IET Smart Cities最新文献

{"title":"Evaluating the Impact of Smart City Composite Index on Economic Performance Across Provincial Areas","authors":"Fateme Asayesh,&nbsp;Mansour Mahinizadeh","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70036","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Urban management plays an important role in the transformation towards smart cities by improving resource efficiency and enhancing economic performance. This study examines the nonlinear relationship between smart city development and economic performance across 31 provinces of Iran by constructing a comprehensive smart city composite index (SCI) based on nine dimensions of the IESE Cities in Motion framework, addressing a key gap in the regional smart city literature. Methodologically, the study combines a Hicks-neutral technological progress framework with Hansen's log-threshold regression model to investigate how the impact of smart city development varies across different levels of urban ‘smartness,’ using cross-sectional spatial data. The empirical results reveal clear spatial disparities in smart city development. Tehran, Khorasan Razavi and Fars rank highest in terms of smartness, while Lorestan, Semnan and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad are positioned at the lower end of the distribution. The findings further show that the impact of the smart city index on economic performance is contingent on a threshold value of 0.0128. Below this threshold, a 1% increase in the SCI corresponds to a 0.496% higher GDP per capita. Above the threshold, the marginal effect declines, with a 1% increase in SCI associated with a 0.244% higher output. Overall, the results provide strong evidence of diminishing returns to smart infrastructure investment. While early stages of smart city development are associated with stronger relative economic performance in less-developed provinces, more advanced regions tend to experience saturation effects. These findings suggest that targeted investment in smart city infrastructure in lagging regions can yield higher marginal returns and contribute to reducing spatial inequality and promoting balanced regional development.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70036","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149146754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Post-Quantum Cryptography for Smart City Cybersecurity: An Evaluation of PQC Algorithms Across IoT–Edge–Cloud Layers","authors":"Ahmed Alrowaili,&nbsp;Sehmus Can Ozmen,&nbsp;Muhammad Kazim,&nbsp;Mujeeb Ur Rehman","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70040","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Smart cities are built on a vast interconnected network of Internet of things (IoT), edge and cloud systems to optimise urban services and enhance the quality of life for the residents. However, this integration of cyber-physical infrastructure expands the attack surface, making it vulnerable to advanced cyber threats. The most notable emerging threat is quantum computers, which can break the classical cryptographic algorithms, such as RSA and ECC, that form the foundation of cybersecurity. Integrating liboqs execution benchmarks with an analytical network fragmentation model simulated with NS-3, evaluating NIST-approved PQC key encapsulation mechanisms, ML-KEM (Kyber512/768/1024), HQC (128/192/256) and classic McEliece variants, alongside signature schemes ML-DSA (Dilithium), Falcon and SLH-DSA (SPHINCS+) within a smart city network. We also extended the benchmarking to include NIST's SP 800-230 draft and provide preliminary benchmarks of the six new parameter sets. To assess embedded feasibility, all algorithms are additionally executed on the ESP32 P4 microcontroller, measuring timing, energy consumption and memory under resource-constrained conditions. This dual platform methodology enables cross-validation of network-level overhead and hardware-level performance. Results show consistent behaviour across platforms. ML KEM 512 (NIST Security Level 1) provides the best KEM performance, with key generation at 7.2 µs (NS-3) and 122.6 ms (ESP32 P4), and similarly efficient encapsulation/decapsulation. ML DSA 44 (NIST Security Level 2) achieves the fastest signatures at 64 µs on NS-3 and 490.6 ms on ESP32 P4. These findings provide evidence-based guidelines for deploying postquantum cryptography across smart city IoT–Edge–Cloud infrastructures, emphasising crypto-agility and hybrid cryptography for smart city networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70040","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149146614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Smart Cities Without Smart Institutions? Governance Capacity and the Limits of Urban Technology Procurement","authors":"Syed Asad Abbas Bokhari,&nbsp;Lisa Lim","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70039","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Smart city policy is often characterised as a problem of technology procurement. Cities are encouraged to implement sensors, platforms and analytics to become ‘smart’. However, several such initiatives result in fragmented systems, vendor dependency and symbolic innovation rather than sustained public value. This study argues that smart cities should be understood primarily as projects of institutional reform rather than as programmes of technology procurement. Drawing on state capacity theory, the study develops a conceptual framework that defines smartness through the following four institutional dimensions: governance, capacity, rules and incentives and administrative culture, with technology regarded as an