The Reality of Gaza Strip Cities towards the Smart City’s Concept. A Case Study: Khan Younis City

Abstract

This study aims to promote sustainable urban development by adopting the smart city approach by identifying the concept of smart cities in the reality of the cities of Gaza Strip, considering Khan Younis city as a case study. It also focuses on formulating a future vision using geographic information systems (GIS) and building information modeling (BIM) using current city data and plans. For this purpose, a checklist is designed to investigate the current reality of Khan Younis towards the concept of smart cities. It consists of two parts. The first one includes the demographic data while the second part involves nine axes; the availability of institutional infrastructure, availability of physical infrastructure, availability of social infrastructure, availability of economic infrastructure, availability of smart management components, use of smart city tools, achievement of the city’s 3D goals, evaluation the level of use of GIS/BIM in decision supporting, as well as assessing the degree of challenges prevent transforming towards the smart city approach. The checklist analysis reveals that Khan Younis has 41.7% of the characteristics features of the smart city and needs further improvements in all axes especially the availability of social and economic infrastructures. Thus, the study recommends training the existing cadres to enable them to use GIS/BIM technologies in transforming to smart cities. It also recommends that society be educated and equipped to ensure that it receives and uses all these things in order to achieve the goal of improving the quality of life and facilitating the daily lives of people.