Adaption Rule for Simultaneous Use of Smart Urban Objects from a Fairness Perspective

Smart urban objects are an innovative type of physical objects equipped with sensors, information processing capability and actuators, and located in a public urban area. These objects can enhance usability of the urban environment by adapting parameters to individual needs of pedestrians. However, fairness problems occur if multiple pedestrians with incongruent needs wish to use the same object simultaneously. This research proposes a method for establishing a fair configuration of smart urban objects that are used by multiple pedestrians at the same time. Therefore, I develop an adaption rule based on economic fairness models to establish a welfare-egalitarian configuration of smart urban objects for the case of two concurrent users. The simulation-based evaluation provides evidence that using the adaption rule both enhances fairness and utilitarian welfare compared to using non-adaption.