embedded instrument rather than a defining driver. The framework is applied to two contrasting cases: Songdo, South Korea, and Tallinn, Estonia. Songdo exemplifies a technology-saturated but institution-light model, where intelligence is embedded in infrastructure while governance remains fragmented and externally shaped. Tallinn exhibits a governance-first pathway in which digital systems are integrated into public institutions, supported by clear authority, internal capacity and adaptive rules. The comparison shows that technology strengthens existing institutional conditions rather than compensating for their absence. The findings demonstrate that fragmentation, pilotism and lock-in are structural outcomes of weak governance capacity. Smartness emerges when public institutions can coordinate, learn and exercise authority over sociotechnical systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70039","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148994001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An Attention-Based Gated Recurrent Unit for Intrusion Detection in MQTT-Enabled IoT","authors":"Rizwana Nazir,&nbsp;Saba Noureen,&nbsp;Muhammad Hassan Jamal,&nbsp;Muazzam A. Khan,&nbsp;Faneela Faneela","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70038","url":null,"abstract":"<p>IoT devices are revolutionising various sectors by facilitating effortless communication and the sharing of data. Unfortunately, the proliferation of interconnected devices increases the potential for security threats, which is why intrusion detection systems are essential for protecting these networks. Among the many IoT communication protocols available, the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is known for its fast and efficient data transfer. Therefore, this research aims to improve Intrusion detection systems for IoT environments operating under the MQTT protocol, concentrating on the innovative use of machine learning (ML). In particular, we introduce a new and inventive approach to intrusion detection using the attention-gated recurrent unit (AGRU) architecture. Because gated recurrent units (GRUs) are superb at predicting sequential data, the attention mechanism allows the model to concentrate on the most critical elements of the data at any moment. The main objective of the AGRU is to learn the most complex and advanced intrusion techniques that traditional methods fail to capture. The AGRU is capable of identifying and securely authenticating access request communications on IoT devices using a secure MQTT communication network. The attention mechanism improves anomaly detection in communication processes of the IoT devices, which enhances the detection efficiency with precise intrusion detection and monitoring systems. The conducted simulation test on the attack detection systems shows that the AGRU model is more efficient compared to already existing systems in terms of its capability to address the arising issues with the help of sophisticated ML algorithms.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70038","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148848968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Smart, Sustainable, and Optimal Parking Allocation Scheme for Vehicles in Smart Cities","authors":"Md Abdus Samad Kamal,&nbsp;Nazmus Sakib,&nbsp;A. S. M. Bakibillah,&nbsp;Kou Yamada,&nbsp;Jun-ichi Imura","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70033","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Unregulated parking search is a major source of urban inefficiency, leading to unnecessary cruising, wasted time, driver frustration and increased emissions. Moreover, when drivers select spots solely based on immediate self-interest, ignoring others' dynamic needs and preferences, this behaviour exacerbates congestion, conflict and overall discomfort. To address these challenges and advance towards a smart, sustainable and user-centric mobility system, this paper proposes an Optimal Parking Allocation Scheme (OPAS). By intelligently integrating user behaviour and real-time demand, OPAS dynamically assigns parking spaces that enhance overall system efficiency while flexibly providing each user with an optimal spot, balancing collective sustainability with individual comfort. The proposed OPAS wirelessly receives the user information upon arrival at the entrance and determines the best-suited spot by solving an adaptive optimisation problem considering the travel and parking behaviour in terms of the number of passengers in the car, their walking and driving distances, the priority level of users, in addition to trends of the occupation ratio. The proposed OPAS dynamically tunes its objective parameters to align with overarching system goals, yielding successive, situation-adaptive decisions. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using data from an indoor parking model of a shopping centre in Gunma City, Japan. The results demonstrate that OPAS achieves a significant reduction in both individual walking distance and vehicular travel distance within the parking facility. Consequently, this efficiency directly translates to a decrease in total fuel consumption and associated emissions. Specifically, the proposed strategy achieves a daily reduction of 23 kg in <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <msub>\u0000 <mtext>CO</mtext>\u0000 <mn>2</mn>\u0000 </msub>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation> ${text{CO}}_{2}$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> emissions and 10 L in fuel consumption, highlighting the practical significance of the proposed approach.