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Transformation into a prosperous smart city has become an aspiration for many local governments across the globe. Despite its growing importance, smart city transformation readiness is still an understudied area of research. In order to bridge this knowledge gap, this paper identifies the key factors affecting smart city transformation readiness in the context of Australian cities. The empirical investigation conducted in this study places Australian local government areas (n=180) under the smart city microscope to quantitatively evaluate, through a multiple regression analysis, the key factors affecting their urban smartness levels—a proxy used for smart city transformation readiness. The findings disclose that the following factors determine about two-thirds (65%) of the smart city transformation readiness: (a) Close distance to domestic airport; (b) Low remoteness value; (c) High population density; (d) Low unemployment level, and; (e) High labour productivity. The study findings and generated insights inform urban policymakers, managers and planners on their policy, planning and practice decisions concerning smart cities.

Purpose: First, the key vulnerability factors from the literature are identified. Second, using the vulnerability factors as indicators, a composite index is developed. Last, from the index values, a set of vulnerability knowledge maps, showing the vulnerability hotspots, are prepared. Design/methodology/approach: This study aims to develop a pandemic vulnerability knowledge visualisation index to support the strategic decision-making efforts of authorities. Findings: Ten indicators are identified as vulnerability factors that could significantly impact the virus spread risks. Verifying the identified hotspots against the recorded infected cases and deaths has evidenced the usefulness of the index. Determining and visualising the high-vulnerability locations and communities could help in informed strategic decision-making and responses of the authorities to the pandemic. Originality/value: The study demonstrates that the developed pandemic vulnerability knowledge visualisation index is particularly appropriate in the context of Australia. Nonetheless, by replicating the methodologic steps of the study, customised versions can be developed for other country contexts.

Preventing spontaneous crystallization of supersaturated solutions by additives is of critical interest to successful process design and implementation, with numerous applications in chemical, pharmaceutical, medical, pigment, and food industries, but challenges remain in laboratory and industry settings and fundamental understanding is lacking. When copresented with antifreeze proteins (AFPs), otherwise spontaneously crystallizing osmolytes are maintained at high supersaturations for months in over-wintering organisms. Thus, we here explore the inhibition phenomenon by AFPs, using persistent crystallization of a common sugar alcohol, D-mannitol, as a case study. We report experimentally that DAFP1, an insect AFP, completely inhibits D-mannitol nucleation. Computer simulations reveal a new mechanism for crystallization inhibition where the population of the crystal-forming conformers are selectively bound and randomized in solution by hydrogen bonding to the protein surface. These results highlight the advantages of using natural polymers to address crystallization inhibition challenges and suggest new strategies in controlling the nucleation processes.

Growing concerns, regarding transport disadvantage and increased socioeconomic disparities, demand innovative ways to improve equity and make transportation systems smarter. One of the most anticipated developments within the field of smart mobility is driving automation systems. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the potential to improve accessibility, affordability, safety and efficiency of transport systems, but come with risks including the intensification of private vehicle travel. Understanding public awareness is an important step to determine whether motivation and intention to use AVs will impact on its potential. This paper aims to investigate factors influencing public awareness of AVs as a solution to transport disadvantage. The study applies an ordinal logistic regression analysis to analyse survey data collected from the residents of Brisbane (Australia). Our findings reveal that awareness is positively correlated within young and middle-aged adults, low-income residents, disability, public transport users, and those who feel unsafe on public transport, while an increase in the number of household vehicles is negatively correlated. The study provides insights into public awareness towards the potential benefits of AVs, and highlights potential opportunities and challenges associated with these expectations.

There is a growing demand, across the globe, for smart mobility solutions to reduce negative social, environmental and economic externalities of private automobile travel. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is an integrated system that through a single online interface enables commuters to plan, book, and pay for trips which utilise a range of mobility providers. MaaS has a unique characteristic to provide a system into which new service options can be integrated with traditional transportation modes. This makes MaaS a potential alternative to private vehicle ownership, and a means to overcome some of the negative externalities associated with automobile dependency. To realise this potential, many cities have implemented—or are in the process of implementing—MaaS trials to better understand how this service will function within cities. This paper utilises a systematic literature review to extract insights, and develops a conceptual framework to identify barriers and risks related to MaaS adoption in cities. The study findings reveal that: (a) The desired MaaS outcomes are associated with reduced vehicle kilometres travelled, increased trip awareness, reduced parking, reduced vehicle ownership, and improved social equity; (b) MaaS supply side barriers include public private cooperation, business support, service coverage, shared vision, and data and cyber security; (c) MaaS demand side barriers are its lack of appeal to older generations, public transport users, and private vehicle users, the attractiveness of the digital platform, and user willingness-to-pay.

