Cooperation for a systematic and practicable "Smart-City" terminology

Markus Jüngling
04.12.2024

"Smart City " - What ex­act­ly is that? The term is pop­u­lar and yet is some­times used in a nar­row and some­times vague way. WIS­SENSAR­CHITEK­TUR - Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Knowl­edge Ar­chi­tec­ture (TU Dres­den), to­geth­er with the Chair of Dig­i­tal City Sci­ence (HafenCi­ty Uni­ver­sität Ham­burg) , is now work­ing with the Ger­man Fed­er­al As­so­ci­a­tion Smart City to de­vel­op a stan­dard­ized, prac­ti­ca­ble ter­mi­nol­o­gy.

Un­clear ter­mi­nol­o­gy hin­ders the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion

An analy­sis of ex­ist­ing Smart-City glos­saries car­ried out by the fed­er­al as­so­ci­a­tion in 2023 showed that on­ly around 7% of the terms in sev­er­al sources match. Many terms, es­pe­cial­ly from in­ter­na­tion­al con­texts, are used in­con­sis­tent­ly or in a mis­lead­ing way. This makes com­mu­ni­ca­tion in cities and mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties more dif­fi­cult, hin­ders cross-sec­tor projects and par­a­lyzes trans­for­ma­tion at both lo­cal and na­tion­al lev­el. A re­duc­tion to buzz­words and emp­ty phras­es can al­so lead to a ten­den­cy to use su­per­fi­cial con­tent.

Meta-ter­mi­nol­o­gy for fu­ture-ori­ent­ed mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties and re­gions of to­mor­row

A "meta-ter­mi­nol­o­gy for fu­ture-ori­ent­ed mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties and re­gions of to­mor­row" should now pro­vide a rem­e­dy. It should in­clude and de­fine the most im­por­tant top­ics re­lat­ing to Smart cities from a mu­nic­i­pal per­spec­tive and help to shape fu­ture projects and dis­course pro­duc­tive­ly, suc­cess­ful­ly and clear­ly.

The ini­tial ap­proach­es were pre­sent­ed at a work­shop dur­ing the Smart Coun­try Con­ven­tion in No­vem­ber 2023 and dis­cussed in depth with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all stake­hold­er groups.

Project Smart-City ter­mi­nol­o­gy: sys­tem­at­ic and prac­ti­cal

In 2025, TUD-WIS­SENSAR­CHITEK­TUR - cur­rent­ly the sci­en­tif­ic lead in the pi­lot project Smart City Dres­den - the DCS Ham­burg and the Fed­er­al As­so­ci­a­tion will fur­ther de­vel­op the re­sults.

The project Smart- City-ter­mi­nol­o­gy fo­cus­es on the fol­low­ing as­pects:

  • In­ter­faces and con­nec­tiv­i­ty: stan­dards and a com­mon lan­guage can im­prove com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty and co­op­er­a­tion.
  • Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and rel­e­vance: Clear terms are es­sen­tial to cre­ate trans­paren­cy and un­der­stand­ing among all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing jour­nal­ists and cit­i­zens, and in this way al­so pro­mote so­cial ac­cep­tance.
  • So­cial di­men­sion: Terms should not on­ly re­flect tech­ni­cal, but al­so cul­tur­al and so­cial as­pects.
  • Work process­es: De­vel­op­ment should be flex­i­ble, dy­nam­ic and prac­tice-ori­ent­ed, al­low­ing con­trib­u­tors to fo­cus on their core com­pe­ten­cies. The par­tic­i­pants agreed that the process should be de­signed and im­ple­ment­ed us­ing a "liv­ing doc­u­ment" that is con­tin­u­ous­ly de­vel­oped and adapt­ed to new re­quire­ments.

The aim of the new Smart-City ter­mi­nol­o­gy is to de­vel­op a sys­tem­at­ic and prac­ti­cal tax­on­o­my that de­fines cross-sec­toral terms, re­duces mis­un­der­stand­ings and en­sures in­ter­na­tion­al com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. In this way, the dig­i­ti­za­tion of Ger­man mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties can be used world­wide as an ex­port good and knowl­edge prod­uct "Smart City made in Ger­many".