1st Workshop on Citizen Engagement and Evaluation of Current Participatory Platforms in Smart City

The workshops provide an opportunity for exchange of views on the role of citizen engagement in the process of the development of Smart Cities. The workshop aims to bring together researchers, academics, industry experts, software professionals and students interested in the advances in the field of smart city development and innovative citizen engagement methods. Participants will have the opportunity to present and observe the latest research results and ideas in this area. Regarding this context, two workshops are going to be held to create an exceptional approach to the participation and civic engagement in the Smart City domain: Workshop 1: New challenges to information systems to engage citizens in e-participation This workshop would focus on discussing ways of optimizing, visualizing and summarizing data that can be collected within a city infrastructure, the strengths and weaknesses of the existing information technologies solutions for citizen e-participation, innovative information systems design and solutions oriented to motivate citizen engagement in the decision-making process. We encourage hands-on workshops proposals, where participants can actively get involved in the discussion. Workshop 2: The “Wise City” as an alternative to the Smart City: methods for evaluation of current participatory platforms in smart cities Current trends in urban development are rapidly increasing and focusing towards the deployment of smart strategies, and technologies attempting to involve citizens. Financial investment of public and private sectors is being directed to this aspect, but it is the critical impact in citizens’ life remains to be evaluated. The growing number of examples of abandoned or obsolete Smart City platforms and tools due to their lack of use by the citizens are calling for a more social and “wiser” approach. This aspect requires a thorough analysis and consideration since it can have a great impact in governance related aspects in the “smart cities”. An ideal strategy will be to evaluate and address issues regarding citizens’ involvement during the planning and designing stages in the process of building “smart cities”. In this one-day workshop we will focus on exploring solutions for including citizens in the early planning stages of smart cities to increase the sustainability of technological tools in the future. We will have a mini-design session to find challenges and solutions in this context. The main objective is to provide to the academic and business people, a privileged forum where practitioners, researchers, teachers and university students to discuss key issues related to civic engagement topic in Smart Cities, relating different areas of information systems design, development and operation. Both workshops accept introductory and advanced proposals in the target area. All submitted papers will be reviewed by, at least, two Program Committee members.