Purpose: Rural communities around the world are searching for solutions to upkeep, restore and improve local services that are deteriorating. They are exploring the potential of a digital transition along with the opportunities and threats created by new patterns of mobility and closer links with urban areas. The expansion of information and communication technologies (ICT)-enhanced applications enables rural communities to improve their quality of life. The concept of smart village is primarily about how rural communities make the best use of both ICT and social innovation by responding to the ongoing and emerging challenges. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate strategies for adoption of smart villages along with the challenges faced.Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative research methodology was adopted in this research. A web-based questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data. In total, 110 fully completed and useable questionnaires were received. Statistical analyses were undertaken using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).Findings: The results indicate that lack of budget, lack of clear strategies for development of sustainable “smart villages”, lack of collaboration between stakeholders and lack of knowledge related to “smart villages” are the most debated challenges for implementing smart village agenda. Whereas smart energy, smart healthcare, smart transport, smart education and smart water are the top five most important smart village strategies.Research limitations/implications: Despite the novel insights provided by this study, it has some limitations. Given that the research reported in this paper is based on literature review and small-scale survey, results presented are only tentative and not generalisable. The findings of this paper are limited to the UK context only. Although generalisability outside of this context may be limited, the authors infer that the results are relevant to other comparable developed countries.Originality/value: Research on smart village development is rare. This paper presents a theoretical basis on the concept of smart villages. It adds to the rich insight that goes into the understanding and awareness of the current smart village strategies along with the key challenges organisations encounter when implementing smart village initiatives. This research has implications towards informing professionals and policymakers on key lessons learnt during the implementation of smart village strategies. Also, this paper contributes to the academic debate on smart village development and provides useful recommendations to both policymakers and practitioners.

Nigeria, potentially, has abundant sunshine throughout the year, making it full thirst for solar energy generation. Even though, the country's solar energy projects have not realised a fair result over the years, due to many barriers associated with initiatives implementation. Therefore, the entire power sector remains incapacitated to generate, transmit and distribute a clean, affordable and sustainable energy to assist economic growth. The research integrated five African counterpart's solar energy initiatives, barriers, policies and strategies adopted as a lesson learned to Nigeria. Inadequate solar initiative's research, lack of technological knowhow, short-term policies, lack of awareness and political instability are the major barriers that made the implementation of solar initiatives almost impossible in Nigeria. The shock of the barriers therefore, constitutes a major negative contribution to the crippling of the power sector in the state. Future research will concentrate on initiatives for mitigating solar and other renewable energy barriers.

The adoption of Big Data (BD) in the construction industry has been identified as a possible solution to the demand of the current needs of projects, but the integration of this technology has proven to be a challenge specially in industries such as construction that are not technological driven. The understanding of the key elements for the BD adoption has become the focus of many industries that seek to exploit the benefits offered by this technology. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the challenges faced by the adoption of BD in the Dominican Republic (DR) construction industry. To identify these challenges qualitative research was undertaken due to the paucity of scientific data. Twenty-one individuals representing 19 companies who have great impact in the DR construction sector were interviewed. From the analysis six main challenges were identified. They are: lack BD awareness, high cost of investment, resistance to change, lack of government support and regulation, lack of technological expertise, and security concerns of BD. The challenges identified in this study, will serve to help companies better plan their technology adoption process, mainly considering aspects such as the need to tackle the lack of awareness by disseminating and promoting the concept of BD which will not only generate a better understanding of technology by making sure that present and future professionals understand the technology and its benefits. This study provides insight in the challenges to overcome for a successful adoption of BD technology, which would help companies to prepare for a future adoption.

Smart cities need to take advantage of the opportunities that the knowledge-based economy and society can bring to the city. Therefore, cities planners and decision makers need to develop cities that take advantage of local knowledge and the intellectual capital of the population. Organizational culture is widely held to be a major barrier to creating and leveraging knowledge. Successful implementation of knowledge management (KM) almost always requires a culture change in order to promote a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration. Hence, organizations implementing smart cities need to place great emphasis on the need to change organizational culture to pursue effective KM and its successful implementation. However, the management of culture change is a complicated task; its precise nature in smart-city development and the strategies required to be adopted remains underspecified. This study aimed to explore organizational cultural transformation needed for managing knowledge in the context of smart cities. The methodological approach for this study is a systematic review, covering publications on smart cities, KM, and organizational culture. The method used in this study involved three stages: planning the review, conducting the review, and reporting and disseminating the results. The findings revealed three key themes which are: organizational perspectives of smart cities; organizational change, innovation, and digital transformation; and the relationship between organizational culture and KM. The paper concludes that the cultural transformation required for the development of smart cities needs to facilitate the ability to integrate, create and reconfigure both internal and external competences to manage knowledge that originates from within and beyond projects boundaries. This study provides an insight into urban policymakers, planners, and scholars to prepare for the challenges that organizations face in their efforts to manage and implement smart cities successfully.

Using building information modelling (BIM) within a design team allows for integration of sustainability analysis such as daylighting analysis, water harvesting, and thermal assessment whilst capturing the data which can be used for BREEAM assessment. Therefore, the availability of data compared to traditional methods can be used to design teams, stakeholders, and environmental assessment bodies’ advantage. Since BIM boasts extensive building performance analysis capabilities, design teams should be provided with standard methodologies and guidance into successfully achieving certain BREEAM criteria. This paper highlights gaps in the existing theory to develop a solid understanding for further research in order to achieve BIM integrated BREEAM design team protocol. Further to this and running parallel to the protocol and guidance, an internal conceptual framework existing within BIM software could be instigated from future research. This will require detailed and innovative solutions to link the credits with the software both from an IT and from a software coding perspective; also, there is great merit into analysing design teams’ cultural and behavioural factors towards sustainable design through the BIM model.