Generative AI (GenAI) and smart cities

Given the variability of challenges cities and urban areas face today, including most profoundly inclusion, safety, and resilience, the objective of this chapter is to examine how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) may facilitate the process of addressing these challenges, thus fostering sustainable cities. By focusing explicitly on smart cities, in this chapter, it is argued that a great variety of GenAI-based applications exist, and these may bear great value for smart cities and their inhabitants. Indeed, by now, GenAI and GenAI-based applications have proven useful in integrating and analyzing information, thereby facilitating operations such as analysis, data management, and description. Accordingly, when utilized in the smart city and/or urban context, GenAI is of value in relation to urban planning, disaster preparedness and mitigation, traffic management, public safety, waste management, and last but not least improving the efficiency and quality of services' provision to the city inhabitants. Clearly, the use of GenAI in this context presents challenges too, including data timeliness, different representations, and other issues related to the complexity of urban data. These considerations should be considered in the design, development, and implementation of GenAI-based applications to ensure their effectiveness, accuracy, and compliance with regulatory frameworks as well as with values and principles. None of these is possible without an explicit engagement of human beings, i.e., experts, who would provide monitoring and oversight over the GenAI-devised suggestions and recommendations.