less opportunity to engage with the natural environment since parks seem to be passive locations of activity. We investigated how to proactively enhance the attraction of green space to improve people's health. First, we surveyed how 683 city residents were engaged in physical activities. From them, 30 people were recruited for depth interviews. Results showed that the park environment and the health activities that feature ‘inner-attraction' could enhance the frequency and persistence of the city residents to engage in healthy activities. We also evaluated the service experience and attraction of 40 users in a 3-month program in the Daan Forest Park of Taipei City in Taiwan. Using the culture probes method, we found that the experience cycle and the use of social media enhanced the park's inner and inter attraction, and that the role of the park was transformed from a passive green space provider to an active service operator.

This paper presents a mobility monitoring system, based on the detection of Bluetooth and WiFi signals emitted by personal portable devices. The work also describes its possibilities of tracking in... Show More

This paper presents a mobility monitoring system, based on the detection of Bluetooth and WiFi signals emitted by personal portable devices. The work also describes its possibilities of tracking in two real scenarios, one inside the Spanish city of Granada, and another one in a highway between Granada and Málaga, both with several detection nodes. They have been deployed trying to solve one of the most difficult issues in the city, namely the automatic and accurate hourly monitoring of traffic, in order to synchronise the traffic lights, for instance. Moreover, their deployment in a highway might be very useful for other traffic issues, such as computing the average speed in a section of the road. Thus, this system could be used as a tool for smart city and smart traffic. In the experiments, the datasets gathered by the system nodes are analysed, yielding useful information for the automatic detection of rush hours, the identification of traffic flows and computing speed rates.

The main objective of many e-government solutions is establishing smart government through developing user oriented, integrated and interoperable services. However, the heterogeneous and distributed... Show More

The main objective of many e-government solutions is establishing smart government through developing user oriented, integrated and interoperable services. However, the heterogeneous and distributed nature of public administrations and the limit of traditional service discovery approaches does not enable achieving efficiently this objective. Rather achieving semantic interoperability through the development of shared e-government knowledge can be the key to smart government. As its main contribution, this paper presents a semantic modelling approach of data and public services, and a service discovery approach for building smart government applications. Our approach uses both semantic web services and conceptual structures technologies. Applying these technologies was shown to have an extremely high potential impact in smart government development. They enabled the improvement of the data and services description, of multiple resources, with additional semantic information, which allowed an automatic processing of information and services.