Smart Cities and Smart Communities: Empowering Citizens through Intelligent Technologies

"Smart City" programs and strategies have become one of the most dominant urban agendas for local governments worldwide in the past two decades. The rapid urbanization rate and unprecedented growth of megacities in the 21st century triggered drastic changes in traditional ways of urban policy and planning, leading to an influx of digital technology applications for fast and efficient urban management. With the rising popularity in making our cities "smart", several domains of urban management, urban infrastructure, and urban quality-of-life have seen increasing dependence on advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) that optimize and control the day-to-day functioning of urban systems. Smart Cities, essentially, act as digital networks that obtain large-scale real-time data on urban systems, process them, and make decisions on how to manage them efficiently. The book presents 26 chapters, which are organized around five topics: (1) Conceptual framework for smart cities and communities; (2) Technical concepts and models for smart city and communities; (3) Civic engagement and citizen participation; (4) Case studies from the Global North; and (5) Case studies from the Global South.

Dr. Srikanta Patnaik is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Siksha 'O' Anusandhan (SOA) University, Bhubaneswar, India. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering with a focus on Computational Intelligence from Jadavpur University, India, in 1999 and has supervised 12 Ph.D. dissertations and more than 30 M. Tech theses in the areas of Computational Intelligence, Soft Computing Applications and Re-Engineering. Dr. Patnaik has published around 60 research papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He is the author of 2 textbooks and has edited 12 books and a few invited book chapters, published by leading international publishers such as Springer-Verlag, Kluwer Academic, etc. Dr. Patnaik was the Principal Investigator of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)-sponsored TAPTEC project “Building Cognition for Intelligent Robot” and University Grants Commission (UGC)-sponsored Major Research Project “Machine Learning and Perception using Cognition Methods”. He is one of the Editors-in-Chief of International Journal of Information and Communication Technology and International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics published from Inderscience Publishing House, England, and also one of the Editors-in-Chief of the book series on “Modeling and Optimization in Science and Technology” published by Springer, Germany.

Dr. Siddhartha Sen is a Professor of City and Regional Planning and Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University (MSU), Baltimore, USA. He is a recognized scholar on Indian urbanization and the non-profit sector in India. His articles have appeared in journals such as Third World Planning Review (now known as International Development Planning Review), Development and Change, Cities, Voluntas, Journal of Urban Technology, Michigan Sociological Review, Journal of Planning History, and Journal of Planning Education and Research. He is the author of several book chapters published by leading publishers such as Manchester University Press, University of Toronto Press, Routledge, John Wiley and Sons, Sage Publications, and Praeger. His 2017 book – Colonizing, Decolonizing, and Globalizing Kolkata: From a Colonial to a Post-Marxist City –  published by the Amsterdam University Press has been widely acclaimed in the field. His most recent co-edited book, Smart Village Technology: Concepts and Developments, has been published by Springer: Cham, Switzerland in 2020. He has been involved in many editorial activities, including serving as the book review editor of the Journal of Urban Technology since 2005. He has also served as a reviewer for many international journals as well as publishers such as Routledge and Fordham University Press. He has managed over $4 million worth of research contracts and grants for agencies such as the Economic Development Agency, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Highway Administration, Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Baltimore Urban League, and the National Transportation Center at MSU.

Dr. Sudeshna Ghosh is an Associate Professor of Regional Planning in the Department of Geography and Regional Planning at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA. Dr. Ghosh earned her Ph.D. in Regional Development Planning from the University of Cincinnati, USA, and her Master’s degree in City Planning from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. She has published several articles and book chapters in the areas of economic development planning, land use modeling, smart city and smart living strategies in the US, and planning in the developing world, specifically India and Brazil.