Prospects for the use of enterprise architecture in developing smart city solutions

Smart city is an idea so novel that it is difficult to find a city that would be using such a comprehensive and fully functional system supporting both the tasks (objectives) of all its stakeholders and their demands. The ongoing research projects and practical solutions can be metaphorically labelled as ‘island’ solutions, since they cover only a few issues (domains, aspects) associated with the management of urban space in the context of smart cities. The urban space can be divided into several areas, each associated with a particular stakeholder, such as local authorities that represent the government, the government and its administrative bodies, municipal companies, educational entities, health care system entities, associations, universities, research centers, businesses, residents of the particular region and other actors indirectly related to the proposed solution for an intelligent city. A comprehensive approach to the implementation of the smart city concept should cover all the aspects of city management and the flow of information between all stakeholders in the existing public space. Therefore, a project to create a smart city should involve targets, flows and interactions in every area of life and public space, which means that it is a multi-level and complex task. The paper argues that an integrated and comprehensive approach to creating a model city in terms of an intelligent system can be achieved through proper creation and use of enterprise architecture (EA). Other experiences have shown that EA makes it possible to recognize the complex and multidimensional character of the preparation and implementation of such projects. The concept of enterprise architecture, both globally and in Poland, starts to be widely applied. The implementation includes a set of objectives and characteristics of the organization, a formal description of the structure and function of the various information, process, and technological components and interconnections between these components. At the same time, EA is used to describe the above elements in business, organizations, and increasingly often in public administration. It must be noted that at present there is no systematic approach to the usage of EA in complex deployments of the smart city idea, in other words to transform the public space from a space that reacts ex post to a space that reacts ex ante. The authors are not aware of example applications of EA to create comprehensive smart city solutions. This article aims to identify the conditions for developing a reference model of smart city using EA as an effective tool for transforming a city into a smart city. To achieve that city needs to be compared to an enterprise as a system of interconnections and interdependencies between all its agents and resources.