Sustainability and Sustainable Development are becoming increasingly relevant in the global agenda of governments as well as businesses and civil society. They should be among the top priorities of what we would consider a really Smarter Planet. The concept of smartness is widely used essentially to refer to digitalized processes and telematic interactions in several fields of social, environmental, and economic human activities. Sustainability is used to define successful human activities, processes and interactions from a social-environmental-economic point of view. Although both the concepts imply multi-disciplinary views that include economic, social and environmental sciences, the smartness and sustainability perspectives have different focus: the smartness perspective is more focused on socio-technical systems (Trist, 1981), hence on interaction between humans and technology; the sustainability perspective is more focused on social-ecological systems (Berkes et al., 2003; Ostrom, 2009), hence on interaction between humans and nature. By focusing on the relationship between socio-technical and social-ecological systems, two key research questions emerge: What is the relationship between smartness and sustainability? Is a smarter planet also more sustainable?

Linking Smartness and Sustainability for a more intelligent world

Saviano, M.
2017-01-01

Abstract

Sustainability and Sustainable Development are becoming increasingly relevant in the global agenda of governments as well as businesses and civil society. They should be among the top priorities of what we would consider a really Smarter Planet. The concept of smartness is widely used essentially to refer to digitalized processes and telematic interactions in several fields of social, environmental, and economic human activities. Sustainability is used to define successful human activities, processes and interactions from a social-environmental-economic point of view. Although both the concepts imply multi-disciplinary views that include economic, social and environmental sciences, the smartness and sustainability perspectives have different focus: the smartness perspective is more focused on socio-technical systems (Trist, 1981), hence on interaction between humans and technology; the sustainability perspective is more focused on social-ecological systems (Berkes et al., 2003; Ostrom, 2009), hence on interaction between humans and nature. By focusing on the relationship between socio-technical and social-ecological systems, two key research questions emerge: What is the relationship between smartness and sustainability? Is a smarter planet also more sustainable?
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11386/4707922
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