Urenio Watch Watch: Intelligent Cities – Smart Cities – Innovation Ecosystems

New article_Governing the Sharing Economy


This study develops an analytical framework for municipal governance of the sharing economy. It comprises five governance mechanisms (regulating, providing, enabling, self-governing  and collaborating) and 11 governance roles. The purpose of this article is twofold: to explore municipal governance mechanisms and roles for engaging with sharing economy organisations and to propose a comprehensive analytical framework.

i4Trust_Launch of Project towards Improved Data Sharing for SMEs

FIWARE, iSHARE and FundingBox launch the i4Trust Initiative to boost data sharing and facilitate SME innovation capability through the creation of data spaces.  The EU-funded project, is launching an incubator of trusted B2B data sharing ecosystems of collaborating SMEs connected to Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs). The project stimulates sharing, re-using and trading of data assets towards further participation of SMEs in the development of innovative services in different sectors.  

The people’s smart city dashboard (PSCD): Delivering on community-led governance with blockchain

This paper studies the current delivery of strategic smart city agendas and the top-down means that are used to measure and present their performance. People’s Smart City Dashboard (PSCD)  is proposed as a mean to reimagine smart cities in a more empowering and collaborative manner, using Blockchain. People-centric measurement tools  are designed, supporting a bottom-up and blockchain-based implementation of smart cities.

New Technical Report on Smart Cities Related Standardisation and Citizen Requirements

The ETSI Human Factors Technical Committee has released ETSI TR 103 455, a Technical Report that assesses citizen-related issues that smart city-related standardization in the ICT domain needs to address.   The present document is based on the recognition of local communities as users of standards rather than participants, and highlights the importance of addressing their needs within standardisation documentation.  The issues that are being addressed include  accessibility, usability, interoperability, personal data protection and security, among others. The study gives an overview of existing ETSI and other SDOs standards in that field, including ETSI community indicators. It also aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’.

New Paper_ Digital Transformation of City Ecosystems: Platforms Shaping Engagement and Externalities across Vertical Markets

Common digital transformation drivers across different sectoral ecosystems (source: this paper)

The paper “Digital Transformation of City Ecosystems: Platforms Shaping Engagement and Externalities across Vertical Markets’ by Nicos Komninos, Christina Kakderi, Anastasia Panori, Antonio Collado and Ilektra Papadaki analyses the role of digital platforms in the construction of ecosystems, towards the digital transformation of diverse contexts. It is based on lessons learned from Digital Cities Challenge (DCC) initiative, implemented between October 2017 and June 2019.

How Technology Helps Modern Cities Address Major Problems

If history has taught us one thing about cities, it’ s that they’ re easier to build than manage over time. Once the original population boom is over, the city becomes a diverse spread of communities, institutions, and dimensions. It’ s a beautiful thing from a cultural point-of-view, but a challenging one from a planning perspective.

As time goes on and technology improves, cities must find ways to reshape themselves to adapt to these changes. The result is a never ending series of problems for city officials and others involved in municipal management.

Understanding the Sharing Economy and its Implication on Sustainability in Smart Cities

This research is based on the synthesis of outcomes from different use cases of the sharing economy, such as room sharing, car sharing and fashion sharing. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the main drivers of the sharing economy through an exhaustive weighting and meta-analysis of previous relevant quantitative research articles, obtained using a systematic literature review methodology.