Holistic Approach for Decision Making Towards Designing Smart Cities

This edited volume examines strategies to make future cities more sustainable. The aim of these and other initiatives of the recent past, is to transform our cities into smarter cities. Thereby, these solutions are determined to boost clean electricity and pollution reduction, improve the life of citizens and transform city environment and regulatory structures.

As the EUs ambition is to become carbon-neutral until 2050, the outlined projects also consider fostering economy prosperity and social wellness and environmental sustainability. The greatest challenge being already built urban spaces that need to be transformed quickly and at low costs. The book will analyze future smart cities in three centric dimensions: energy and sustainable development, smart infrastructures for smart cities, social involvement and economic prosperity.

With its global approach, the volume is highly useful for professionals involved in city planning and urban ecology.

Dr. George Cristian Lazaroiu is Professor at the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Romania. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Romania in 2002 and 2003, respectively. In 2006 he obtained the PhD in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy and in 2009 the PhD in Energy Engineering from University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Romania. He obtained the Habilitation in energy engineering in 2015. Dr. Lazaroiu developed large international cooperation with highly prestigious universities from all over the world taking part in PhD commissions, supervising foreign Post-Docs and PhD students. He acts as evaluator in research grants for many research funding bodies lie Romanian UEFISCDI, the Italian MIUR, the Kazakhstan NCSTE, and as Expert for evaluating research projects in energy domain within HORIZON 2020 of EU European Commission. Dr. Lazaroiu authored or coauthored 5 books and more than 150 papers in prestigious international journals and national/international conferences. He is Senior Member of the IEEE, member and secretary of the Energy Commission, Engineering Sciences Section of the Romanian Academy. He was the Co-Chair of IEEE 16th International Conference on Harmonics and Quality of Power (ICHQP 2014) and General Co-Chair of 2019 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT-Europe 2019). He is active in IEEE Working Groups in the areas of power quality. He obtained the “Constantin Budeanu” Best Paper Award at IEEE ICHQP 2006, the Best Power Award at ICRERA 2014, the Business Excellence Award at Int. Conf. Business Excellence 2017, the Best Paper Award of Inventions journal in 2018, and the IEEE PES Chapter Outstanding Engineering Award in 2018. He is Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Energy and Environmental Engineering, Energy Executive Editor of University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest Scientific Bulletin Series C-Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Editorial Board member of Renewable Energy, and Editorial Board member of Smart Cities. His research interests include energy systems development, smart cities, monitoring and control of power quality, electricity markets and optimization of power systems.

Dr. Mariacristina Roscia is the mother of two awesome daughters: Chantal and Micol. She obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Naples "Federico II" and the PhD, from the same university, with a dissertation entitled "Possible energy scenarios and sustainable development". Since 2019 she is associate professor for the courses of "Electrical systems", "Smart Home into Smart City" and “Smart Electrical Infrastructure” at University of Bergamo, Italy.  She was Adjunct Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy for more ten years for the course "Automation of transport systems" and "Electric transport systems I". She authored more than 90 papers in Scopus international journals and international conferences. She acts as Reviewer for more than 30 different Scopus journals and conferences, international research programs. She is Expert Evaluator for HORIZON 2020 Work Program 2018-2020, Energy challenge 2020, EU European Commission. She contributed as technical support for the City of Naples for: optimization of energy services, SMART CITY projects, SEAP (Sustainable Energy Action Plan), participation in the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project).  Sustainable development has been the first key element of the research activity, up to the issues of development, definition and implementation of Smart Cities. The research fields are smart grids in the presence of distributed generation, for the control and management of energy flows between the grid, Smart Home and Building. The systems related to electric mobility, intelligent lighting through the aspects of sustainability were considered jointly and integrated, these issues then saw in parallel the study of the related Power Quality issues. She has given several speeches on Smart City aspects and several articles have received the Best Poster Award.

Dr. Vasile Sebastian Dancu is Professor at University of Bucharest, Romania, with a rich teaching and research career in the field of social sciences and journalism. He obtained the doctorate in sociology from Babeș Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. He taught at prestigious universities from Romania as Babeş Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, University of Bucharest, National Academy of Information Mihai Viteazul. He is a member of prestigious professional associations in Romania and abroad: ESOMAR (European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research), ISA (International Sociological Association), SSR (Society of Sociologists in Romania). Throughout his teaching career he founded several faculties, research centers or master studies in public and private universities from Romania in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca. He founded two of the most important public opinion and social research companies in Romania: the Institute of Social Studies, Marketing and Advertising Metro Media Transilvania (1994) and the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy - IRES (2009). He is the author of numerous courses, works and volumes of sociology, sociological research, but also of eight volumes of journalism in which he radiographs contemporary society. For his work he was rewarded with numerous awards and distinctions, the most recent being in November 2015: the Cross of Merit in the Rank of Knight of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany (November 2015) and Professor Honoris Causa of Babeş Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (November 2015). Since 2000, Dr. Dancu is actively involved in public life in Romania, occupying various positions as member of the Romanian Government holding the Public Information portfolio, heading the Agency for Government Strategies, as Minister ofRegional Development and Public Administration. His research interests focus on sociology of public opinion, sociology of media and mass communication, security and risk management, culture and institutions or research on interethnic relations.