A Preliminary Survey on Smart Specialization Platforms: Evaluation of European Best Practices

In July 2021, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance, presented a study on the status of technology governance in cities, outlining the fundamental conditions that all smart cities, regardless of their strategic aims, must achieve. A decision support system based on a model that enables interoperability across multiple urban sectors should ensure these requirements, which serve as the foundation for effective technological governance. To accomplish this, many European cities have based their urban strategies on smart specialisation on open web platforms that systematise different sectors to create smart cities. From these premises, the purpose of this paper is threefold: (i) investigate the relationship between smart urban development and the use of open data platforms; (ii) understand how these are useful for defining actions and strategies that facilitate the planning of a smart city, and (iii) understand, if it is possible, to find platform’s common characteristics that allow cooperation of intentions between European Union cities. To this goal, the authors make a systematic and cross-reading of some European platforms’ good practices in smart city solutions and projects, highlighting the scope of the smart city and sustainability/financing, the open data exploitation and the technical characteristics. In this regard, an analytical approach is proposed, underlining the originality and value of this research to strengthen the smart Governance model based on open web platforms.