Evidence-based decision making is promoted as offering efficiency and effectiveness; however, its uptake has faced barriers such as underdeveloped supporting culture, limited access to evidence, and evidence that is not fully relevant. Smart city conceptualizations offer economic and environmental sustainability and better quality of life through evidence-based policy decision-making. We wondered whether smart city theory and practice has advanced the knowledge of evidence-based decision-making. We searched major databases for literature containing a mention of smart cities, decision-making, and policy. We identified relevant literature from a range of disciplines and supplemented these by following backwards and forwards citations. Evidence-based decision-making was found mostly in literature regarding the theory and practice of smart city operations, and, to lesser extents, the articles regarding policy decisions and tactical decisions. Better decision-making which supported the achievement of city sustainability objectives was reported in some articles; however, we found significant obstacles to the further achievement of city objectives in the areas of underachievement in collaborative decision-making, privileging of big data evidence, and artificial intelligence agents as decision-makers. We assembled a definition of smart city decision-making and developed an agenda of research which will support city governments, theorists, and practitioners in better achieving sustainability through improved decision-making.
Collaboration is problematic in the public sector, yet many smart city theorists advocate relationships fully dependent upon collaboration to address the intense complexity encountered by city governments and achieve city objectives of quality of life, efficiency, effectiveness, and economic and environmental sustainability. Skeptical, we inductively drew together the widely dispersed theoretical tenets of smart city collaboration into a framework of collaborative relationships and tested this framework using secondary evidence as to practice in greater Amsterdam. Mostly authentic collaborative relationships were explicated. Theory is extended by clarifying the roles of actors, especially the role of city government as actor and steward of the collaborative ecosystem. Future research should unpack the factors that impact the sustainability of smart city collaborations.
Uncertainty and its profound impact on the management of infrastructure project portfolios is introduced. The advent of COVID-19 is depicted as a defining event in the management of infrastructure. This study applies the Black Scholes option valuation model and real options analysis to determine value for money in front-end engineering for Australian megaprojects. The findings indicate that despite the fact all current Australian infrastructure projects examined had a positive net present value and a benefit to cost ratio greater than one, almost sixty percent of the planned expenditure was for projects for which real options analysis indicated the engineering as being poor value for money. The paper concludes with recommendations to manage the national portfolio of infrastructure projects as a pipeline of carefully chosen pre-engineered options, some of which are constructible projects and others being non-asset, demand management solutions.
We speculate that COVID-19 will drive engineering asset owners to require governance entities such as boards of management (BoM), to elevate engineering asset management (EAM) to being a corporate level strategy and core competence. We sought to understand whether there was a fit-for-purpose conceptualization of EAM as a corporate level strategy. Our research considered foundational Asset Management (AM) prescriptions finding that the available AM models have distinct gaps as to the roles of governance entities and of CEO’s in asset management where these are actively involved in the policy and practice of asset management. Using the Victorian Government Asset Management Accountability Framework as an example of active top-level involvement we identified a ‘bottom-up’ approach, incomplete integration with the whole organization and positioning of AM planning subsequent to strategic level planning as barriers to effective corporate level asset management strategy implementation. Responding to those findings we offer a program of future research aimed at developing fit-for-purpose strategic EAM tools to assist those BoM’s who seek to elevate EAM to a corporate level strategy.
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