One of the most challenging areas of Future Smart Cities Research is the Smart Energy domain. Critical issues related to optimization, provision of smart customizable networks and sophisticated computational techniques and methods enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning need further investigation. The renewable energy (RE) is a powerful resource for the future global development in the context of climate change and resources depletion. Artificial intelligence (AI) implies new rules of organizing the activities in order to respond to these new requirements. It is necessary to improve the design of the energy infrastructure, the deployment and production of RE in order to face the multiple challenges that will affect the sector’s growth and resilience.. In this research work we exploit the recent developments on the AI adoption for RE sector in European Union (EU). In this respect, we analysed (i) the efficiency of the transformation processes of the RE within the energy chain from Gross Inland Consumption to Final Energy Consumption, (ii) its implications on the structure of renewable energy by source (solar, wind, biomass etc.), (iii) the labour productivity in RE sector compared to the economy as a whole and its correlation with investments level, (iv) the implication of the adoption of AI for RE towards Future Smart Cities Research. The main contribution of this research is the development of a framework for understanding the contribution of AI in the RE sector in Europe. Another bold contribution of this work is the discussion of the implications for Future Smart Cities Research and future research directions.

The new technologies, the digitalisation of processes and automation of work will change the manner of doing business, working and living. The effects of digitalisation on the economy, society and quality of life imply significant challenges of the labour market. All the participants will be concerned: authorities, companies and ordinary people. The objective of this research is to analyse the perceptions of the EU citizens about digitalisation and to highlight the differences among specific socio-demographic groups. The analysis is grounded on a composite methodology, comprising several statistical and econometric methods that provide scientific support to achieved conclusions: statistical analysis (with the primary goal to shed light on the EU citizens' perceptions about their digital technology skills), TwoStep Cluster Analysis (TSCA) (with the purpose to identify the ‘digital vulnerable groups’ and then the ‘digital vulnerable countries’ in terms of the exposure to digital divide) and logistic regression (with the main aim to quantify the impact of the relevant factors on citizens’ perceptions about digitalisation). We identified a group of respondents evaluating themselves as having meagre digital skills, very afraid that robots could steal their jobs and with low usage of the internet. They are elderly, with a low level of education, manual workers or not working, with a relatively low level of income and little Internet use. The originality of our approach is given by the fact that we focused on investigating if digital divide leads to the creation of vulnerable groups (citizens and/or countries) and if there are specific patterns in terms of the perception on being skilled in the use of digital technologies in daily life or at work and of the understanding that robots replace human on the labour market. We aim to find relevant factors for the labour market to assume targeted measures that should be taken for a better match of supply and demand on the labour market and for creating a smart labour market. It is highly needed to increase the people's confidence in their skills level and to make the most of digitalisation of the societies. The results show consistent patterns in term of socio-demographic characteristics and perception towards digitalisation. The latter will have a meaningful impact on the economy and the society in the European Union in the next period. That is why a positive attitude towards digitalisation is essential for transforming this relatively new challenge into an excellent opportunity for the future.

The COVID-19 pandemic represented a significant challenge to higher education and forced academic institutions worldwide to abruptly shift to remote teaching. Higher education institutions are continuously confronted with the difficulties of creating satisfactory online learning experiences that adhere to the new norms. This paper presents a study concerning the perceptions of the quality and efficiency of the educational process in higher education concerning distance learning at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional of Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data analysis identified the level of satisfaction with distance learning education separately for students and professors and the lived experience for future education models. Data analysis consisted of a stepwise regression model to identify the most important variables related to the satisfaction aspect of e-learning for students and professors. The main findings are associated with the perception of one's own skills as the most crucial variable to define the aspects of e-learning satisfaction. Therefore, these skills involve the knowledge of e-learning platforms and the adoption rate of new technologies. The study found that the students emphasized that the variable "low sense of community" negatively impacts e-learning due to the loss of personal contact with the academic workspace. The key contribution of our research is a knowledge translation into a sustainable innovation capability model.

The paper focus on the topic of circular economy in the context of sustainable development, as one major objective of today’s societies. Circular economy is mostly characterized by the need to improve the use of resources,by reducing waste and recycling. Under the sustainable development broader circumstances, circular economy becomes one of the important part of providing resources for the future generations, based on intra and intergenerational solidarity, having as starting points the 3 R (reuse, recirculation, recycling) and extending the lifecycle of products. Also, a circular economy is an important factor to develop the smart cities. The smart city can be understood as a sustainable city, a city well performing in economy, governance, but also in environment and living. The paper aims to identify a set of major actions recommended at the European Union level in order to promote this vision. It aims as well to highlight some of the economic and institutional barriers that might be faced at all economic levels. The EU recommendations associated with the trends of increasing the prices of raw materials and also with the need to reduce the import dependency such as better ensure the energetic security and sustainability by respecting the imperatives of environment protection, require a focus on efforts towards these directions. Starting from these approaches, we analyzed the progress achieved by Romania in the last ten years and the extent to which the country is prepared to implement an efficient management of municipal waste in order to promote the circular economy vision. Based on the progresses obtained in the last decade, we appreciate that Romanian decision makers had understood the importance of circular economy and had taken some specific action dedicated to the focus on this direction. Although some of the indicators referring to recycling show an improvement in Romania, it still has to improve performance in this field. We consider that one of the main challenges for the future in terms of circular economy refers to the further development of the sectors associated with the circularity of resource and with the emergence of employment opportunities, based both on an active involvement of public and private sectors.

The recent evolution of smart cities research has initiated a holistic dialogue for the integration of past initiatives promoting e-government at European Union Level. At the same moment Future Smart Cities research, is justified as a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research domain. Within this context this research work provides insights for the integration of Economics, E-government, Information Systems, and Social Sciences. The study addresses the e-government process as one of the most important application of smart cities in our current societies. More specifically, we have examined the existence of β-convergence between EU member states in terms of e-government services, confirming the hypothesis that low performance countries record higher growth rate than developed countries. In order to move closer to the factors with high impact on e-government development, we have analyzed other variables for testing the differences between countries, in terms of education, digital skills and access to internet for controlling the hypothesis that countries initially have different development conditions and they will not probably converge to the same steady state. We found that the opportunity of using e-services, particularly e-government services, is less accessible to citizens with low overall digital skills and, as is technically normal, to those with low access to internet access. In this context, at EU level it is needed to rethink and design the e-government services in order to be adapted not only to needs of the citizens, but also to their digital skills. The main contribution of this research is two-fold: From one side provides an integrated study with emphasis on the impact of social sciences and economics research to Future Smart Cities Research and from the other side it brings forward several soft factors for the adoption of Smart Cities services in the context of government transformation and provision of ubiquitous e-services to citizens.

Sustainable economic development requires ensuring economic growth and development in terms of environmental protection by providing a bridge between sustainable economic growth, improvement in human health, social justice, employment and environmental protection. Our paper aims to study the situation of green jobs at the European Union level and the relationship between environment and employment, by analysing the link between employment and environmental policies. It highlights the main trends recorded at the European Union level in the field of employment policy to promote green jobs for sustainable economic development. Although there is little effect from environmental policies on employment, the effects are positive, which shows that the relationship between environmental and employment policy should be continued and improved by measures taken at both the macro- and microeconomic levels.