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70033","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148753028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"PoAD-Lite: A Lightweight, Activity-Aware Consensus Protocol for Scalable and Energy-Efficient IoT Blockchains","authors":"Kofi Sarpong Adu-Manu,&nbsp;Pachomius Kweku Lawson,&nbsp;Prince Samuel Kyeremanteng,&nbsp;Eugene Cobbah,&nbsp;Prince Ofori,&nbsp;Charles Adjetey","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70034","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The growth of Internet of Things (IoT) applications requires blockchain consensus mechanisms that are efficient, fair and resilient under constrained and intermittently connected operating conditions. This study presents the Proof-of-Activity and Delegation-Lite (PoAD-Lite), a lightweight consensus protocol that combines activity-aware eligibility scoring, verifiable randomness, minimal-state delegation and quorum-based finality. A Python-based simulation evaluated PoAD-Lite against PoW-Lite, PoS and PBFT-Lite in committee-scale IoT/edge settings with 10–100 validators. In addition to assessing scalability, the revised evaluation examines validator churn and adversarial behaviours, including delayed participation, equivocation, invalid block proposals and delegation concentration. The results show that PoAD-Lite maintains finality under moderate churn of up to 20% with no observed safety violations or unsafe fork events in the tested scenarios. Under severe 30% churn, the finality success rate declines to 77.8%, indicating liveness degradation, whereas safety is preserved. Adversarial tests similarly show that invalid or conflicting proposals are detected and rejected, although stronger Byzantine participation reduces the progress. These findings demonstrate that PoAD-Lite provides a promising, safety-preserving and resource-conscious consensus approach for committee-scale IoT/edge blockchain deployments, which is evaluated with up to 100 validators.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70034","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148752563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Infrastructure to Digital Skills: A PRISMA Systematic Review of Digital Capability in Smart City Transformation","authors":"Ioannis Zervas,&nbsp;Emmanouil Stiakakis","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70035","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Smart city research has largely focused on infrastructure, digital systems and technological performance, while giving less attention to the human and organisational conditions that make urban transformation feasible and durable in practice. This study examines how digital capability shapes smart city transformation beyond infrastructure-led perspectives. A PRISMA-based systematic review was conducted using Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection to identify studies linking smart city or urban digital transformation to human capital, workforce capability, organisational capability and governance capacity. The review indicates that transformation outcomes are not sufficiently explained by infrastructure alone. Digital skills, workforce readiness and training emerged as important foundations of change, but their influence depended strongly on organisational support, leadership capacity, internal coordination and governance arrangements that enable digital initiatives to be embedded, maintained and scaled. The findings suggest that smart city transformation is better understood as a multi-level capability process in which individual, organisational and governance capabilities interact rather than operate independently. The synthesis also indicates that technologically ambitious urban strategies often generate uneven results when capability development remains fragmented or weakly institutionalised. On this basis, the review supports a capability-based interpretation of smart city transformation that shifts attention from technology as an end in itself to the conditions that sustain its effective and inclusive use. The study contributes to a more human-centred and institutionally grounded understanding of smart city transformation and highlights capability alignment as a key condition for resilient and sustainable urban change.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70035","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148752491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dirichlet-Enhanced Transformer for Reliable WiFi RSSI Power Fingerprinting-Based Indoor Positioning in Smart Energy Buildings","authors":"Phuong Anh Nguyen,&nbsp;Tung Vu,&nbsp;Do-Hyeun Kim,&nbsp;Ngoc Le","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70031","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Accurate indoor positioning is a key enabler of smart building intelligence, supporting applications such as occupant localisation, asset tracking, emergency response and energy optimisation. In GPS-denied environments, WiFi fingerprinting has emerged as a cost-effective and infrastructure-ready solution that leverages ubiquitous access points without additional hardware. However, traditional fingerprinting methods face challenges of temporal instability, signal fluctuation and the absence of uncertainty quantification, leading to unreliable performance in dynamic indoor environments. Recent Transformer-based models have improved feature extraction through attention mechanisms but still struggle to handle noisy or unreliable access points and typically produce overconfident predictions. To address these issues, this paper proposes a Dirichlet-Enhanced Transformer (DE-Transformer) architecture