Contemporary urban centers are facing diverse challenges of climate change, urbanization, population growth, traffic congestions, water and land scarcities, environmental pollution, etc. Resilience refers to the city’s capacity to withstand and recover from economic, environmental, and social challenges while maintaining its core functions and services. Smart cities can be seen as an urban management model that leverages advanced technologies to build intelligent systems for enhanced decision-making and public service provision. The integration of smart approaches into the concept of resilient cities aims to exploit ICTs to strengthen their ability to withstand and adapt to external disruptions, maintain stability and foster long-term sustainability.

The Dynamic Ambient Intelligent Sociotechnical Systems (DAISSy) Research Group of Hellenic Open University has developed a suite of educational instruments that together amount to a holistic approach towards fostering Smart and Resilient Cities (SRCs).

These include:
- Descriptions of emerging SRC job profiles and their associated skills and competencies;
- Self-assessment tools indicating competence level in specific SRC job profiles and recommending learning pathways
- Modular, competency-based online training programs for current and prospective professionals in SRCs’ ecosystems
- Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support training in a wide range of competencies and detailed guidelines for trainers
- Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to train city officials, businesses, and citizens in open data, SRC practices and smart city planning, management and technology leadership;
- Synchronous training, peer learning and project-based learning initiatives to promote SRC concepts and practices;
- Pilot course delivery evaluation studies measuring MOOCs’ effectiveness, identifying success factors and suggesting improvement opportunities

In this paper, these instruments, together with the experience gained from implementing them, are presented.

Keywords: Smart and resilient cities, professional development, continuing training, e-learning, MOOC.