Author: Sindi Haxhija

Balancing Urban Innovation with a Responsible Approach to the Internet of Things: The Case of Limerick

Posted on June 11, 2021 by -

Abstract

Smart cities appear to be synonymous with pervasive IoT. Footfall, energy consumption, passengers availing of public transport, everything needs to be monitored, predicted, and adjusted to fit pre-determined models. But cities have their own individualities, and besides their infrastructures, they are made of people. In this article, we are discussing the case of a city that is involved in a large-scale project which explores the balance between facilitating engagement and instituting surveillance through sensor-enabled behavioral change, smart energy metering, and data sharing between property owners.

Year: 2019

Authors: Helena Fitzgerald, Gerard Walsh, Gabriela Avram, Stephen Kinsella, Javier Buron Garcia

Publisher: ThingsCon

The Next Generation of Smart Citizens: Experiences and Inspiration from the +CityxChange Project

Posted on June 11, 2021 by -

Abstract

Environmental sustainability has become a core objective in policy fields related to the built environment, from the international to local level. The transition to a sustainable built environment depends on increasing the energy performance of buildings, but due to the maturity of the building stock in Europe affecting energy efficiency and the current incentives for investing in sustainable energy solutions, the performance of buildings cannot be improved without widespread citizen engagement. Technical solutions for upgrading smart buildings and connecting them are being developed that create new opportunities for achieving a net-zero or even positive energy balance on the neighbourhood, district and city level. Nevertheless, attention must also be paid to the social aspect using citizen engagement to ensure that such solutions are taken up and replicated. From a social perspective, new skills and values are needed amongst citizens to improve individual and collective behaviours. Co-creation is an approach for shaping the urban environment that includes a wide range of stakeholders and is believed to lead to improved outcomes, especially with regard to integrating users’ needs and generating a sense of shared responsibility and ownership over the built environment.

The Horizon 2020 project +CityxChange uses co-creation for the development of positive energy districts (PEDs), which have the potential to bring carbon neutral cities to reality. The paper explores several aspects of citizen engagement developed in the project: an urban innovation lab approach, a citizen participation playbook, a learning framework for the next generation of smart citizens, and a framework for creating positive energy champions.

Year: 2020

Authors: Alenka Temeljotov-Salaj, Bradley Loewen

Publisher: University of Belgrade, Faculty of Architecture

Storytelling of and for Planning – Urban Planning through Participatory Narrative-building

Posted on May 26, 2021 by -

Abstract

Storytelling is the oldest form of communication and still finds various areas of application in urban planning, ranging from communicating visions to citizens to co-creating narratives as a tool for participatory practice. This paper elaborates “storytelling for planning”, describing the background, its application as workshops in the project +CityxChange, and replication potential. The workshops are an integral part of the knowledge development and exchange in and outside the project and contribute to intra-project collaboration and clustering. Led by ISOCARP Institute, the Storytelling Workshops are jointly organized with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), as well as the project cities. To ensure an active exchange with other stakeholders and Smart Cities and Communities (SCC-01) projects, representatives of other projects are invited to the workshops.

Year: 2020

Authors:  Sindi Haxhija, Tjark Gall

Conference: 56th ISOCARP World Planning Congress: Post Oil City, Planning for urban green deals

Big Data Driven Multi-Tier Architecture for Electric Mobility as a Service in Smart Cities: A Design Science Approach

Posted on May 26, 2021 by -

Abstract

Electric mobility as a service (eMaaS) is suggested as a possible solution to ease transportation and lessen environmental issues by providing a collaborative transport sharing infrastructure that is based on electric vehicles (EVs) such as electric cars, electric bicycles and so on. Accordingly, this study aims to propose a multi-tier architecture to support the collection, processing, analytics and usage of mobility data in providing eMaaS within smart cities. The architecture uses application programming interfaces to enable interoperability between different infrastructures required for eMaaS and allow multiple partners to exchange and share data for making decision regarding electric mobility services.

Year: 2020

Authors:Anthony Junior Bokolo, Sobah Abbas Petersen, Dirk Ahlers, John Krogstie

Publisher: Emerald

A Fundamental Model for Continuous Intraday Electricity Trading

Posted on May 26, 2021 by -

Abstract

This paper develops an econometric price model with fundamental impacts for intraday electricity markets of 15-minute contracts. A unique data set of intradaily updated forecasts of renewable power generation is analyzed. We use a threshold regression model to examine how 15-minute intraday trading depends on the slope of the merit order curve. Our estimation results reveal strong evidence of mean reversion in the price formation mechanism of 15-minute contracts. Additionally, prices of neighboring contracts exhibit strong explanatory power and a positive impact on prices of a given contract. We observe an asymmetric effect of renewable forecast changes on intraday prices depending on the merit-order-curve slope. In general, renewable forecasts have a higher explanatory power at noon than in the morning and evening, but price information is the main driver of 15-minute intraday trading.

Year: 2020

Authors: Marcel Kremer, Rüdiger Kiesela, Florentina Paraschiv

Publisher: The Royal Society

Challenges of Sustainable Urban Mobility Integration

Posted on May 26, 2021 by -

Abstract

This position paper addresses the field of cities, mobility, and climate change. We claim that the challenge is no longer just only individual interfaces for individual cars or mobility providers, but rather an overhaul of overall mobility systems and approaches, and of integrated interfaces to these new complex systems, with a focus on sustainability and emission reduction.

