How to measure a Smart City?

Authors: Herrera Priano & Fajardo Guerra

There are several international assessments that are published in order to measure the intelligence of cities (you can see some on this site, rankings section).

Answer the question «How Smart is a city?» is particularly complex, especially when you consider that:

• There is no consensus on the definition of a Smart City.

• There are various points of view (depending on the source of information consulted). There are different types of Smart Cities rankings. Each one use its own criteria and indicators. This last implies that you can get different results.

We can focus on the concept through two examples:

For the ranking «European medium-sized cities» a smart city is a city with a good performance in six features. These six characteristics are:

• Smart Economy
• Smart Mobility
• Smart Environment
• Smart People
• Smart Life
• Smart Government

For other types of studies (IDC) «The Smart Cities are a finite unit of a local authority (district, city or possibly small region or country) that makes use of ICT to transform their modus operandi in areas such as energy, environment, government, mobility or building». These areas of activity are:

• Smart Government
• Smart Buildings
• Smart Mobility
• Smart Energy and Smart Environment
• Smart Services

Both rankings develop different criteria and indicators to assess cities in the same area of ​​activity.

Conclusion: We have entered in the race to measure the intelligence of our cities when possibly be more logical establish valid models to perform the measurement. Compare Hong Kong with Kuala-Lumpur or Belfast would be unnecessary, specially because the three cities look for achieve similar levels of satisfaction (intelligence perceived by its citizens).