Toward Smart City Architecture Principles: A Cornerstone in the Case of Smart City Duisburg

Developing smart city (SC) solutions often requires complex collaboration between diverse organizations and systems. Given that SC initiatives face certain challenges comparable to that of traditional enterprises, existing SC architectures are often based on generic enterprise architecture (EA) frameworks. However, the resulting SC architectures tend to suffer from several weaknesses and existing research does not detail the process of developing SC EA principles. We address this gap by reporting on a collaboration with an SC initiative in a medium-sized European city and by presenting two artifacts we developed in that initiative: architecture principles and the related roles and structures. Corresponding to our involvement in the initiative, our work has been guided by the action design research approach. We expect that other SC initiatives can learn from our results and challenges and that transferring our approach to these initiatives will reduce their required effort for SC EA principles development.