Call for Papers: Smart Applications for Smart Cities: New Approaches to
Innovation
Special issue of the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce
Research
Guest Editors: Hans Schaffers, Carlo Ratti and Nicos Komninos
The Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research is planning
a special issue on Smart Applications for Smart Cities: New Approaches to
Innovation.
Cities are complex, networked and continuously changing social ecosystems,
shaped and transformed through the interaction of different interests and
ambitions. Ensuring employment, sustainable development, inclusion and quality
of life are important concerns. Infrastructures of cities, addressing these
concerns, comprise a diversity of services such as healthcare, energy,
education, environmental management, transportation and mobility, public safety.
Increasingly these services are enabled by broadband infrastructures, wireless
sensor networks, Internet-based networked applications, open data and open
platforms. The concept of “smart cities” has emerged during the last few years
to describe how investments in human and social capital and modern ICT
infrastructure and e-services fuel sustainable growth and quality of life,
enabled by a wise management of natural resources and through participative
government (Caragliu, Del Bo, Nijkamp).
However truly smart – and real – cities are driven bottom up by citizens and
organizations as innovators rather than by top down visions and plans that
ignore the innovative potential of grassroots efforts, while governments should
play the role of mediator bringing companies, research organizations and
creative people to work in concert (Ratti, Townsend). The connection between
smart environments and bottom-up innovation practices in the framework of cities
and urban agglomerations is the main focus of the Special Issue. In particular
we explore how collaboration platforms, embedded systems, open data, and
semantic web technologies sustain a new round of innovation driven by the
creativity of the population and the collective intelligence of collaboration.
The concept of Living Labs takes its point of departure in the consideration of
people as innovators, and envisions environments of open and user driven
innovation. As infrastructures and social networks become more advanced and
widespread, the role of the Internet as an enabler of city services has become
more important for urban development. Cities are increasingly assuming a
critical role as drivers of innovation in areas such as health, inclusion,
environment and business, a trend that will surely continue as more people and
devices will become part of the Future Internet even than are connected today.
Cities are increasingly becoming a living lab itself, a playground of innovation
and transformation.
In this landscape, different traditionally separated streams of scientific
research are coming together. New research challenges emerge in and across areas
such as urban development and spatial planning, network infrastructure,
technology platforms, services and applications, user behaviour, service
engineering, innovation theory and urban economics. Also new methodological
approaches to research and innovation emerge, such as design science, action
research, living labs methodologies, testbed methods and tools, which need a
more solid and empirically based foundation in theory as well as in practice.
This special issue aims to advance our understanding of the emerging or already
more mature research challenges at the cross point of the different areas
mentioned. Such understanding will help academics and practitioners to explore
new directions and generate knowledge and solutions towards smarter cities.
Subject Coverage
We specifically encourage papers related to user centered approaches for
innovation focusing on smart applications, aiming for a transformation towards
smarter cities. Papers may cover smart applications for smart cities, addressing
the participative design, implementation and validation aspects. We also solicit
methodologically oriented papers on new, non-traditional approaches to
citizen-centric innovation for smart cities. Particular topics to be addressed
might include, but are not limited to the following :
• User driven innovation facilitating participative urban development
• Innovation Labs facilitating urban planning, development and transformation
• Citizen participation in urban and regional planning and decision-making and governance
• Internet-enabled infrastructures, services and networked applications for smart cities
• Smart applications for innovation based on Internet of Things and Internet of Services paradigms
• Wireless sensor networks and smart sensor-based networked applications in urban areas
• Cloud computing, service models and smart city solutions enabling innovation
• Standardisation and open interfaces of smart city systems, platforms and applications
• Smart applications based on Semantic Web, Linked Data, Ontologies
• Infrastructures and applications for new public urban services such as water, energy, healthcare, environmental monitoring, traffic management, intelligent transportation, e-government
• Smart grids for utility infrastructures and services in urban areas
• E-work and e-business applications
• Design, implementation and evaluation of smart applications
• Case studies of user driven innovation for smart(er) cities.
Notes for Intending Authors
We are seeking original manuscripts on conceptual and methodological issues
related to qualitative research on e-marketing and online consumer behaviour, as
well as papers which report on the results of qualitative empirical research in
the field.
Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently
under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Author guidelines can be found at http://www.jtaer.com/author_guidelines.doc.
All submissions will be refereed by at least three reviewers. Submissions should
be directed by email to hans.schaffers@aalto.fi with copy to ratti@mit.edu and
komninos@urenio.org.
For more information, please visit the following web site: http://www.jtaer.com.
Important dates
Full paper submission: 1 May 2012
Notification of acceptance: 1 July 2012
Revised submission: 1 August 2012
Final acceptance notification: 15 August 2012
Camera ready version of paper: 15 September 2012
Publication: December 2012
Guest Editors
Prof. Hans Schaffers
Aalto University School of Economics
Centre of Knowledge and Innovation Research (CKIR)
http://ckir.aalto.fi
E-mail: hans.schaffers@aalto.fi
Prof. Carlo Ratti
MIT
Senseable City Laboratory
http://senseable.mit.edu
E-mail: ratti@mit.edu
Prof. Nicos Komninos
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Urban and Regional Research Unit (URENIO)
http://www.urenio.org
E-mail: komninos@urenio.org