Smart Cities: Infrastructure, Air Quality, Disaster Response, and Data Management

The special collection on Smart Cities: Infrastructure, Air Quality, Disaster Response, and Data Management is available in the ASCE Library (https://ascelibrary.org/jitse4/smart_cities).

Emerging advancements in information and computer technologies (ICTs) offer unprecedented opportunities for realizing the concept of smart cities. These developments, which include vehicle autonomy and connectivity and smart data governance and security, open new opportunities for society to address long-standing infrastructure-related problems including infrastructure degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, response to disaster, and management of increasingly massive data related to transportation infrastructure. Other elements of smart cities include active transportation, enhanced access to destination, and equity.

This special collection features work on a variety of topics that are centered around the concept of smart cities applied to civil engineering systems. The collection provides a forum for presenting and discussing innovative research work that addresses these directions. It also crystallizes some current thinking and future directions regarding the pursuit of smart city initiatives to address some of society’s persistent problems. Some of the articles in this special collection were presented at the 2019 International Conference on Smart Cities (ICSC) organized by iSMARTi that took place in Seoul, Korea.

Balasubramani et al. (2020) propose a smart data management protocol to convert infrastructure maps from legacy computer-aided design (CAD) formats to geographic information systems (GIS), including procedures to ensure data integrity via a machine-learning algorithm, to track urban infrastructure evolution and to combine GIS infrastructure maps with other data sets for optimal scheduling of asset repair. This is a critical capability that is required by most metropolitan agencies worldwide that currently seek efficient and effective ways to infuse smart management of their data and infrastructure.

Saeed et al. (2021) recognize that highway agencies seek knowledge of the infrastructure changes needed for connected and automated vehicle (CAV) operations. That way, the agencies will be better informed to incorporate this technological transformation into their long-range plans and budgets. This article presents preliminary results of ongoing research that developed a classification of roadway infrastructure and discusses the challenges and opportunities that highway agencies will likely encounter as they prepare their infrastructure for the CAV era. The authors also discuss the related issues of CAV market penetration and level of autonomy trends during the CAV transition period.

Feng et al. (2021) present a methodology that could be used by operators of personal transport units (PTUs) to balance the locational demand and supply of PTUs in a city in order to mitigate excessive surpluses or deficits at PTU pickup stations. As a smart transport strategy, the use of PTUs by travelers represents active and healthy transport and it promotes ease of personal movement and access to destinations. The article’s methodology combines discrete wavelet transform and artificial neural network techniques to predict the demand at PTU stations, and it uses a three-step mathematical program for PTU supply vehicle routing and PTU repositioning such that the weighted total travel costs and unmet user demand are minimized.

Despite the popularity of the concept of smart cities, much work remains to be done to operationalize the concept. The articles in this special collection demonstrate potential to leverage advancements in ICTs toward this goal, but the journey has only just begun.