Transforming urban centers into smart cities with emerging technologies

The emerging technologies have the potential of transforming the urban centers and cities in smart cities. This potential can be translated into various types of benefits provided to cities and citizens. Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain are presented as the most promising technologies for enhancing the cities modus operandi. The research project on "Transforming urban centers into smart cities with emerging technologies" is part of the research line on "Emerging Technologies for Digital Transformation in the Public Sector" . The purpose of this research project is to explore how emerging technologies, such as Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine and cognitive learning can transform the public sector, service delivery, decision-making, and support the sustainable development. This research line focuses on the adoption process and use-cases driven by the opportunities, benefits, potential weaknesses, and risks associated with new technologies and concepts in innovation and digital transformation. The project aims at developing a framework for transforming urban centers into smart cities with emerging technologies. The objectives of the framework are to analyze and observe the requested elements for the transformational process from a socio-technical perspective as well as to define the benefits resulted from the application of the emerging technologies into the cities. This framework can be proposed to government’s decision-makers, officials and consultants in order to better understand and analyze the transformational effect, the potential of these technologies for enhancing smart cities and the foreseen benefits that can be realized.