Suchergebnisse

A reasonably well-rounded and comprehensive definition of a smart city may be found in Caraglui et al (2011) who assert that a city is smart when "….investments in human and societal capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance." There are many other definitions on offer in the publicly available literature. However, this definition, though complex is arguably necessarily nuanced. It embraces all the various dimensions (social, institutional, economic, communication technology, infrastructure and environmental management) impinging on practical 'smart city' thinking. This complexity contributes to the phenomenon whereby most people may not fully understand what is actually meant by the 'smart city 'concept (Lima 2016). Perusal of popular media and much 'grey' literature also suggests that many cities seem to claim to be 'smarter' even though the evidence suggests that strictly speaking (particularly in the light of our preferred definition) they are not. In some of these cases, simply the status of being 'wired' is deemed to indicate smartness. Yet being wired with high availability and quality of ICT infrastructure is not a sufficient or adequate definition of a smart or intelligent city. This report begins by introducing the term 'smart city' buttressed by some critical consideration of the several definitions that are proffered in the extant literature. Then, the conceptual evolution of the 'smart city' construct is set out with reference to smart (city) policies implemented in the EU, mapped with reference to the results of a Boolean web search exercise. This analysis helps to systematically unveil the narrative used by practitioners and policy makers in shaping the perception of smart city policies and projects. Finally, a new index of smartness is implemented based on Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA). The new ...

This report begins by introducing the term 'smart city' buttressed by some critical consideration of the several definitions that are proffered in the extant literature. Then, the conceptual evolution of the 'smart city' construct is set out with reference to smart (city) policies implemented in the EU, mapped with reference to the results of a Boolean web search exercise. This analysis helps to systematically unveil the narrative used by practitioners and policy makers in shaping the perception of smart city policies and projects. Finally, a new index of smartness is implemented based on Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA). The new index will consider both objective measures and citizens' perceptions of key dimensions offering value in assessing 'smartness' in city projects and policies.

This report will analyse the interaction between regional Cohesion Policy (CP) and rural, development and agricultural policies (RP) of the EU. The analysis will explore if and eventually to what extent (i) a synergy arises between the two different (set of) policies in terms of both (ii) the effects and (iii) the determinants of the allocation of funds and subsequent actual expenditure in the 2007-2013 programming period.

This report will analyse the relationship between smart cities and economic resilience at city level. The conceptual evolution of the 'smart city' is discussed in detail in Work Package 4.1. Furthermore, a new index of 'smartness', which provided a measure of the extent to which a city is smart, was constructed in Work Package 4.1 using Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA) at city level. The index considered both objective measures and citizens' perceptions of key dimensions offering value in assessing 'smartness' in city projects and policies. Building on the work conducted in Work Package 4.1, this report focuses on smartness (the creation and use of knowledge) and the potential link with the resilience at city level.

Rural Development is a priority in Europe and it is supported by specific, financial programmes. At the same time, sustainability is the key word for the European Union to construct programmes and policies for all human activities. However, measuring sustainability of rural areas is not easy, due to their particular features. The improvement of knowledge on sustainability in rural areas is important to build long term policies and strategies for those territories. The objective of this study is the development of a decision support system based on the Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA), to assess the level of Rural Sustainable Development in specific areas.We used DRSA to analyze the level of sustainability of the 92 municipalities of the Region of Umbria, Italy. The results were synthesized in a final ranking, taking into account the equilibrium and the integration between development and sustainability of each municipality. DRSA showed a high potential in the context of management or planning, and for supporting Decision Makers. DRSA is able to give a ranking as well as an explanation of the main factors driving sustainable development in rural areas.

This document is a comparative synthesis of the reports on regional case studies written by PERCEIVE's partners. Each report is based both on an original data collection and on the analysis of the focus group's section that addresses communication issues. Each partner collected national and/or regional communication plans, which were mostly used for the first chapter of this report: "Communication strategy at different levels and LMAs' organization." Focus group were realized within Perceive's Work Package 1. Part of the data collected in the focus groups have been already analysed in tasks 1.1 and 1.2, and presented in deliverable 1.1. Another part of data collected in the focus groups regards communication issues. This data collection was the ground for the second chapter of this report: "Focus groups and in depth interviews." In particular, the partners of the PERCEIVE consortium realized the focus groups with practitioners of Cohesion Policy programmes between February and March 2017. Table 1 presents a description of the focus groups. Within the semi-structured questionnaire, a chapter was developed by UNIBO and WU to address communication issues: it is presented as appendix 1. The other parts of the focus group are analysed within Work Packages 1 and 4. The focus groups were moderated by members of the PERCEIVE partners' research units. The only exception being Italy's case-studies, where the moderator was a journalist with expertise in Cohesion Policy, under instruction and assistance of the researchers of the UNIBO team. The focus groups lasted between 3 and 5 hours. To allow for a deeper level of analysis and to collect feedback, a one-week follow-up phase was available to participants for providing an additional written contribution. In compliance with the Horizon2020 policy, the transcripts of each focus group, translated in English language, are stored in the PERCEIVE repository and available for open access.