The Sick City : a review of smart cities in the Covid-19 era
More than one year later, the Covid-19 virus continues to threaten crowds. Social distancing — the new normal, is sometimes difficult to respect in cities which, by definition, are densely populated. With the assistance of technology, smart cities around the world chose their weapons to fight against the pandemic : lockdown, curfew, tracking… This article based on 25 research papers published from early 2020 to the present (January 2020 — April 2021). Interdisciplinary databases have been used : Sage, Science Direct, Web of Science and Wiley. The keywords “smart city” and “Covid-19” have to be cited in the title and/ou abstract of the selected papers. On the agenda :
- a portrait of cities under Covid-19,
- a discussion of technology use in case of pandemics and its impacts on cities’ governance and citizens (privacy and social issues),
- and lessons to learn to adapt the smart city in the post-Covid-19 world.
But, first, let’s go back to the smart cities’ origins.
Smart city origins
In 2005, Bill Clinton, president of the United States challenged the digital giants (at that time IBM, Cisco, Microsoft) to use their digital “superpowers” to solve urban issues. That’s the Smart City : a city that uses technology to optimise the use of its natural, energy and human resources to achieve a sustainable urban development in different areas (smart mobility, smart environment, smart governance, smart economy, smart living…). In his 2010 book “Whole Earth Discipline”, Stewart Brand defends the city as a sustainable solution to reduce energy consumption (smaller living surface, shorter daily trips…) with the concentration of people. City offers better access to services, accomodation, jobs, and so on. City concentrates many opportunities, but also many risks. The most “recent” one: the biological disaster with the Covid-19 (and many other ones in the past : H1N1, Sars-Cov, Ebola…).
Cities under Covid-19
By 2050, two-thirds of the world population should live in cities. The urban population keeps growing with more and more megacities in the world (cities with + 10 million inhabitants) and more and more economic, social and environmental threats. In those threats, the risk of pandemic is high : World Health Organisation detects about 7 000 signs of potential outbreaks each month (in Junior, Ribeiro & Viana, 2021). The risk of contamination is not the same everywhere: some cities are densely populated and crowds cross each others in shopping centers, commuting, etc. and for other cities the health hazard comes from poor water infrastructures, water supply. In Cities History, many transformations have been made to deal with those biological disasters but also with climate change effects, social inequalities and digital disruptions (Kareem, 2021). The city never stops adapting. In 2020, with the Covid-19, many studies focused on the role of technology (AI, big data, chatbots…) to monitor and protect cities.
Hush ! Listen to the city !
As cities have turned inward, technology has made it possible to monitor their “rest”. In Stockholm, Sweden, the city center has measured a very strong decrease of the noise level with acoustic sensors as soon as the government gave its recommandations to stay home. Because YES, the Swedish government has chosen not to make any lockdown or curfew. The recommendations to the population to reduce travel and meetings were enough. The streets recorded a noise level equivalent to that recorded on public holidays (Rumpler, Venkataraman, Göransson, 2020). The city at rest is also a city that consumes less electricity. $131,844 of savings for April, 2020 in the province of Ontario, Canada who registered a significant decrease in electricity consumption during peak hours (7–11 am, 5–7pm) (Abu-Rayash & Dincer, 2020).
Technology : the savior of the city ?
As intended by the definition of the smart city, technology must provide solutions in all areas of the city. In the case of an epidemic, there has been talk of smart hospital with a better waste management, smart home, smart grocery and even autonomous testing vehicles in rural areas (Chauhan, Jakhar and Chauhan, 2021; Gupta et al., 2021).
The goal is to prevent, alert and mitigate the risks associated with the outbreak.
In the case of China, which has been very committed to the development of smart cities since 2012, this involves (Yang & Chong, 2021) :
- a smart community (with “zero contact service” and “high efficiency identification” to reduce useless trips thanks to e-commerce),
- a smart government for better data governance and real-time resource management to make efficient and fast decisions,
- a smart healthcare that facilitates teleconsultation to identify urgent cases in the city as well as in the most isolated areas for a better allocation of medical resources and speed of diagnosis and treatment,
- and a smart information transversal to the 3 previous aspects for a relevant geolocalized information in real time.
Smart city solutions for Covid-19 crisis management
These different applications are possible thanks to a wide range of technological tools:
- Chatbots to reassure the population. To inform and indicate when there is an urgent case and where to send them (and avoid pressure on the health system)
- Scanning cameras and real-time monitoring with drones to track symptoms and make the population respect the restrictions (social distance, no meeting) (Ho, Caals, Zhang, 2020; Shorfuzzaman, Hossain, & Alhamid, 2021).
- Digital twins or Digital replicas of real-life scenarios with the help of AI, crowd computing and big data. The goal is to experience the city as a virtual world to make transformations, predict the potential errors or opportunities (Allam & Jones, 2021).
- Actually, AI is used to create predictive models in smart cities with hugh amount data from different sources like cameras, sensors… The machine learning is also based on passed outbreaks like H1N1, SARS-Cov or Ebola to better detect abnormal behaviors compared to a “normal” pattern outside of outbreaks period. An abnormal temperature rise could be the beginning of a fire, the number of hospital admissions, the beginning of a health crisis, and so many scenarios. Here, the goal is to detect, then alert the stakeholders (e.g. firefighters, alert the population on places to avoid) and mitigate the risk with the reorganisation of critical areas, detect fake news on social media (Jaiswal, Agarwal & Negi, 2020).
