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This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework\ud as analytical tool to support the systematic and methodical investigation of smart city instantiations. Integrating existing fragmented perspectives, we propose three analytical dimensions (integration, automation and adaptivity) to describe the relationships between four foundational smart city aspects (technology, people, institutions and material environment). Together dimensions and foundational aspects create smart city configurations (SCCs). SCCs enable the systematic description, assessment and comparison of specific smart city instantiations. SCCs can further help to make transparent the basis for policy decisions and\ud implicit assumptions of decision-makers aiding the legitimacy, explainability and accountability of smart city efforts.

International audience; The use of real-time data in logistics is an important topic. Every day, logistics produces a large quantity of data, which is mainly produced by monitoring and controlling the enormous flow of goods. The last-mile delivery market is expanding at a rapid pace through large-and small-scale consumer platforms, but the economic drivers to create more sustainable systems are weak. Therefore, cities are facing the potential downside of this "Uberisation" of logistics. Urban and city planners, city administrators, and business stakeholders need a new adaptive approach such as the usage of digital twinning solutions of urban logistics. This to help in the interpretation of the dynamics of logistics networks in the city and the consequences of the introduction of particular innovations. The challenge is to predict the most likely developments for the coming years and propose feasible policies on that basis. This research work aims to advance research in the field of digital twins applied to city logistics, by proposing a framework enabling new applications for designing and assessing targeted urban logistics policies and to develop a range of logistics solutions for shared, connected, and low-emission logistics operations, empowered by an adaptive modeling approach.

The vision of smart cities has became a reality. Technological advances in low power devices and reliable communication and overall system architectures made it happening. However, there are plenty of improvements that still can be employed to further increase the efficiency of relevant systems or to provide new approaches that improve existing solutions. This special issue on Enabling Architectures and Technologies for Smart Cities of the JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS aims to report on the recent advancements and developments in various aspects related to emerging hardware and software technologies enabling the IoT, such as RFID, WSN, system software architecture, integrated solutions, embedded systems, and so on. This issue recommended totally 10 papers for publication based on the standard reviewing process, where at least two constructive reviews and with guest editors comment have been received. Papers are split in two main groups focused mainly on system architectures that improve reliability in smart cities ([1- 5]), and hardware solutions ([6-10]) that are presented as either upgrades to exisiting solutions or new more efficient proposals. All of these were validated by analytics, simulations and/or testbed approaches.

Energy management is a current major concern due to several reasons. Increasing energy consumption brought new challenges to energy networks, leading their development towards an intelligent direction with the advent of smart meters. Intelligence in energy systems provides results in many heterogeneous applications taking advantage from IoT, such as energy delivery efficiency, reliability, and fault recovery. Energy in smart environments is an important research topic of IoT since energy efficiency is vital for the environment and global sustainability. Smart meters create the basis for intelligent energy networks, providing real-time information regarding quality and usage of appliances, data consumption, and energy flow information. Besides, the use of an energy management system, capable for collecting data from distinct sensors, generate various reports using collected data, and perform alarm reports based on data analysis, is a need for both consumers and suppliers. The authors proposed, designed, and implemented a cost effective three phase smart energy meter, IoT enabled, multi-protocol and modular, capable to collect, process, and transmit several electric energy related information, mainly focused on consumer-side, to any smart energy control system. It is also proposed the use of a specific software platform to manage collected information, performing data analysis and post- processing. The proposed platform is client- server based, expandable, and future-proof, allowing further integration.