Towards smart(er) resilient cities. Evidences from Romanian urban areas

Abstract

The investment in communication technologies has become increasingly prominent in cities, as they face a considerable pressure to become “smarter”. Connected technologies are able to collect and analyze data in real time, leading to predictive and adaptive decisions. However, being smart(er) does not necessary mean being more resilient; in fact, using sophisticated technologies may have some drawbacks that diminish the general resilience capacity of cities. The present paper aims to explore the relationship between resilience and smart city initiatives. The number of smart city projects is therefore firstly correlated with the resilience capacity (built on three dimensions: economic, socio-demographic, and environmental), then to the outcome resilience (calculated as the recovery following the recent economic crisis). The results show a clear connection between the most socially resilient cities, the share of employment in tertiary activities, and the implementation of smart city projects.

On the relation between ‘resilience’ and ‘smartness’: A critical review

“…Some contend that a truly smart city must be resilient, others that resilience can only be achieved when a city is smart -giving more emphasis either to 'resilience' or 'smartness'. Some, however, highlight that the implementation of new smart digital technologies may in fact hinder the resilience of the physical city in particular ways (for an example see Bănică et al 2020).…”

The principle of cascadic prosilience—Assessment of territorial recovery strategies after disrupted regional infrastructure systems in Iraq

“…As the complexities of systemic transitions and perturbations are gradually unveiled, a diverse array of statistical and modeling methodologies for studying economic shocks has emerged. Examples include operational quantitative disaster studies, as exemplified by works like Okuyama and Rose (2019) and Banica et al (2020), which rigorously dissect the multifaceted effects of disruptions. These studies contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the implications of disruptions across various dimensions.…”

Rural tourism accommodation performance in times of COVID-19 pandemic

“…Thus, despite some rural housing closing (Sari et al 2022), a shift in rural areas from agricultural or non-agricultural activities to tourism was identified (Mugauina et al 2020;Roman, Grudzien 2021;Sari et al 2022;Zibert et al 2022), providing tourism services to tourists in these areas. That change in the economic activities in a given territory seems to have been borne because of a previous commitment to sustainability, which in the long-term benefits resiliency (Banica et al 2020).…”