Page 28 - U4SSC: City Science Application Framework

7. Conclusion

Cities globally face a myriad of urban challenges. City science is posed in this deliverable as a
potential to address and resolve various urban challenges. As a novel inter-disciplinary field,
city science carries an enormous potential to address urban problems systematically and also
scientifically. Some of the conclusions from the framework and the real-life case studies in this
deliverable are stated below:

• City science as an inter-disciplinary novel field can be utilized to solve real urban challenges.
• The proliferation of city data available from a wide range of urban sources (e.g. mobile devices,
IoT sensors) acts as an input to city science.

• The algorithms and the mathematical models and techniques utilize city data to provide
solutions to urban challenges.

• The fusion of cyber and physical systems provides an opportunity to address urban physical
challenges through digitization and ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) based
techniques.

• Urban challenges and priorities, city administrations’ smart sustainable city strategies, citizens’
urban requirements can act as a viable demand for city science with even concomitant
commercial potential in some cases.
• The advent of city science can help entrepreneurs and businesses innovate and also
commercialize new city science solutions.

• Cities can engage a broad range of stakeholders for city science reflecting different perspectives,
as well as demand and supply issues.

• City administrators have a wide range of tools at their disposal to encourage and incentivize
city science defined as enablers in the city science application framework in this document (e.g.
regulations, policies, awareness, start-up ecosystem).

• Exchange of knowledge and city science solutions at the local, regional and international levels
will help develop city science as a novel field, and will also increase its sustainability while
providing solutions to real urban problems across the globe.
• It would be beneficial to assess the impact of city science solutions from social, economic and
environmental perspectives. Understanding the predicted and the actual consequences of city
science solutions will help assess their effectiveness and will also enable further improvements.
• As a scientific discipline, city science can considerably benefit from research and development
(R&D) programs boosting city science solutions. The specific aspects of urban challenges
demand particular solutions and modelling techniques to be developed along with their specific
data requirements. Hence, focused R&D can generate substantial innovation in city science.
• Cities can capitalize on city science by turning it into a viable economic sub-sector while
simultaneously addressing and solving their own urban challenges. With the participation of
different scale cities and collaboration among them, city science can prove to be an innovative
global field amalgamating data, emerging technologies and city problem solving techniques.

20 City Science Application Framework