Page 235 - ITU Kaleidoscope 2016

TASK-BASED PROCESS MODELING FOR POLICY MAKING IN SMART CITIES

Leonidas Anthopoulos

Associate Professor, University of Applied Science (TEI) of Thessaly, Greece, lanthopo@teilar.gr

George Giannakidis

Center for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving, Greece, ggian@cres.gr

ABSTRACT this paper aims to provide with answers the following
research questions:
Several competitive standards have been introduced for RQ1: do existing smart city standards provide guidelines
smart city quite recently, which define the architecture and for city’s energy efficiency policy making?
its components or city key performance indicators. RQ2: how can smart city energy efficiency policy making
However, these standards do not discuss smart service be modeled and standardized?
formulation, nor policy making process modeling. Both the above questions are very important to be
Standardization assists in achieving process automation by answered, since smart cities and corresponding standards
introducing “best practices” as standard process models. are being evolved, while several energy efficiency solutions
Policy making mainly follow non-standardized procedures, appear to deal with city’s sustainability. In this respect, it is
even if it is supported by various tools (i.e., Multi-Criteria important for standards to cover important smart city issues
Decision Methods (MCDM)). Inspired by the Task-Based that have not been addressed yet. Moreover, recent studies
Modeling method (TBM) this paper focuses on policy [1] show that the urban system is so complex that existing
making process standardization for smart cities. It utilizes eco-friendly solutions can succeed only temporarily in their
the case-study of the InSmart (Integrative Smart City targets and in this regard a long-term and standardized
Planning) coordination action in the smart city of Trikala, policy making has to be performed.
Greece, in an attempt to define and introduce a model for In order to provide with answers the above research
such a process. questions, this paper focuses on standardization of the
policy making process for city energy efficiency. It utilizes
Keywords— standardization, smart city, policy making, the Task-Based Modeling (TBM) method [2] as a means to
decision making, case study, TBM. map the corresponding policy making process. Moreover, it
uses findings from the project InSmart (Integrative Smart
1. INTRODUCTION City Planning), which is a European Coordination Action
and it is being implemented with the collaboration of 10
Smart city has evolved since its initial appearance in 1996 to partners (3 of which are cities and 2 universities) coming
an emerging market and to a multidisciplinary scientific from 4 European countries. More specifically, it uses the
domain. Quite recently, most standardization bodies around outcomes from experiments that took place in the city of
the globe have introduced several competitive standards in Trikala for this purposes of this project.
their attempt to clarify the smart city context and The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: section
corresponding industrial products. 2 concerns a background section, where both the smart city
However, standardization has left out so far smart service standardization and the process standardization topics are
modeling as well as corresponding policy making. For investigated. Next, section 3 contains this paper’s research
instance, smart city owners claim that smart urban solutions methodology, which concludes to the task-based process
address significant challenges (i.e., climate change and local model. Finally, section 4 contains some conclusions and
growth) and in this regard, they plan corresponding policies future thoughts.
that deal with city’s energy efficiency and sustainability.
Such policy making is mainly supported by decision making 2. BACKGROUND
tools (i.e., Multi-Criteria Decision Methods (MCDM)) and
has not been modeled yet. This lack in standardization Standardization refers to the consistent use of
mainly occurs due to the broad context of city policy making methodologies, procedures, tools, and techniques specified
and due to the extensive scope of smart services. This paper above the level of individual projects [3;4]. Standards
addresses the above problem and aims to discuss the policy contain specification documents, rules and guidelines for
making process that deals with one of the most important product or process development [3], while they establish
smart city challenges: city energy efficiency. In this regard, technological convergence in different industrial sectors [5].

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