Towards Smart Cities 4.0: Digital Participation in Smart Cities Solutions and the Use of Disruptive Technologies

The realization of the complexity of the modern societies' needs and problems leads to an understanding that the current civil societies' ecosystem could be compared to a network, where every stakeholder is connected to the others and they collaborate by exchanging information, services and engagement. Recent research studies suggest the adoption of a new model, the Quadruple Helix model, in the action plans of smart cities. This model puts the community and the citizens in the command position alongside with the business, research and government stakeholders. It also entails the participation of the citizens not only in the service provision, through monitor and engagement, but also in the policy making, leading to a more bottom-up decision-making system towards Smart Cities 4.0 level. Information and Communication Technologies, and more specifically the Disruptive Technologies, emerge as a major means of achieving digital transformation in order to co-create user-driven decisions for the communities and the smart cities of the future. The aim of this study is to compare existing solutions of digital participation systems, identify the points of convergence and differentiation and extract useful insights for future research and applications.