One paper developed from the Trust and the Smart City survey is to explore how public trust influences local perception, local pride, and technological trust. The analysis carried out in Hong Kong is also potentially applicable in the Southeast Asia context. Our Senior Research Assistant, Mr. Lai Ming Tsun, led the analysis during and after the research project phase and co-wrote the paper with the PI, Prof. Alistair Cole, about the relationship between trust and pride. The paper was submitted to TRaNS in March 2023, accepted, and published in January 2024. 

The main findings of the whole project, assessing the narratives of Smart City with Hong Kong, are revealed and compiled into a paper led by the PI, Prof. Alistair Cole, co-written with the Co-I, Emilie Tran, the Research Associate Dr. Dionysios Stivas and the Senior Research Assistant Mr. Lai Ming Tsun. The paper was submitted to Cogent Social Science in February 2023, accepted and published in July 2023. 

A more detailed analysis, presenting in-depth observations, critical reviews and reflections, is included as Chapter 7 in the book Constructing Narratives for City Governance. The book, published by Edward Elgar, was co-edited by the PI, Prof. Alistair Cole and published in December 2022. 

During the project research phase, our Senior Research Assistant, Mr. Lai Ming Tsun, led the research on the smart city assessment tools. He has written a paper with the PI, Prof. Alistair Cole, about the assessment of current smart city indices and the suggestion of a smart city evaluation framework. The paper was submitted to Urban Governance in February 2022, accepted and published in November 2022. 

Based on the Trust and the Smart City survey, our Senior Research Assistant, Mr. Lai Ming Tsun, has written a paper with the PI, Prof. Alistair Cole, about the influence of public trust on local citizen's perception of Hong Kong's smart city performance and the association of public trust and digital trust. The authors were invited by Prof. Jörg Noennig, the Head of Digital City Science at HafenCity Universität, Germany, and presented the paper in one session of the 26th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES2022). The paper was published along with the other conference proceedings in Elsevier's Procedia Computer Science in September 2022.

Under the impulsion of the PI, Prof. Alistair Cole and one Co-I, Dr. Emilie Tran, a special issue on the project, with the title of Trust and the Smart City: Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area in International focus, was proposed to the SSCI-ranked journal China Perspectives. This special issue has been accepted, along with four individual articles. Papers are delivered in December 2021, with the special issue being released in September 2022. This will be the main published output from the project. It contains contributions from the PI, Prof. Alistair Cole and Co-I, Emilie Tran; from Co-I, Dr. Daphne Mah and Post-doctoral Research Fellow Dr. Darren Cheung, and from Co-I, Dr. Kevin Ip.

Article:

1. Editorial – Trust and the Smart City

2. Trust and the Smart City: The Hong Kong Paradox

3. Smart City Development in Hong Kong: An Ethical Analysis

4. Understanding Smart Energy Transitions as a New Source of Distrust: The Perspectives of Hong Kong Citizens on the Risks of Regional Intercity Energy Collaboration in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA)

The PI, Prof. Alistair Cole, proposed a panel on Trust and the Smart City for the 5th International Conference on Public Policy in Barcelona in July 2021. The panel was accepted and took place on July 8th, 2021; beyond the communication jointly delivered by Prof. Alistair Cole and one Co-I, Dr. Emilie Tran, the panel involved presentations from colleagues in Israel, Germany, Singapore, and Palestine. Designing the call for papers and selecting the participants involved the PI, Co-Is and Coordinator in fairly intense activity in the early months of the project. A paper presented entitled "Can Hong Kong stay at the Top" (Dr. Emilie Tran and Prof. Alistair Cole) was presented at the ICCP conference and provided a contextualized, narrative account of the 25 interviews. In general, the panel was a success.

The project team was associated with the major international conference on Transnational and Transdisciplinary Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic, held at HKBU on 20-21 May 2021, with one panel involving the Lyon team from work package 3 and the work on hospitals and the health pandemic. This conference was part of the successful PROCORE funding, built in part of the Lyon Public Factory. Prof. David Vallat, head of the Lyon Public Factory, presented a paper at the conference on the panel: Governance and Societies in the Pandemic: a Global Perspective, chaired by Prof. Mark Thompson from the City University of Hong Kong, which presented in some detail the work of the students.