A pervasive framework toward sustainability and smart-growth: Assessing multifaceted transportation performance measures for smart cities

Introduction: The concept of a smart city is fast becoming a key instrument in transforming living environments in a better way to enhance the operational efficiency of a transportation system. This paper presents a framework to assess transportation performance measures and smart growth of cities around the U.S. by including physical activity as one of the main criteria. Methods: This study employs Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) as a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method. The proposed assessment framework is comprised of the evaluation of an individual criterion and the assessment of comprehensive results. The criteria are categorized into four groups including network performance, traffic safety, environmental impact, and physical activity. As a case example, the proposed performance measures were examined for forty-six cities in the U.S., and the required data was gathered from multiple sources. Results: The output of the framework contains sustainability and smart-growth rankings of the selected cities as well as uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. The sensitivity analysis was utilized to determine the quantity that each performance measure or weighting factor requires to alter the smart-growth score. It has been illustrated that the dominancy between reversible pairs in the ranking is critically sensitive for almost 15% of cases. Conclusion: The results of the proposed framework can be an effective decision supporting tool in analyzing traffic management strategies. Results from the score sensitivity calculation indicate that the proposed framework can be adopted in multifaceted transportation system performance in sustainability and smart-growth of cities.