Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making for Smart City Evaluation and Ranking

Abstract

As urban areas continue to grow and evolve, the development of smart cities has become a critical topic in urban planning and sustainability. Cities have been forced to become as smart as possible to deal with huge amounts of civic functions and boost economic growth, while constantly increasing citizens’ quality of life. They frequently invest in data-driven smart technologies for managing the vast amount of data and improving performance and efficiency. However, a city earns its smartness status when it satisfies criteria from various dimensions. Therefore, governments and local authorities need to direct their limited resources to the right domains. One way to determine it is to position the city among its rivals. The paper proposes a methodology for evaluating and ranking the smartness of 48 cities worldwide using two techniques: TOPSIS and the entropy weight method. The proposed framework examines the smartness of the cities considering seven dimensions. The results reveal a comprehensive ranking that not only accounts for the cities' overall performance in smart city development but also highlights specific strengths and weak areas for improvement. The proposed approach can be utilized as a decision support tool for city planners, policymakers, and stakeholders to identify best practices for the development of sustainable smart cities, evaluate progress, and direct investments to the right areas.