SMART CITY: Definition and Evaluation of Key Performance Indicators

Accelerated evolution of technology and rising level of globalization have encouraged the emergence of a new concept of urban communities. Smart City model can efficiently incorporate the most recent scientific solutions in daily activities of cities, and improve living quality by integrating social resources, infrastructure modernization and economic growth. Although this novel concept is gaining more and more attention, a smart city assessment system is rarely applied in order to evaluate urban development situation, leading to unjustified decision making and unnecessary investments. In this regard, the formulation of a relevant set of key indicators is mandatory for measuring performance of cities development. The goal of the paper is to provide a comprehensive evaluation model for this system of indicators, focusing on energy and environment concerns as study subjects. With the assistance of computer programs, the z-transformation and Analytic Hierarchy Process methods are implemented for the evaluation algorithm construction. The presented model seeks to investigate the development profiles of various cities around the world, but also to carry out comparisons between performances of the selected cities.