An integrated appRoach To improve the Environmental perforMance of smart cItieS

The smart city concept has received increased attention from researchers and decision-makers across the EU.

However, there is a gap between smart city research & practice, and environmental sustainability: to date, smart city projects have not adequately assessed the environmental impacts of their strategies, which remain largely unknown.

Research is needed to provide empirical evidence, advanced tools and metrics that can support the design, implementation and evaluation of smart city strategies to improve urban environmental sustainability.RESEARCH GOALSARTEMIS will investigate whether and how the smart city can improve the environmental performance of urban systems.

The research aims to provide insight on key aspects in smart city strategies that can effectively reduce environmental impacts; a novel environmental impact assessment framework to support decision-making in smart city projects; and improved key performance indicators (KPIs) on environmental sustainability and circularity for smart cities.ACHIEVING THE GOALSARTEMIS will develop an integrated framework coupling urban metabolism and life-cycle assessment, to estimate how strategies implemented in two EU-funded smart city projects (in Lisbon, Portugal, and Trento, Italy) have affected a wide set of environmental impacts, associated with urban systems.

Drawing on the framework and results, KPIs will be provided to evaluate environmental sustainability in smart cities.

The framework, recommendations and KPIs will be replicable across EU cities.RELEVANCE TO THE WORK PROGRAMMEARTEMIS will support the EU’s vision for smart cities and its aim of becoming a role model in sustainable development.

My expertise in environmental impact assessment and the supervisor’s in smart cities bond effectively to pursue the research plan.

The fellowship is a unique opportunity for me to obtain enhanced knowledge and skills on the development of environmental assessment tools and metrics for smart cities.