[EGOV LIST] CFP - Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-56), Maui, Hawaii, January 3-6, 2023

[Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar]

CALL FOR PAPERS

 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-56), Maui, Hawaii, January 3-6, 2023 (http://www.hicss.org/ <http://www.hicss.org/>)

 Digital Government Track

 Smart and Connected Cities and Communities Mini-track <https://hicss.hawaii.edu/tracks-56/digital-government/#smart-and-connected-cities-and-communities-minitrack <https://hicss.hawaii.edu/tracks-56/digital-government/#smart-and-connected-cities-and-communities-minitrack>>

Cities and communities around the world are entering a new era of transformation in which residents and their surrounding environments are increasingly connected through rapidly changing intelligent technologies, sometimes called, smart technologies. This transformation, which has become a top priority for many cities and other local governments, offers great promise for improved well-being and prosperity but, also, poses significant challenges at the complex intersection of technology and society. 

A smart and connected community can be conceptualized as one that synergistically integrates intelligent technologies with the natural and built environments, including infrastructure, to improve the social, economic, and environmental well-being of those who live, work, or travel within it. Building on the notion of community informatics, smart communities can be seen as enabling and empowering citizens and supporting the individual and communal quests for well-being.

Although the literature is rich in references to smart cities and communities, this is still a developing and fuzzy concept due to its multidimensional and multifaceted aspect that goes beyond the mere use of technology and infrastructure. Although technology is a necessary condition to become smart, it is not the only aspect that defines smart cities and communities. Novel studies are indicating that emerging technologies have a huge influence on social life, catalyzing new needs of citizens and transforming the way they are addressed, influencing people’s ability to exercise their “right to the city/community” and impacting on social sustainability on several levels. City administration and community management, information integration, data quality, privacy and security, institutional arrangements, and citizen participation are therefore some of the issues that need greater attention to make a community smarter today and in the near future. 

Nonetheless, the literature on smart cities and communities is fragmented, particularly in terms of the strategies that different cities and communities should follow in order to become smarter. What most of the literature does agree on is that there is no single way to becoming smart and different communities have adopted different approaches that reflect their particularities. In addition, the advent of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, open government, open data, big data, blockchain, chatbots and so on, have opened new avenues for smart governance in the urban and communities’ contexts, which fosters new research on this area.

This mini track aims at exploring these issues, paying particular attention to the challenges of smart cities and smart communities as well as to the impact of these initiatives to understand how new technologies can shape the social sustainability, the livability of local communities, and the wellbeing of its residents. It also focuses on the orchestrated interplay and balance of smart governance practices, smart public administration, smart communities, smart resources and talent leverage in urban, rural, and regional spaces facilitated by novel uses of ICT and other technologies.

As a result, areas of focus and interest to this mini track include, but are not limited, to the following topics:

-       Taxonomies of smart cities and communities 
-       Smart governance as the foundation to creating smart urban and regional spaces (elements, prerequisites, and principles of smart governance)
-       Smart cities and smart government (focal areas, current practices, cases, and potential pitfalls)
-       Smart partnerships (triple/quadruple/quintuple helix, public-private partnerships, and citizen participation)
-       The impact of digital transformation on the change of citizens’ role in the city
-       Smart cities, communities and regions (cases, rankings, comparisons, and critical success factors)
-       Benefits of the impact of emerging technologies on citizens and local communities
-       Collective intelligence for smart cities and communities
-       Emerging technologies in smart cities and communities (artificial intelligence, big data, open data, open government, social media and networks, chatbots, etc.)
-       Smart governance in cities and communities in the age of the emerging technologies
-       Management of smart cities and communities
-       Outcomes of smart cities and communities
-       The role of digital technologies in both increasing community livability and improving social sustainability and inequalities
-       Smart services
-       Urban-rural gaps in smart communities
-       Resilience and sustainability capacities in smart cities and communities.
-        Innovative solutions for smart cities and communities
-       Building knowledge societies for smart cities and communities
-       Smart cities and communities and their contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
 
Important dates (https://hicss.hawaii.edu/ <https://hicss.hawaii.edu/>):

April 15, 2022: Paper submission system reopened for HICSS-56

June 15, 2022: Papers due

August 17, 2022: Notification of Acceptance/Rejection

September 4, 2022: Deadline for authors whose papers are conditionally accepted to submit a revised manuscript

September 22, 2022: Deadline for Authors to Submit Final Manuscript for Publication

October 1, 2022: Deadline for at least one author of each paper to register for the conference

October 22, 2022: Deadline for the paper production fee payment

January 3-6, 2023: HICSS Conference


Mini-track Co-Chairs:
Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar (primary contact), University of Granada, Spain (manuelp at ugr.es <mailto:manuelp at ugr.es>)

Gabriela Viale Pereira, Danube University Krems, Austria (gabriela.viale-pereira at donau-uni.ac.at <mailto:gabriela.viale-pereira at donau-uni.ac.at>) 

Elsa Estevez, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina (ece at cs.uns.edu.ar <mailto:ece at cs.uns.edu.ar>)

Anna Domaradzka-Widla, University of Warsaw, Poland (anna.domaradzka at uw.edu.pl <mailto:anna.domaradzka at uw.edu.pl>)