Artificial Intelligence in the Urban Environment: Smart Cities as Models for Developing Innovation and Sustainability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The research is interesting for the journal audience, and follows the philosophy of the journal, presenting a good literature review.

The abstract section is well organized, with information about the goal, the literature review, but the research methodology, and the findings need to be improved. I suggest also to clarify the research question in the abstract.

The literature review needs to address to more scientific studies on the theme, relevant articles previously published.

The methodology is not well explained neither the research design. Please clarity the research methodology and all the process of data gathering and data analysis.

The findings are clear presented but the article needs a conceptual model representation to facilitate the analysis and the reading.

Lines 315 - 376 are suported in what source?

Conclusions needs to be further enlarged, explaining the specific conclusions and linking them to the theoretical and empirical findings.

 

Author Response

See the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper focusing on an area where there is need for more knowledge. The paper addresses extremely hot area that refers the development of smart cities. The topic is sound and into the scope of the Journal. The research aim of the study has been achieved with a good level of success. However, the paper needs some improvement. Given below are my comments to improve the quality of the manuscript.

The title says about “… developing innovation and sustainability”, however, the text of manuscript does not say too much about innovation. This is inconsistent with the title of the paper. The authors write just somewhat about the necessity to invest in innovation in modern cities in the Introduction section but in Theoretical background they move directly to the issues of current problems regarding sustainability. The article lacks the theoretical grounding in regard to innovations. Please supplement it with the paragraph referring to the link between innovation and sustainability and provide some examples that can intuitively understand the relationship between innovation and sustainability.

The Abstract section lack the statement of the aim of the research (as it is done in Introduction). I also invite the authors to emphasize the significance of the conducted study. Thus, in the Introduction, you should say what kind of use you envisage for the study results.

In the Introduction section the authors write: “…this study focuses on two theoretical approaches: 1) Dynamic Capabilities Theory, which provides a suitable conceptual framework for obtaining competitive advantages in highly dynamic environments [14] and considers the dynamic environment in the process of seeking results and sustainable business advantages [15]; and 2) Complexity Theory, which understands the organizational environment as a complex system and requires connectivity among a set of heterogeneous agents to analyze the management of organizations [16-18]” (lines 50-55). These approaches are again mentioned while writing about the theoretical contribution of the study (lines 405-409). In my opinion these two theoretical approaches need to be explained and discussed in the Theoretical background. Meanwhile authors do not write about them a word.

In the first chapter of the Theoretical background (2.1) there are three distinct subsections regarding: overpopulation, pollution and the emergence of new illnesses. They seem to be too short for distinct subchapters.

Moreover, while writing about overpopulation the authors do not provide any theoretical grounding. There is even lack of overpopulation definition. As overpopulation occurs when a species' population exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecological niche, it seems significant to discuss the nature of overpopulation in terms of modern cities. I suggest to enrich this subchapter with the relevant part regarding overpopulation issues from scientific point of view. The same problem refers to subsection on pollution. There is only few data regarding trends in pollution and nothing more. I realize that authors write more about the solution related to these issues in the subsection 2.2. (proposed solution). May be a good idea is to combine the issues of overpopulation, pollution and new illnesses into one subsection (2.1) and then provide the proposed solutions (subsection 2.2).

Figure 4 and 7 are not readable – text is too small.

At the end of Theoretical background section the authors formulate 5 hypotheses. First of all, hypothesis testing is a statistical method that allows to draw conclusions about an entire population based on a representative sample by using particular ‘statistical tool’. Statistical hypothesis testing is the use of data in deciding between two (or more) different possibilities in order to resolve an issue in an ambiguous situation and produces a definite decision about which of the possibilities is correct, based on data. The authors of the paper do not provide information on either the representativeness of the sample or the statistical methods and tool used in the study. Secondly, the while formulating hypotheses the authors use the phrase:…………”will drive transformation into a Smart City”. Using the phrase “will” suggests analysing the changes in smart cities in time and this is not the point of the study. In my opinion the phrase “drives transformation into a Smart City” sounds better. However, the study presented in the paper does not statistically prove the regularities contained in the hypotheses. Given the above mention, in my opinion writing about hypotheses seems illegitimate in this case I suggest replacing hypotheses with research questions that will be answered, e.g.:

RQ1. Does the development of strategic technological governance measures drive transformation into a Smart City?

RQ2. Does the development of strategic technological mobility measures drive transformation into a Smart City?

RQ3. Does the development of strategic technological environmental measures will drive transformation into a Smart City?

RQ4. Does the development of strategic technological economic measures will drive transformation into a Smart City?

RQ5. Does the development of strategic technological quality-of-life measures will drive transformation into a Smart City?

Then based on comparative analysis the six Spanish cities it is possible to provide the answers for the posted research questions.

 

In the Methodology and Methods section the authors write about the integrated dashboard with the indicators of city’s smartness they created. In lines 255-259 they write: “We use a Likert scale from 1 to 6 for each indicator on the integrated dashboard; values of 1 and 2 indicate insufficient implementation, 3 and 4 good implementation, and 5 and 6 excellent implementation. The goal is to obtain scores for the results to show the deficient measures detected in each city that must be improved to achieve its transformation into a Smart City”. Further – in line 266 (Data Analysis section) –  the authors write ”We evaluated each item on the integrated dashboard on a scale from 1 to 6”. From this description it is not clear how the authors obtained the data for this analysis. What was the source of the data? I suppose that such a data on smart cities is publicly available, but this should be clearly stated in the paper text with the reference to the relevant source of data. In the Data Analysis section the authors should also specify what level of meeting the individual smart city criteria specified in the integrated dashboard is sufficient to recognize the city as a Smart City.

In my opinion the method is a comparative analysis of 6 Spanish cities (possibly multiple case study of 6 Spanish cities) conducted in order to assess the drivers of their smartness. On the base of such analysis the authors provide the results regarding Granada and its deficits as the smart city.

 

Discussion section has been located as part of Conclusions. Please mark out Discussion section as a separate paper’s chapter. The Discussion part of the paper is too short. This section is crucial for academic papers and should be about contrasting the manuscript's findings with the existing literature. Please supplement Discussion section with the information to what extent your results are aligned with the evidence found in the adequate literature. To what extent your results are not aligned? Please provide a more comprehensive discussion on this.

 

Author Response

See the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors addressed all of my concerns.

The paper is ready to be accepted in the present form.

Congratulations on your work.

Reviewer 2 Report

I am satisfied with the changes and improvements that the authors have made in the manuscript. Particularly, they introduced and then answered the research questions instead of hypotheses. They modified both theoretcical and empirical part of the paper according to the reviewers' comments. I find the paper much more scientific and mature now. I recommend it for publishing in Sustainability journal.