Recent smart urban mobility innovations such as intelligent transportation systems, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, demand-responsive transportation, shared transportation, and mobility-asa- service are consistently identified as the panacea to many of the economic, social and environmental effects associated with private vehicles-including road congestion, urban sprawl, social exclusion, increased costs, crashes, emissions, and environmental degradation. One of the strategies of many smart urban mobility policies is to view the transportation system from a holistic perspective to seek reduction of negative effects and an improve performance. Nonetheless, given the rapid technological advances in the transportation sector, there is a need to identify and evaluate primary smart mobility innovations from a sustainability perspective. This article presents a thorough technology review and evaluation of the main smart mobility innovations identified in the literature. The study has identified and categorized six main smart mobility innovations most commonly discussed within the literature including: (a) intelligent transport systems; (b) alternative fuel systems; (c) driving automation systems; (d) shared mobility services; (e) demand responsive transport; and (f) integrated mobility systems. Furthermore, this article includes a brief description of their characteristics, applications, and also evaluates their sustainability according to their proposed impacts on transport safety, road congestion, energy consumption, the environment, and accessibility.

Transportation disadvantage is about the difficulty accessing mobility services required to complete activities associated with employment, shopping, business, essential needs, and recreation. Technological innovations in the field of smart mobility have been identified as a potential solution to help individuals overcome issues associated with transportation disadvantage. This paper aims to provide a consolidated understanding on how smart mobility innovations can contribute to alleviate transportation disadvantage. A systematic literature review is completed, and a conceptual framework is developed to provide the required information to address transportation disadvantage. The results are categorized under the physical, economic, spatial, temporal, psychological, information, and institutional dimensions of transportation disadvantage. The study findings reveal that: (a) Primary smart mobility innovations identified in the literature are demand responsive transportation, shared transportation, intelligent transportation systems, electric mobility, autonomous vehicles, and Mobility-as-a-Services. (b) Smart mobility innovations could benefit urban areas by improving accessibility, efficiency, coverage, flexibility, safety, and the overall integration of the transportation system. (c) Smart mobility innovations have the potential to contribute to the alleviation of transportation disadvantage. (d) Mobility-as-a-Service has high potential to alleviate transportation disadvantage primarily due to its ability to integrate a wide-range of services.

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has started to manifest itself at an unprecedented pace. With highly sophisticated capabilities, AI has the potential to dramatically change our cities and societies. Despite its growing importance, the urban and social implications of AI are still an understudied area. In order to contribute to the ongoing efforts to address this research gap, this paper introduces the notion of an artificially intelligent city as the potential successor of the popular smart city brand—where the smartness of a city has come to be strongly associated with the use of viable technological solutions, including AI. The study explores whether building artificially intelligent cities can safeguard humanity from natural disasters, pandemics, and other catastrophes. All of the statements in this viewpoint are based on a thorough review of the current status of AI literature, research, developments, trends, and applications. This paper generates insights and identifies prospective research questions by charting the evolution of AI and the potential impacts of the systematic adoption of AI in cities and societies. The generated insights inform urban policymakers, managers, and planners on how to ensure the correct uptake of AI in our cities, and the identified critical questions offer scholars directions for prospective research and development.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most disruptive technologies of our time. Interest in the use of AI for urban innovation continues to grow. Particularly, the rise of smart cities—urban locations that are enabled by community, technology, and policy to deliver productivity, innovation, livability, wellbeing, sustainability, accessibility, good governance, and good planning—has increased the demand for AI-enabled innovations. There is, nevertheless, no scholarly work that provides a comprehensive review on the topic. This paper generates insights into how AI can contribute to the development of smarter cities. A systematic review of the literature is selected as the methodologic approach. Results are categorized under the main smart city development dimensions, i.e., economy, society, environment, and governance. The findings of the systematic review containing 93 articles disclose that: (a) AI in the context of smart cities is an emerging field of research and practice. (b) The central focus of the literature is on AI technologies, algorithms, and their current and prospective applications. (c) AI applications in the context of smart cities mainly concentrate on business efficiency, data analytics, education, energy, environmental sustainability, health, land use, security, transport, and urban management areas. (d) There is limited scholarly research investigating the risks of wider AI utilization. (e) Upcoming disruptions of AI in cities and societies have not been adequately examined. Current and potential contributions of AI to the development of smarter cities are outlined in this paper to inform scholars of prospective areas for further research.

