A Decision-Making Approach Based on TOPSIS Method for Ranking Smart Cities in the Context of Urban Energy

This paper presents the use of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) for the evaluation of smart cities. During the development of the method, the importance of the decision-making approach in the linear ordering of cities was presented. The method of using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was proposed for the preparation of ranking. The method was verified by the application in the measurement of energy performance in smart cities. The authors conducted a literature review of research papers related to urban energy and MCDM published in the period from 2010 to 2020. The paper uses data from the World Council on City Data (WCCD). The research conducted allowed for the identification of the most popular MCDM techniques in the field of urban energy such as TOPSIS, AHP and DEA. The TOPSIS technique was used to organize and group the analyzed cities. Porto took the top position, whereas Buenos Aries was the last.

Automated summary

This paper introduces the use of multi-criteria decision-making for evaluating smart cities, presenting a method for linear ordering using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The study identified TOPSIS as one of the most popular MCDM techniques in urban energy evaluation, with Porto ranking first and Buenos Aires ranking last.