All these papers support the potential of technology to prevent, control and mitigate the Covid-19 crisis and other outbreaks to come. The smart city appears as a solution for a healthy and resilient city thanks to the potential of technology (Yang & Chong, 2020; Sonn & Lee, 2020). However, their recommendations should be taken in perspective : some papers funded by governments seems to “promote” the smart city and its solutions, but with not enough discussion on issues for governments and citizens.
Issues for governments and citizens
For governments, the major issue is data governance when using private solutions from businesses in smart cities. Solutions used should guarantee the free access to data (Allam & Jones, 2020). Indeed, in the Covid-19 crisis, the effectiveness of smart transport platforms is discussed because their potential to reduce the risk was huge, but there is not a real governance of mobility data: traveller information is fragmented between different mobility services (Yang & Chong, 2021).
For citizens, techonology use seems to have positive results on outbreak management but privacy issues are real (Junior, Ribeiro & Viana, 2021). Under the pretext of wanting to control the virus, Singapour made an important pivot with its app “TraceTogether” : it became a wearable tech device for the 5.7 million residents without any privacy concern (Lee & Lee, 2020). Is citizens’ privacy the price to pay for health security ? The question has been asked for many years now for the security. The Covid-19 crisis gives new urgent case studies on privacy issues. Do we have to pseudonymise or to anonymise personal health data? Pseudonymise techniques can track back the original state of data (so there is a high risk for privacy) while it’s impossible with anonymised techniques (Gupta et al., 2021).
Social implications for smart cities under Covid-19
As seen before, the use of technology and especially personal smartphones for citizens, has proven its efficiency to communicate with them and deliver relevant and geolocated pieces of information in real time (Junior, Ribeiro & Viana, 2021). Even social media, and especially Twitter, have been used to measure citizens’ concerns and to understand their psychological needs (Alomari et al. 2021; Long, Alharti & El Saddik, 2020).
The digital transformation has been accelerated in different sectors like education. Many opportunities to reinvent e-learning have emerged, and the potential weaknesses have been revealed (cybersecurity inside and outside the building for learners) (Mircea, Stoica & Ghilic-Micu, 2021).
With the Covid-19 crisis, despite the social distance, social relationships in cities have been reinvented : balconies have come to live, solidarity between generations to made homemade masks and to do neighbour’s shopping (Kareem, 2021).
The dark side…
But historically, economic and health crisis lead to social tensions in cities : fear of strangers, protests, blockades, social isolation in lockdown, etc. (Allam & Jones, 2020; Kang et al., 2020).
Social inequalities and rise of populism: the Covid-19 virus was spread through a globalised world. The health crisis revealed the negative aspects of globalisation that benefits the richest people more (Kubina, Šulyová & Vodák, 2021). Social inequalities reinforces the lack of access to health services (Junior, Ribeiro & Viana, 2021).
Aging population: the Covid-19 crisis has shown that cities are vulnerable, especially cities in developed countries where there is an aging population (Marston, Shore & White, 2020). What is at stake for the future is designing technologies to better include older people in services like online food shopping (Gao et al., 2020). Beyond the technological solutions, the smart city planners promoted social inclusion with intergenerational accommodations projects. But with the growing health risks in cities, we have to protect the oldest ones at the same time. Will social inclusion be compatible with health protection?
People with a disability: other vulnerable people, the ones with a disability, can also be more sensitive to health problems (immune and respiratory systems) and suffer from social distancing and less assistance in their everyday life. For the ones with a motor disability, cities have many physical barriers (streets, transportation, shopping…) (Pineda & Corburn, 2020). The smart city should also be a more inclusive and accessible city.
Lessons from the Covid-19 era
It’s not finished, but the crisis gave us potential solutions with the assistance of technology to deal with outbreaks and asks ethics questions at the same time (citizens’ privacy, social inequalities, rise of populism, vulnerable population). To design “smart” cities, the epidemic risk must be taken into account in the same way as natural disasters (floods, tsunamis, heat waves) in cities’ disaster management (Allam & Jones, 2020).
It’s too early to say that the world after will not be the world before the crisis. But, one thing is certain : the smart city in the post-Covid-19 era will have to deal with new challenges to keep on fighting against climate change :
Let’s take exemples on 3 smart city areas :
- Smart ecology : hydroalcoholic gel and masks (and gloves for some people) in our bags and garbage cans. New plastic waste ! The Covid-19 crisis should not make us forget our “green” efforts (Barbier, 2020).
- Smart mobility : an area affected by behavior change is urban mobility. Even if public transport still be considered as a sustainable solution to commute, share mobility intentions are declining (Sui et al., 2020). But there is a hope for active modes like shared bikes and scooters (Orro et al., 2020). Tier, Voi, Dott, Bolt, Lime, Bird… the startups fundraisings don’t stop ! And cocorico, well done to Blablacar with 115 millions euros raised, information published this week.
- Smart tourism/Smart home : one of the most affected areas, what will be the consequences for tourism ? Here again, technology would offer potential solutions to reassure tourists with human-machine interaction devices (Van et al., 2020). But how to create trust in shared homes (Airbnb and others) ? Will the shared trend be impacted by the Covid-19 ? How to reinvent our homes for welcoming others but also for us (Work From Home) ? Did the Work From Anywhere would be an opportunity for the shared economy ?
To be continued…
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