We delve into the literature to further understand and contextualise the “sustainability”, “smart” and “city” concepts within the scope of our study.
2.1 The “Sustainability” Concept
Sustainability is often used in literature with reference to development to connote the act of balancing the pace of development with the number of resources required to achieve such a pace. Environmental sustainability can be traced back to the eighteenth century when Carl von Clausewitz postulated that we should not be cutting down trees at a rate higher than that at which they are replaced (von Clausewitz
2009). This postulation is the underlying principle of environmental sustainability: using the earth’s resources faster than it is being replenished. This unsustainable use of the earth’s resources to meet man’s immediate needs has resulted in, among other things, an increase in the amount of CO
2 in the atmosphere. An increase in atmospheric CO
2 will, in turn, lead to the warming of our planet precipitating the risk of flooding, drought and an increase in natural disasters among other things (IPCC
2018).
The concept of sustainability was first introduced to the urban domain in the early 1990s (Wheeler and Timothy
2014). It was born out of a realisation of the risks that urban development poses to the environment which may lead to a perilous future (Bibri and Krogstie
2017a). According to Bibri and Krogstie (
2017a), urban sustainability is “a desired state in which urban society strives for achieving a balance between environmental protection and integration, economic development and regeneration, and social equity and justice within cities as long-term goals through the strategic process of sustainable urban development as a desired trajectory”. This definition is supported in the various literature which hinges sustainable development on three components; economy, environment and society (Jenks and Jones
2008; UNECE
2015b).
2.4 The “smart sustainable city” Concept
Smart sustainable cities is a concept that fuses environmental sustainability, urbanisation and technological development (Höjer and Wangel
2015). It is a term that combines smart city and sustainable city, used to describe the use of ICT to enable cities to become more sustainable and to improve the quality of life of citizens (Akande et al.
2019; Al-Nasrawi et al.
2015; Bibri and Krogstie
2017b; Höjer and Wangel
2015; A Kramers et al.
2016). The use of ICT in urban systems and domains includes but is not limited to “sensing, collecting, storing, coordinating, integrating, processing, analysing, synthesising, manipulating, modelling, simulating, managing, exchanging, and sharing data for the purpose of monitoring, understanding, probing and planning modern cities to achieve particular goals” (Bibri and Krogstie
2017a). The emerging field of smart sustainable cities is gradually developing into two main research strands; one that focuses on the effects and implication of ICT use and infrastructure on urban sustainability (Anna Kramers et al.
2014; Nasrawi et al.
2016) and another that deals with the development of integrated frameworks to measure the combined smartness and sustainability of cities (Ahvenniemi et al.
2017). This research is line with the first strand, focusing on the relationship between ICT and environmental sustainability in cities.
2.5 The Link between ICT and Environmental Sustainability
It is worthy to note that, despite the obvious link between ICT and environmental outcome, there are no statistical indicators that directly measure this link (OECD
2009). Research exploring the impact of ICT and the information society on environmental sustainability only began appearing in literature in the year 2000 (Ospina and Heeks
2010). A survey of this literature reveals three interrelated research strands: sustainable development, mitigation and adaptation.
The first strand of research in this field explores a global perspective to link sustainable development and the information society. These researches discussed the potential effect the rapid expansion of ICT could have on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and environmental sustainability. Slob and van Lieshout (
2002) studied the trends of ICT development and their implication on sustainability. Although they found that ICT has stimulated economic growth, they were not certain of the effect the rapid developments in ICT will cause on the environment and called for more research into technology-environment interactions. Furthermore, (Willard and Halder
2003) considered the implication of Information Society on sustainable development, highlighting the consequences environmental information systems, e-commerce and e-participation will have on sustainability from a broad perspective.
The second research strand of literature found focuses on the role ICT applications play in the reduction of CO
2 emission. Here, the International Telecommunications Union plays a prominent role identifying the direct, indirect and systematic effects of ICT on CO
2 emission and recommending policies and activities aimed at reducing the adverse effects and promoting the positive effects (ITU
2008). It focuses on how the use of ICT can affect the environment in developed countries. For example, how the use of video conferencing instead of travelling can reduce the carbon footprint of the user or the use of e-mails instead of sending a postal mail in paper form (Wu and Raghupathi
2018). Literature here focuses on the opportunities posed by ICT to reduce CO
2 emission generated by energy consumption (ITU
2009), travel and mobility (Sustainable Development Commission
2010) and industries (Mingay and Pamlin
2008).
