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The study aims to use DfX to develop a comprehensive database of smart and resilient indicators that assists city administrators and authorities alike. The Smart and Resilient Cities Indicators Bank (SRCIB) will identify the level of smart and resilience determinants that will simultaneously provide ways to improve the city's infrastructure to meet smart and resilient objectives.

Design of excellence (DfX) is adopted in dissecting from four best indicators of established systems, and a database of indicators is developed and specified in diverse ways. A new indicator system is then created for smart and resilient cities.

The proposed indicator bank consists of four layers consisting of dimension, sub-dimension, key issues and the number of indicators resulting from four different indicator systems that the study have analysed.

The proposed indicator bank is an exploratory approach that needs to be tested in a real scenario because the urban systems are complex inter-related systems with too many variables that may influence actual outcomes. Thus, the proposed indicators bank does not attempt to quantify or solve related urban issues commonly address in smart and resilient city concepts but more to enhance the management of attaining towards smart and resilient specifications.

The proposed indicator bank is an exploratory approach that needs to be tested in a real scenario because the urban systems are complex inter-related systems with too many variables that may influence actual outcomes. Thus, the proposed indicators bank does not attempt to quantify or solve related urban issues commonly address smart and resilient city concepts but more to enhance the management of attaining smart and resilient specifications.

The study builds a robust guide for assessing smart and resilient cities that is yet a widely accessible assessment framework. The proposed SRCIB allows local authorities and relevant stakeholders of typical cities to better manage its urban agenda towards smart and resilient city objectives when specific indicators are defined. Besides, a smart city can become resilient; likewise, a resilient city can become smart as the SRCIB is comprehensive.

This paper aims to develop a framework that could establish and further the terminology of smart city/resilient city discourse in that resilience could support urban “smartness”, a term that is widely argued being not easily measured nor quantifiably assessed.

The qualitative approach was employed, and based on selected keywords, a systematic literature review was carried out to understand the main themes within the smart city and resilient city concepts databases. Upon screening, 86 papers were used and synthesised through the meta-synthesis method using both synthesis approach, meta-aggregation and meta-ethnography that systematically identifies both properties and characteristics, to build an innovative framework as an indicator-based smart/resilience quantification model.

Two novel frameworks are proposed, smart resilient city (SRC) and resilient smart city (RSC), as guidelines regulatory that establish a city's smartness and resilience.

The quantitative research phase is not provided as the framework builds on the exploratory approach in which the model is proposed through the postulation of data definitions.

Although the study's scope was limited to the city, proposed frameworks may be interpreted for other contexts that deal with the topic of resilience and smart.

The established framework proposal would encourage further exploration in context, serving as an inspiration for other scholars, decision-makers, as well as municipalities to keep strengthening smart city through resilience factors.

The purpose of this study is to navigate the challenges irregular migratory flows generate for cities and urban systems. The migration and refugee crises that challenged Europe in 2015-2016 revealed that the developed world cities and urban areas are largely unprepared to address challenges that irregular migratory flows generate. This paper queries the smart and resilient cities’ debates, respectively, to highlight that migration-related challenges and opportunities have not been explicitly addressed in those deliberations. This creates a disconnect between what these debates promise and what cities/urban systems increasingly need to address on a daily basis. Subsequently, a way of bridging that disconnect is proposed and its policy-making implications discussed.

To suggest ways of navigating irregular migration-inflicted challenges cities/urban areas face, a nexus between the smart cities and resilient cities’ debates is established. By placing advanced sophisticated information and communication technologies (ICTs) at the heart of the analysis, a novel dynamic ICTs’ enabled integrated framework for resilient urban systems is developed. The framework’s dynamics is defined by two hierarchically interconnected levers, i.e. that of ICTs and that of policy-design and policy-making. Drawing from qualitative analysis and process tracing, the cross-section of policy design and policy-making geared towards the most efficient and ethically sensitive use of sophisticated ICTs is queried. Subsequently, options available to cities/urban systems are discussed.

The ICTs’ enabled integrated framework for resilient urban systems integrates the effectiveness of migrants and refugees’ policy design and policy-making in human-centred thinking, planning and policy-design for resilient urban systems. It places resilient approaches in the spotlight of research and policy-making, naming them the most effective methods for promoting a humanistic smart cities and resilient urban systems vision. It highlights critical junctions that urban systems’ stakeholders must consider if the promise of emerging sophisticated ICTs is to be employed effectively for the entire society, including its most vulnerable members.

First, when designing ICTs’ enabled integrated resilient urban systems, the key stakeholders involved in the policy-design and policy-making process, including local, national and regional authorities, must employ a holistic view to the urban systems seen through the lens of hard and soft concerns as well as considerations expressed by the receiving and incoming populations. Second, the third-sector representatives, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other actors, need to be seen as peers in integrated humanistic networks, thereby contributing critical, unbiased knowledge flows to infrastructures, which promote fair and inclusive participation of migrants and refugees in local economies.

