Development of integrated sustainability performance indicators for better management of smart cities

As the world population grows rapidly, the global energy demand increases exponentially and the technological advancements require more resilient infrastructure than ever, there is a strong need to develop innovative energy systems in smart cities. This paper introduces a novel model to assess cities for their smartness. A smart city is characterized by assessing 8 main domains including economy, environment, society, governance, energy, infrastructure, transportation, and pandemic resiliency. Each domain is evaluated by assessing several key parameters that reflect the condition of that domain in any given city. All indicators are measurable and can be assessed, which gives this approach more credibility and accuracy. This model has been applied on 20 cities worldwide. Enhancing the smart energy index by 25 % results in doubling the smart economy index for all cities. Furthermore, enhancing the GDP per capita by 50 % results in modest increase in the smart economy index. Smart governance has a positive and linear relationship with smart economy with a p value of 0.004. Montreal has the highest Smart City Index of 0.8 while Abuja has the lowest of 0.3. Socioeconomic and energy domains are critical domains that must be improved to achieve higher Smart City Index scores and therefore resilient and smart cities.

Automated summary

This study introduces a new model to assess the smartness of cities, focusing on 8 main domains of smart cities, providing new insights for sustainable urban development. Empirical analysis of 20 cities shows that increasing the smart energy index significantly promotes the smart economy development of cities, and smart governance has a positive correlation with smart economy.