TITLE:
The Reality of Gaza Strip Cities towards the Smart City’s Concept. A Case Study: Khan Younis City
AUTHORS:
Abdelkhalek I. Alastal, Raed A. Salha, Maher A. El-Hallaq
KEYWORDS:
Smart City, GIS, BIM, Khan Younis, Urban Development, Checklist Analysis
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.7 No.1,
March
29,
2019
ABSTRACT: This
study aims to promote sustainable urban development by adopting the smart city
approach by identifying the concept of smart cities in the reality of the
cities of Gaza Strip, considering Khan Younis city as a case study. It also
focuses on formulating a future vision using geographic information systems
(GIS) and building information modeling (BIM) using current city data and
plans. For this purpose, a checklist is designed to investigate the current reality
of Khan Younis
towards the concept of smart cities. It consists of two parts. The first one
includes the demographic data while the second part involves nine axes; the
availability of institutional infrastructure, availability of physical
infrastructure, availability of social infrastructure, availability of economic
infrastructure, availability of smart management components, use of smart city
tools, achievement of the city’s 3D goals, evaluation the level of use of
GIS/BIM in decision supporting, as well as assessing the degree of challenges
prevent transforming towards the smart city approach. The checklist analysis
reveals that Khan Younis has 41.7% of the characteristics features of the smart
city and needs further improvements in all axes especially the availability of social and
economic infrastructures. Thus, the study recommends training the existing cadres
to enable them to use GIS/BIM technologies in transforming to smart cities. It
also recommends that society be educated and equipped to ensure that it
receives and uses all these things in order to achieve the goal of improving
the quality of life and facilitating the daily lives of people.