The ICTs’ enabled integrated framework for resilient urban systems promotes a humanistic smart cities’ and resilient urban systems’ vision. It suggests how to design and implement policies apt to meet the needs of both receiving and incoming populations along value chains specific to smart and resilient cities. It promotes emerging sophisticated ICTs as the subtle, yet key, enabler of data ecosystems and customized services capable of responding to critical societal needs of the receiving and the incoming populations. In addition, the framework suggests options, alternatives and strategies for urban systems’ stakeholders, including the authorities, businesses, NGOs, inhabitants and ICTs’ providers and vendors.

The value added of this paper is three-fold. At the conceptual level, by bringing together the smart cities and resilient cities debates, and incorporating sophisticated ICTs in the analysis, it makes a case for their usefulness for cities/urban areas in light of challenges these cities/urban areas confront each day. At the empirical level, this analysis maps the key challenges that cities and their stakeholders face in context of migratory flows and highlights their dual nature. At the policy-making level, this study makes a case for a sound set of policies and actions that boost effective use of ICTs beyond the smart technology hype.

The aim of this chapter is to develop a conceptual model for the analysis of sustainable development and the ranking of cities based on selected standard criteria and metrics of smart cities. The conceptual framework contains standard and measurable indicators that influence the creation and survival of smart cities that could be self-sustaining, Green Resilient. We can measure the level of smartness of cities from two perspectives, first from the point of view of the degree of automation of services, infrastructure, buildings, transport, etc. and second from the point of view of planning the further development of the city in order to raise the quality of life of its citizens. Indicators should satisfy the principles of specificity, measurability, availability, relevance and timeliness (Schomaker, 1997). Researchers in the field of smart cities define different sets of characteristics, on which they construct a system of indicators that together describe the degree of development of a smart city. It must be taken into account the fact that there is no single set of indicators that would refer to the level of smartness of the city. It is a complex phenomenon, which occurs differently depending on the conceptual framework and the goal of classifying cities according to the complex characteristics of smartness, especially if you take into account the fact that the general well-being and quality of life of citizens are more important than only indicators of the quality of city services.

Cities evolved into quite complex urban systems. The rigid management process must reflect the complexity of the current political, social, and economic environment. With the vast city growth, citizens experience new difficulties – traffic congestion, pollution, immigration, overcrowding, and inadequate services.

In our research, we analyze problems and benefits that occur with the growing complexity and offer a new concept considering every city as a live and constantly developing complex adaptive system of many participants and actors that operate in an uncertain environment. These actors (residents, businesses, transport, energy, water supply providers, entertainment, and others) are the main elements of city life.

The new concept of “Smart City 5.0” is based on a previously developed model of Smart City 4.0 (compared with Industry 4.0) and implements the Urban Digital Ecosystem, where every element can be represented by a smart agent operating on its behalf. It is shown that smart services can interact vertically and horizontally in the proposed ecosystem, supporting competition and cooperation behavior based on specialized network protocols for balancing the conflicting interests of different city actors.

The chapter describes the design principles and the general architecture of the Urban Digital Ecosystem, including the basic agent of smart service, protocols of the agent’s negotiation, the architecture, and basic principles Smart City knowledge base.

The developed evolutionary methodology of implementation will ensure a minimum of disruptions to city services during its transformation into an urban ecosystem to harmoniously balance all spheres of life and the contradictory interests of different city actors.

As the global community increasingly directs its attention towards sustainable urban development, integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into circular economy (CE) management within smart cities has become a potent strategy. This study aims to examine the potential influence of AI-based technologies on optimizing resources and minimizing waste, which constitute critical components of the principles underpinning the CE. The focus is mainly on applying these technologies within smart city environments. Artificial Intelligence can significantly enhance the processes of gathering, analyzing and decision-making by integrating internet of things (IoT) sensors, data analytics, machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics. This chapter explores the potential of AI in predicting trends, optimizing circular supply chains, improving waste management and recycling practices, facilitating sustainable product design, fostering citizen engagement and aiding policy development. The current research presents a comprehensive examination of the interrelated connection between the principles of CE and the advanced technology of AI. Doing so contributes significantly to our holistic comprehension of how these advancements might collectively influence the development of a more sustainable and resilient future for urban populations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected around 216 countries and territories worldwide and more than 2000 cities in India, alone. The smart cities mission (SCM) in India started in 2015 and 100 smart cities were selected to be initiated with a total project cost of INR 2031.72 billion. Smart city strategies play an important role in implementing the measures adopted by the government such as the issuance of social distancing regulations and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies. However, there is no research reported on the role of smart cities strategies in managing the COVID-19 outbreak in developing countries.