The third strand of research explores how ICT can play a role in climate change adaptation issues in developing regions because these are most vulnerable to the effect of increased CO
2 emission. This research strand examines how ICT can be used as a tool to foster innovation and involve all stakeholders in climate change strategies (Ospina and Heeks
2010). This is exemplified by researches on poverty reduction and environmental protection in Kenya (Mungai
2005) and the use of SMS to report air pollution in the Philippines (Dongtotsang and Sagun
2006).
Of these three strands, our research falls within the second as we explore how to exploit this relationship and apply it within the context of cities and urbanisation (Yi and Thomas
2007).
ICT products and services are playing an essential role in improving the sustainability and liveability of cities. These products and services range from the new wave of computing such as big data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ICT-enabled applications such as eCommerce, eBanking, eHealth, eLearning, and e-mail (Bibri and Krogstie
2017a; Cruz-Jesus et al.
2017; Pappas et al.
2018). They enable new sustainable ways of doing business and providing services in what is known as “Digital Transformation” (Pappas et al.
2018; Venkatesh
2008). Furthermore, when combined with e-government, these e-services can facilitate the transition of society into “digital nations” (Kar et al.
2017). Most importantly, they promote dematerialisation which has implications for the environment. Big data generated from various IoT technology gives businesses an insight into how their products and services are affecting the environment providing them with an opportunity to help decarbonise the global economy (Mikalef et al.
2017). Furthermore, ICT gives businesses a competitive advantage via eCommerce (Gorla et al.
2017; Guo and Gao
2017), provides a cost- effective and flexible way to learn via eLearning (Joseph et al.
2017; Teo et al.
2018), improves communication between medical personnel and their patients via eHealth (Maresova and Klimova
2017; Serrano et al.
2018), increases the speed and flexibility of financial transaction via eBanking (Garín-Muñoz et al.
2018) and reduces the cost of communication via e-mail (Gouvea et al.
2017). Overall, the ICT services highlighted above have reduced the need to commute and are inherently connected with environmental sustainability.
There are various studies on the connection between ICT, urbanisation and sustainability. Using ideas proposed by Giffinger et al. (
2007), Bifulco et al. (
2016) studied the roles of ICT in improving sustainability within smart cities. Using the Network Readiness Index of the World Economic Forum as a proxy for ICT and the Environmental Performance Index as a proxy for environmental sustainability, Gouvea et al. (
2017) studied this link at a country level. This link was studied using ordinary least squares regression with ICT as the predictor variable. They found a positive and significant linear relationship between ICT and environmental sustainability. Their work was in line with Wu and Raghupathi (
2018), who did an exploratory study on the strategic association between ICT and sustainability at country level using data from the World Bank Group. Wu and Raghupathi (
2018) studied this relationship using multiple linear regression with five ICT factors derived from averaging various ICT measurements as explanatory variables. They found that ICT factors are positively associated with sustainability. However, Añón Higón et al. (
2017) using ordinary least squares regression, discovered that the relationship between ICT and CO
2 emission is not linear but rather an “inverted U-shaped” at country-level. Watson et al. (
2010) also discussed the role of ICT in improving energy efficiency and fostering changes that reduce the environmental impact of cities.
Despite the wealth of literature in analysing the relationship between ICT development and environmental sustainability across different countries from a broad perspective, this relationship is not yet fully understood at a micro-level. Hence, there is a need to take a comprehensive approach to understand the relationship between ICT solutions and environmental sustainability (Bibri and Krogstie
2017a,
b). Although Kramers et al. (
2016) argue that it is difficult to determine the role of ICT in environmental sustainability because of the larger socio-technical system which encapsulates ICT, we believe that this complex relationship can be broken down by operationalising theoretical constructs and studying specific aspects of this relationship. A foundational step in deciphering this relationship is understanding how this relationship varies different cities at a micro-level.