that integrates Dirichlet distributions into multi-head attention to assess the reliability of individual access points whilst generating confidence-aware position predictions. The proposed framework consists of three modules: WiFi RSSI preprocessing and embedding, a Dirichlet-enhanced Transformer encoder and an uncertainty-aware regression decoder. Experimental evaluation demonstrates substantial performance gains—achieving a mean positioning error of 0.90 m and 92.5% accuracy within 1.5 m, outperforming baseline Transformers by 21% in mean error and 53% in worst-case bounds. Statistical analysis confirms significant improvements <span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mo>(</mo>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mi>p</mi>\u0000 <mo>&lt;</mo>\u0000 <mn>0.001</mn>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <mo>)</mo>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation> $(p&lt; 0.001)$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> with enhanced temporal stability, reduced error variance and calibrated uncertainty estimates. Owing to its robustness, scalability and confidence-aware inference, the proposed DE-Transformer represents a promising solution for real-time, safety-critical indoor navigation in smart building environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70031","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148616264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"ALFA: A Software Architecture for Bounded Incremental Firmware Updates in Energy-Constrained LoRa-Based IoT Systems","authors":"Aya Taghian,&nbsp;Koji Inoue","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.70029","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Battery-powered and energy-harvesting IoT systems increasingly depend on Firmware Update Over-The-Air (FUOTA) to remain secure and functional after deployment. In LoRaWAN networks, however, FUOTA is constrained by strict duty-cycle regulations (e.g., 1% in EU868), small payload sizes and long packet airtime, frequently stretching updates into multihour or multiday operations. Such prolonged latency can be problematic: Devices become temporarily desynchronised, sensing gaps degrade monitoring quality (e.g., for AI-assisted analytics) and energy-harvesting nodes may miss update windows and remain outdated. Although differential updates reduce transmitted data size, their effectiveness is often undermined by build-induced structural volatility, whereby minor code changes trigger widespread binary reorganisation and inflate patch size. This paper identifies structural volatility as a root cause of FUOTA latency and proposes ALFA, a linker-enforced software architecture for bounded firmware evolution that establishes architectural spatial organisation of the firmware image together with explicit intercomponent interaction isolation prior to differential update generation. Experiments on MCU-class firmware demonstrate up to a 7.4<span></span><math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mo>×</mo>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation> ${times} $</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> reduction in differential patch size, reducing airtime by 86.3% and restoring update feasibility under duty-cycle and energy-harvesting constraints.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148466611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Integrating AI Tools and Drone Photogrammetry for Urban Planning and Analysis: Implications for Sociocultural Dynamics, Sustainability, and Pedagogy","authors":"Jordi Rabago,&nbsp;Antonio Juárez,&nbsp;Lesly Pliego,&nbsp;Kingsley Okoye","doi":"10.1049/smc2.70032","DOIUrl":"10.1049/smc2.70032","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study proposes an integrated interdisciplinary framework that combines AI tools with drone photogrammetry to address technical, theoretical and pedagogical dimensions of urban analysis. It uses high-precision geospatial data (<i>n</i> = 737) to validate urban complexity theories and professional competencies. The methodology involves orthomosaic generation, point clouds and 3D models using photogrammetry techniques. AI core methods, such as machine learning and computer vision, specifically automated feature detection, Structure from Motion (SfM) and Multi-View Stereo (MVS) algorithms embedded in commercial photogrammetry pipelines, supported spatial analysis, improving data quality and analytical capacity. The results demonstrate that automated semantic segmentation facilitates classification of point clouds for urban modelling. Automated feature-matching and lighting normalisation achieved a mean reprojection error of 0.102 pixels, yielding a high-fidelity dataset capable of capturing informal urban morphologies that remain unresolved in standard, publicly available satellite imagery. Beyond technical outcomes, a motivation survey of participating students revealed strong intrinsic and extrinsic engagement, while fostering competencies to address complex urban challenges. The study contributes to a technical workflow for AI-enhanced spatial reconstruction, empirical validation of urban complexity and fractal theories and organisation, and an exploratory pedagogical study on emerging technologies. Overall, the framework improves spatial precision, supports evidence-based urban governance and contributes to the UN's SDG goal 11.</p>","PeriodicalId":34740,"journal":{"name":"IET Smart Cities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1049/smc2.70032","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148381082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}