This paper aims to address the research gap in smart cities, technology and healthcare management through a review of the literature and primary data collected using semi-structured interviews.

Each city is unique and has different challenges, the study revealed six key findings on how smart cities in India managed the COVID-19 outbreak. They used: Integrated Command and Control Centres, Artificial Intelligence and Innovative Application-based Solutions, Smart Waste Management Solutions, Smart Healthcare Management, Smart Data Management and Smart Surveillance.

This paper contributes to informing policymakers of key lessons learnt from the management of COVID-19 in developing countries like India from a smart cities’ perspective. This paper draws on the six Cs for the implications directed to leaders and decision-makers to rethink and act on COVID-19. The six Cs are: Crisis management leadership, Credible communication, Collaboration, Creative governance, Capturing knowledge and Capacity building.

The purpose of this paper was to identify the main necessary competences for smart cities’ development. From their inception until now, smart cities are striving to clarify their identity and become better, and thus, smarter. The whole process is in many ways similar to the journey of a child in his quest of growing into a smart adult, with the help of parents and support from educators. But it is not easy to tell how we, as citizens, through civic, educational and governance structures, raise smart cities. What competences do we need? This was the main question for the present essay, generated from several theoretical and practical experiences.

In this study, literature analysis, synthesis and theoretical inferences, for the smart city problematiques, and induction and exploratory qualitative analysis, for soft, civilizational competences, were used.

The main conclusion is that the literature still associates the smart city especially with its hard dimension, the highly developed and intelligent technologies, including information and communication technologies (ICTs), despite a growing number of studies dedicated to the soft, human and social capital component. The intangible, soft component – the human actor – plays an equally, if not even more important role, through mechanisms affecting all classical dimensions of smart cities (smart economy, people, governance, mobility, environment, living). Civilizational competences, soft skills or human-related characteristics of cities strongly influenced by culture (at national, regional, organizational and individual levels) are crucial for the development of smart and competitive cities. Civilizational competences are grouped into four categories: enterprise culture, discoursive culture, civic culture and daily culture. If we want to make our cities smart, we need to develop these competences – first define them, then identify their antecedents or influence factors and measure them.

The study has several limits. First, the exploratory nature in itself, with many inductive and abductive suppositions that will need further testing. Second, the literature selection has a certain degree of subjectivity owing to the fact that besides the common, classical theory of smart cities, the authors were particularly interested in rather heterodox opinions about the subject, which lead them to the inclusion of singular or isolated points of view on narrower issues.

The findings of this exploratory conceptual essay could be used for further testing of hypotheses on the relationship between civilizational competences and smart cities’ development.

Local and regional administrations could use the results to increase civil society’s involvement in the development of smart cities.

The study points out some new connections and relations for the smart city problematiques, and explicitly suggests relating the development of smart cities to the development of civilizational competences, as a complex category of factors going beyond the unique dimension of “people” or “human and social capital” from the smart cities literature. It is an exploratory outcome, generating new research hypotheses for the relationships between smart city development and culture-related factors grouped under the “cities” civilizational competences’ label.

Earthquakes pose a significant challenge to human safety and the durability of infrastructure, highlighting the urgent need for innovative disaster management strategies. This study addresses the gap in current earthquake disaster management approaches, which are often related to issues of transparency, centralization and sluggish response times. By exploring the integration of blockchain technology into seismic hazard management, the purpose of the research is to overcome these limitations by offering a novel framework for integrating blockchain technology into earthquake risk mitigation and disaster management strategies of smart cities.

This study develops an innovative approach to address these issues by introducing a blockchain-based seismic monitoring and automated decision support system for earthquake disaster management in smart cities. This research aims to capitalize on the benefits of blockchain technology, specifically its real-time data accessibility, decentralization and automation capabilities, to enhance earthquake disaster management. The methodology employed integrates seismic monitoring data into a blockchain framework, ensuring accurate, reliable and comprehensive information. Additionally, smart contracts are utilized to handle decision-making and enable rapid responses during earthquake disasters, offering an effective alternative to traditional approaches.

The study results highlight the system’s potential to foster reliability, decentralization and efficiency in earthquake disaster management, promoting enhanced collaboration among stakeholders and facilitating swift actions to minimize human and capital loss. This research lays the foundation for further exploration of blockchain technology’s practical applications in other disaster management contexts and its potential to transform traditional practices.

Current methodologies, while contributing to the reduction of earthquake-related impacts, are often hindered by limitations such as lack of transparency, centralization and slow response times. In contrast, the adoption of blockchain technology can address these challenges and offer benefits over various aspects, including decentralized control, improved security, real-time data accessibility and enhanced inter-organizational collaboration.