Enabling Smarter Cities with Operations Management

Abstract

Recent development of new technologies and data analytics has unleashed the so-called smart city (SC) movement, which has been transforming the ways that cities (and their services) operate. This movement is in line with the operations management (OM) community’s pursuit of innovative research questions, and part of our community has already started working on this exciting area of SC OM. In this article, we shall discuss (i) the potential contribution that OM can make to the SC movement, that is, how OM research may help inform discussion and decision making in the public and private sectors. In particular, the core principle of making cities smarter is in line with the OM literature. We then discuss (ii) how and why SC operations can be an interesting topic that possibly expands the scope and depth of OM theory, through drawing links to the existing and new streams of OM literature. Finally, we present (iii) a few promising research directions and examples, in domains such as energy, transportation (mobility), and retail.