A Smart City Economy Supported by Service Level Agreements: A Conceptual Study into the Waste Management Domain

The full potential of smart cities is not yet realized, and opportunities continue to exist in relation to the business models which govern service provision in cities. In saying this, we make reference to the waste services made available by councils across cities in the United Kingdom (UK). In the UK, smart waste management (SWM) continues to exist as a service trialed across designated cities, and schemes are not yet universally deployed. This therefore exists as a business model which might be improved so that wider roll-out and uptake may be encouraged. In this paper, we present a proposal of how to revise SWM services through integrating the Internet service provider (ISP) into the relationship alongside home and business customers and the city council. The goal of this model is to give customers the opportunity for a more dynamic and flexible service. Furthermore, it will introduce benefits for all parties, in the sense of more satisfied home and business owners, ISPs with a larger customer base and greater profits, and city councils with optimized expenses. We propose that this is achieved using personalized and flexible SLAs. A proof-of-concept model is presented in this paper, through which we demonstrate that the cost to customers can be optimized when they interact with the SWM scheme in the recommended ways.