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In the financial sector, insurance companies generate large volumes of data, including policy transactions, customer interactions, and risk assessments. These historical data on established customers provide opportunities to enhance decision-making processes and offer more customized services. However, data on potential new customers are often limited, due to a lack of historical records and to legal constraints on personal data collection. Despite these limitations, accurately predicting whether a potential new customer will generate benefits (high-performance) or incur losses (low-performance) is crucial for many service companies. This study used a real-world dataset of existing car insurance customers and introduced advanced machine learning models, to predict the performance of potential new customers for whom available data are limited. We developed and evaluated approaches based on traditional binary classification models and on more advanced boosting classification models. Our computational experiments show that accurately predicting the performance of potential new customers can significantly reduce operation costs and improve the customization of services for insurance companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing demand for sustainable urban development, smart cities have emerged as a promising solution for optimizing energy usage, reducing emissions, and enhancing the quality of life for citizens. In this context, the combined use of key performance indicators (KPIs) and data analytics has gained significant attention as a powerful tool for promoting energy efficiency and emissions reduction in urban areas. This paper presents a comprehensive conceptual framework in which a series of KPIs are proposed to serve as essential metrics for guiding, monitoring, and assessing energy efficiency and emissions reduction levels in smart cities. Some of the included KPIs in the analysis are 'annual energy consumption per person', 'reduction in greenhouse gas emissions', 'public transport use', and 'adoption of renewable energy'. By incorporating these KPIs, city planners and policymakers can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of sustainability initiatives. Furthermore, the paper explores how the integration of KPIs with data analytics can be used for monitoring and assessing the overall performance of the city in terms of energy efficiency, emissions reduction, and the enhancement of urban living conditions. Visualization tools, such as radar plots, and time series analysis forecasting methods allow data to be processed and patterns to be identified, enabling informed decision-making and efficient resource allocation. Real-life case studies of ongoing smart city projects are presented in the paper, which also provides a KPI comparison among different European cities, as well as models to forecast the evolution of KPIs related to energy usage and emissions reduction in different European cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]