There are a number of open questions around this. The exact approach to deal with them is not yet clear, except that we will have to meet this mobility-related, and also societal change. We provide background and examples to present our open questions and challenges.

Year: 2020

Authors: Dirk Ahlers

Intraday Electricity Pricing of Night Contracts

Posted on May 26, 2021 by -

Abstract

This paper investigates the intraday electricity pricing of 15-min. contracts in night hours. We tailor a recently introduced econometric model with fundamental impacts, which is successful in describing the pricing of day contracts. Our estimation results show that the mean reversion and the positive price impact of neighboring contracts are generic features of the price formation process on the intraday market, independent of the time of day. Intraday auction prices have higher explanatory power for the pricing of night than day contracts, particularly, for the first and last 15-min. contract in a night hour. Intradaily updated forecasts of wind power infeed are the only significant fundamental factors for intraday electricity prices at night. Neither expected conventional capacities nor the slope of the merit order curve contributes to explaining price dynamics. Overall, we conclude that fundamentals lose importance in night hours and the 15-min. intraday market is rather driven by price information. 

Year: 202o

Authors:Marcel Kremer, Rüdiger Kiesel, Florentina Paraschiv

Publisher: MDPI

Peer-to-Peer electricity trading in an Industrial site: Value of buildings flexibility on peak load reduction

Posted on May 26, 2021 by -

Abstract

Local electricity markets and peer-to-peer (P2P) trading schemes in buildings have recently gained importance as an efficient way to incentivize energy flexibility (e.g. consumer demand response or storage) and to share local energy resources (e.g. solar PV). This paper proposes local electricity markets for a complex of industrial buildings. We study P2P electricity trading and analyze the role of sharing local flexibility, e.g. a large battery, to maximize the use of distributed energy resource (DER) technologies. The objective is to investigate the value of P2P electricity trading in combination with on-site flexibility resources for a Norwegian industrial site. As the industrial consumers are exposed to a substantial peak power charge for grid usage, the study analyses how a local market affects the peak power demand management. To analyze it, we developed a linear programming model that represents the local power system characteristics of the buildings and simulates one year in operations. Results indicate potential savings on reducing electricity costs in the range of 6.8% to 11.0% based on P2P trading features. The total cost of peak power is reduced up to 25%, making peak shaving the largest contributor to the net cost savings. Moreover, the industrial site consumes more distributed generation locally, with no DER power curtailment and reduced grid feed-in.

Year: 2021

Authors: Pedro Crespo del Granado, Salman Z. , Guro Sæther

Publisher: Elsevier

Exploring Data Driven Initiatives for Smart City Development: Empirical Evidence from Techno-Stakeholders’ Perspective

Posted on May 26, 2021 by -

Abstract

The aim of this article is to provide a critical understanding of techno-stakeholders’ perspective by considering data-driven initiatives for smart city development. Particularly, a model is proposed based on a systematic literature review to explore techno-stakeholders’ perspectives in smart cities. Findings from this study identify that data-driven initiatives that influence techno-stakeholder’s perspectives for smart city development comprise stakeholder involvement, data ownership, data access, policies, regulations, trust, and data privacy. Evidence from this study offers insight into techno-stakeholder’s perspectives by proposing a model that could be utilized as a governance tool to benchmark and evaluate urban data transformation.

Year: 2021

Authors: Bokolo Anthony Jnr

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

D1.3: Report and catalogue on the ICT data integration and interoperability

Posted on May 3, 2021 by -

The deliverable 1.3: Report and catalogue on the ICT data integration and interoperability was submitted by the University of Limerick (UL), with contributions from NTNU, LCCC, TK, IESRD, POW, FAC, TE, ABB, ATB, ABG, ESB, 4C, MPOWER, SE,
COL, and IOTA in April 2021. The executive summary of the deliverable is available below and the full deliverable at the end for download:

”This deliverable D1.3 is part of Task 1.2: ‘Data Integration and Interoperability for the ICT Ecosystem’ within WP1– ‘Integrated Planning and Design’ of the +CityxChange project.

The results presented in this report summarize the approach and achievements within the project to ensure data interoperability within a complex ICT ecosystem. The results have been developed in collaboration with partners and related ICT development tasks within the +CityxChange project. We have built on the Enterprise Architecture Framework (EAF) and ICT Ecosystem approach, detailed in Deliverable D1.2: Report on the Architecture for the ICT ecosystem. The results here specifically complement that enterprise architecture in order to ensure data integration and interoperability of ICT systems and services, including software platforms and tools, data repositories, and IoT devices. This report provides an overview of data integration challenges in the smart city domain including standards, data models, guidelines, APIs, etc.. The developed approach and lightweight data integration and interoperability framework DIIF aim to ensure agreement on open standards between service providers involved in demo projects for interoperability and support data flow between partners and demos. We document the interoperability work done between partners, the API management approach, and API catalog. To secure distributed data integration between various services in the ICT ecosystem, the potential of using IOTA and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) as a mechanism for data transfer was examined.

This report addresses the data integration and interoperability goals of +CityxChange, through developing a lightweight +CityxChange Data Integration and Interoperability Framework. It specifically addressed two aspects (i) the Interoperability aspect under the Data Perspective, dealing with the general interoperability requirements and processes; and (ii) the DataxChange and Data Processing layers of the ecosystem, dealing with the overall data storage and exchange and its use in the data processing layer. The report concludes with a summary of lessons learnt that provide a valuable resource for replication within the +CityxChange project, application to other cities, and further research.”