This report presents the findings of a study conducted at the Urban Studies Lab of Queensland University of Technology (QUT)—with support from the Australian Government’s Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications (DITRDC)—that placed Australian local government areas under the smart city microscope to evaluate their performances. The study selected the local government areas that are in the greater capital city statistical areas along with the larger local government areas (with pop- ulation over 50,000) located beyond the greater cap- ital city statistical areas. These 180 local government areas—that house over 85% of the Australian population—are evaluated against the ‘Smart City Assessment Model’ criteria—that measure the smart city outcomes, and provide a snapshot of the smart city performance of the local government areas.

Children are commonly involved in competitive activities that can result in misunderstands because of differing interpretations of ambiguous situations. This study investigates if the group identity of children affects their interpretation of ambiguous situations when there is an accusation of misconduct. The results support the hypothesis because there was a divergence of evaluations based on team membership following an accusation of cheating.

Organisms must respond to unpredictable, novel, and/or dangerous conditions in their environment to maintain homeostasis and optimize fitness. We evaluated physiological response in free-living endangered and common passerine species to human disturbance indicated by endocrine stress response as measured by plasma corticosterone and energy expenditure as measured by telemetered heart-rate. We conducted a series of experiments on endangered blackcapped vireos and golden-cheeked warblers and non-endangered white-eyed vireos on Fort Hood, Texas to evaluate chronic and acute response to human disturbance trials. Overall, we found only weak and mixed evidence that physiological response measures in songbird species in this study are acutely or chronically sensitive to human activity at exposure levels in this study, although adults exhibited strong behavioral responses. We did find a decline in baseline corticosterone in the habitat specialist golden-cheeked warblers in habitats with high road densities that we did not observed in habitat generalist white-eyed vireos. Comparison of our results with studies for other non-passerine avian taxa suggests potential differences in disturbance response in species with significantly different life-history characteristics. This is the first study integrating these two physiological measures of response to human disturbance in free-flying passerine species and addresses key knowledge gaps in how wild animals respond and adapt to potential disturbance from human activities. This research also provided the rare opportunity to directly measure these stress responses in two federally-listed endangered avian species., Prepared in collaboration with Tufts University, Medford, MA, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Germany, the Univ of Illinois Urbana, Champaign, and Severn Electronics, Annapolis, MD.

Effects of transient human disturbance on avian species is a concern on Department of Defense installations that support populations of federally listed endangered birds. Military training often is conducted within habitats that support endangered bird species, thus exposing individuals of these species to harassment as defined under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. During the 2006 breeding season on Fort Hood, Texas, evaluations of two major physiological response systems determined response in passerine species to disturbances characteristic of military training activities: a hormonal (adrenocortical) response to stress in white-eyed vireos and endangered black-capped vireos, and energy expenditure as measured by remotely monitored heart rate in white-eyed vireos. Heart-rate radio telemetry was used to measure avian metabolic demands in response to potential stressors related to military training. This study is the first to demonstrate that 1) heart-rate transmitters can successfully be mounted on small (10-g) migratory passerines, 2) heart rate can be continuously monitored and recorded in these birds for at least 60 hours, and 3) heart rate is a robust measure of energy expenditure in small passerines and therefore is a powerful method to test the effects of military activity on survival in species of concern., The original document contains color images.

When an animal detects a stressor, it initiates a stress response. The physiological aspects of this stress response are mediated through two endocrine systems. The catecholamine hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine are released from the adrenal medulla very rapidly and have numerous effects on behavior, metabolism, and the cardiovascular system. This is commonly termed the Fight-or-Flight response. On a longer time scale, the glucocorticoid hormones are released from the adrenal cortex. They interact with intracellular receptors and initiate gene transcription. This production of new proteins means that glucocorticoids have a delayed, but more sustained, effect than the catecholamines. The glucocorticoids orchestrate a wide array of responses to the stressor. They have direct effects on behavior, metabolism and energy trafficking, reproduction, growth, and the immune system. The sum total of these responses is designed to help the animal survive a short-term stressful stimulus. However, under conditions of long-term stress, the glucocorticoid-mediated effects become maladaptive and can lead to disease.