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Smart service portfolios: Do the cities follow standards?
Anthopoulos L., Janssen M., Weerakkody V.  WWW 2016 Companion (Proceedings of the 25th International World Wide Web Conference Companion, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Apr 11-15, 2016)357-362.2016.Type:Proceedings
Date Reviewed: Jul 19 2017

The roll out of smart city technologies has taken place at such a rate that regulatory standards have largely been unable to meet the pace. Many mobile networks today are therefore operating in a technically unstandardized landscape. The results include incompatibility across deployments, and longer and more expensive development periods. There is also less assurance that the recommended levels of safety and performance, as controlled by standards in other regulated systems, are being met. There may be a longer learning curve for users of individual systems within any smart city, with each being developed according to its own bespoke approach, and the full realization of an integrated smart city of technology is therefore unlikely to be fulfilled.

This paper reports on a number of important facts in relation to the smart city standardization challenge. First, the authors describe how the standards available do not accommodate the services currently existing in cities. As an example, the authors believe that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), as a contributor to technical networking standards in general, has not responded to all types of smart services available in their smart-sustainable cities focus group results. The authors also recognize the fact that service contributions in smart cities are the outcome of innovations, and smart cities are therefore constantly moving targets. This further complicates the standardization challenge, and the standards that do exist typically do not reflect the practice.

This paper therefore seeks to track the extent to which services deployed in cities follow the standards available.

The investigative work presented is dense, with the authors characterizing the technical capabilities of a number of smart cities. The contribution of this work, however, is not as substantial as anticipated. London, for example, is described as offering mobile services to its visitors and inhabitants. Amsterdam is described as having an extended urban space with new smart districts created. These characterizations do not reveal the “innovation discovery per city” that the authors initially claim to provide.

The authors conclude the work, not by stressing the importance of rolling out standards in general, a priority that cannot be argued with, but rather by stating that the standards are made available retrospectively, in light of the developments made. Therefore, the innovation potential seen in smart cities today should not be adversely affected while the environment becomes regulated.

Reviewer:  Cathryn Peoples Review #: CR145434 (1711-0761)
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