Applying the KnowCis methodology to a Greek municipality: a case study

The concept of the Knowledge City is a subfield of the Knowledge-Based Development which, during the last years, has attracted the interest of many researchers and practitioners. Various cities around the world have also undertaken considerable efforts and initiatives so as to be developed or to enhance their status as a Knowledge City. However, their approaches were rather ad-hoc and spontaneous and were not based on a pre-defined methodology. The research community has only recently begun to concentrate on the direction to substantiate the fundamental principles of Knowledge Cities and to define unified methodologies for their design, development and operation. Under this prism, the authors have recently proposed such a methodology, called KnowCis. The application of this methodology is currently in progress, on a Greek municipality. The municipality incorporates some special characteristics and features that render it a very advantageous case for this pilot application. This paper refers to the characteristics of the municipality and to the application of the KnowCis methodology, presents the progress of the effort and the preliminary results until now and provides useful insights on the forthcoming actions and plans of the city's administration. The outcomes, results and lessons-learnt of this pilot application will permit to fine-tune the KnowCis methodology.