System Engineering for Smart Cities - Hybrid-Agile Approach in Smart Cities Procurement

A smart city is a growing phenomenon of the last years with a lot of researches as well as implementation activities. A smart city is an interdisciplinary field that requires a high level of cooperation among experts from different fields and a contribution of the latest technologies in order to achieve the best results in six key areas. The six key areas cover economy, environment, mobility, people, living and governance. Following a system development methodology is in general a necessity for a successful implementation of a system or a project. Smart city projects introduce additionally new challenges. There is a need for cooperation across many fields, from technical or economic through legislation to humanitarian, together with sharing of resources. The traditional Systems Engineering methodologies fail with respect to such challenges. This paper provides an overview of the existing Systems Engineering methodologies and their limitations. A new Hybrid-Agile approach is proposed and its advantages with respect to smart city projects are discussed. However, the approach expects changes in our thinking. Customers (typically municipality or governmental organizations) have to become active and engaged in smart city projects. It is demonstrated that a city cannot be smart without smart government.