Welcome back. I am sure you are aware that, currently, no Smarty City is fully functioning. We are moving toward Smart City, and Smart City is actually, rather, a process than a final state. Therefore, it may be a little bit premature to talk about all the challenges that we see in Smart City services. What we currently see is that Smart City services will raise, we think, 3 main big challenges: the challenge of services integration, the challenge of universal service obligation, and the challenge of quality. Let's briefly come back to the conceptualization of this entire MOOC. Namely, the idea that you have infrastructure services that has already been infrastructures and, traditionally, the services are delivered on the basis of the infrastructures. Now, on top of that we have a digital layer in between that, as we have said, changes the nature of the services, and changes, actually, the relationship with the customers. From there, we can picture the 3 types of challenges that are raised. The challenge of services integration across the layers or between the infrastructure and the layer. The challenge of universal service obligation, and the challenge of quality. So let's first talk about services integration. Traditionally, you have traditional infrastructure services providers in any city. The water company. The electricity company. The different transport companies. The waste management company. They generally own the infrastructure and are now, thanks to digitalization, capable of developing their services, new services, on the bases of their traditional services. These are the kind of actors that are taking advantage of digitalization to improve, to further advance, their infrastructure services, but there are also new providers, like, let's say, a mobility service provider who does not own any infrastructure, who can enter into the market thanks to this new digitalization and the data that are generated here. We have already seen, before, that, in this case, the new kind of services, the customers become much more active. They can become prosumers. They can interact. They can even, themselves, organize the services: bike sharing services, sharing economy. Things like that. From here follow the 3 main challenges of services integration. The 1st challenge, actually a traditional one, but exacerbated because of digitalization, is the challenge of services coordination across the different services. So, the traditional operators, urban infrastructure operators, have their different services. Vis-a-vis the customers, now, these services are being integrated or connected. You can offer, let's say, to citizens, customers who own electric vehicles, you can offer combined mobility and energy services. Of course, these kind of services have to be integrated physically, and electronically as well. So this is the 1st challenge. The 2nd challenge is the one of data integration. This, of course, affects, in particular, the new services providers because they can only provide the services on the basis of this digital layer, on the basis of the data that are generated inside the city, typically by the traditional infrastructure services providers, but sometimes, also, by other actors. The challenge here is to make sure these data are integrated so that the new services are possible. The 3rd challenge, of course, is, then, to somehow integrate, coordinate, old and new services. Coordinate purely digital services with traditional infrastructure services These kind of things need to all be addressed at the services coordination level if we want to have good quality smart urban services. Let's go to the 2nd big challenge. The 2nd big challenge is this challenge of universal services obligation. This is a traditional concept that comes from the traditional infrastructures. It basically means that the citizens should be entitled to some basic services in terms of quality, accessibility, and affordability. This is mainly geared at the weakest customers, at the weakest citizens, who may not be able to afford or may not have access to these services. So there are 2 issues here. The 1st issue is the issue of accessibility. Think, for example, of information about public transport. The new generation gets this information all on their app on their smart phone, but there are older generations who are not equally versed in these kind of technologies and may not actually have access to certain of the new services on the digital layer, in the digital era. This will be an issue of what is typically called the digital divide in the sense that something needs to be done to either continue to make access possible without digitalization for some types of population, or to train, to educate, people in order to also be able to access these digital services. The 2nd issue is an issue of affordability. This is a traditional issue. Some of the urban infrastructure services are essential, like water, like energy, like some sort of public transportation. These services may not be affordable for some of the citizens, and digitalization does not change anything. It is not because of digitalization they will be more affordable, even though we have seen there may be some efficiency gains. The issue here is triple, actually. There is an issue of equity. Do all the people have equal access to these services? There is an issue of social tariffs. In case some groups of citizens cannot afford the services, should we have different tariffs? It may be lower water tariffs for some people for whom water is not affordable. Or also questions of subsidies. Should some households be subsidized for some of the services? Also, in the digital era, this question of affordability will continue to exist. The 3rd big challenge is the challenge of quality of services. We have already said that in the digital era, the customers are somehow empowered. They may create, commence, communities, shared economy. They may offer services themselves. They interact much more with the services providers. The remains issues of competition. Remember when I talked about this tendency on the digital layer towards concentration, towards winner-takes-all. That has a tendency to lead to monopolies. That may actually hamper the quality of the service. Typically, traditionally, we think that the quality of a service is guaranteed thanks to competition, but competition may not always work or may not work perfectly. It will not necessarily work better in the digital era than in the traditional, before. There remain regulatory issues to make sure that also in the digital era competition works. The 2nd big issue is a legal issue. It is an issue of liability. There has always been questions of liability if the bus does not come. If the train is late, we now have rules about liability to the customers. If you get bumped from an airplane, for example, but the problem of liability is, of course, exacerbated because of the digital nature of services. Some of the providers may not be, themselves, actually, will not be, themselves, the providers of the services. They just have the app by which you buy the services. So the question will be, who is ultimately liable? Is it the infrastructure provider? Is it the app owner? Is it the other citizens in the case of some sort of shared services? So there will be big liability issues that we will have to clarify at the services layer. I have now presented to you the main 3 challenges that arise at the services layer. Many of them are still a little bit theoretical, but cities are already starting to face these challenges. So let's hear from a practitioner what kind of challenges and how they are facing these challenges. Stay tuned.
