Preparing for Smart Cities’ Future Competences: Trends Arising Through Keyword and Review Analysis

Abstract

Nowadays, given the rapidity of recent technological advancements and their influence in all areas, key competences are needed as necessary requirements to cope with the complexity in different domains, where changes will become the norm in the future. Aiming to explore the topic of competences in smart cities, which is present at different disciplines, this study uses bibliometric analysis to achieve insight into new trends. The analysis was done on peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers, published after 2010 in the Web of Science database. The publications are classified into distinct clusters so formed by using classifying techniques, hence, to make the voluminous data more understandable. This research firstly aims to contribute to the advancement of the understanding for the competence concept and relating researching aspects in the academic literature regarding smart cities by building a visual map of the keyword concepts used and obtain a conceptual atlas of the existing literature. Secondly, it studies recent competence reviews emphasizing the most relevant thesis in the area. The impact of this study will be an update to the pool of knowledge on smart cities’ competences needed to reflect needs not only for a specific group of persons but for all involved domain stakeholders. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.