Holistic Value Model for Smart Cities

Abstract

Smart technologies for cities require a fundamental shift in business model paradigms. Smart city solutions aim to link multiple technologies and multiple public and private stakeholders by an ICT-based connector. Digitalization and the Internet of Things (loT) practices require a new organizational and economic model for connected clean and efficient technologies. Companies and cities thus need to start thinking beyond efficiency and policy based models and understand themselves as part of a larger value model that delivers value-added services to cities and citizens. The smart city value model is thus a new economic approach to link the value creation of integrated socio-technical systems to a set of different beneficiaries and types of benefits, which builds on the conceptual work of positive externalities and external benefits. It is intrinsically linked to smart cities and districts places where the positive effects of a connected solution reach many different beneficiaries and are able to create different kinds of value through the interaction of many systems and people. The lighthouse project Triangulum thus serves as a test case to develop a modular framework that helps to systematise the factors that lead to a successful design and implementation of smart districts and prove the distributed benefits of smart and sustainable technologies in cities. This framework shall consist of a range of “smart city modules” that can be described as system solutions for smart cities. They represent core technologies that are organised around a business model and pursue a specific goal for cities and citizens. A set of smart city indicators will help distinguish between individual local factors and generic smart city success factors. Connected solutions can be broken down into some core categories leading to a finite number of connected solutions with specific characteristics.