Context-sensitive measurement
Addressing the local context in smart city assessment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59490/dgo.2025.984Keywords:
Smart cities, Measurement, Context-sensitive indicatorsAbstract
Various organizations and researchers have developed Smart Cities Measurements (SCM) to monitor the advance of Smart Cities (SC) initiatives worldwide, yet there is no consensus about their impact on local governments. Local managers implement SC and SCM projects differently depending on their contexts, but few studies have analysed these measurement initiatives from local governments’ perspective. To address this gap, this paper aims to identify how municipalities use SCM and adopt indicators according to local context. Data were collected by in-depth semi-structured interviews with representatives from seventeen Brazilian cities, including different regions and population sizes. The results describe how local governments adopt measurement frameworks, expanding the literature on SCM.
Downloads
References
Albino, V., Berardi, U., & Dangelico, R. M. (2015). Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives. Journal of Urban Technology, 22(1), 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2014.942092
Alcaide Muñoz, L., & Rodríguez Bolívar, M. P. (2021). Different levels of smart and sustainable cities construction using e-participation tools in European and Central Asian countries. Sustainability, 13(6), 3561.
Anand, P. B. (2021). Assessing smart city projects and their implications for public policy in the Global South. Contemporary Social Science, 16(2), 199-212.
Angelidou, M. (2014). Smart city policies: A spatial approach. Cities, 41, S3-S11.
Arief, A., Abbas, M. Y., Wahab, I. H. A., Latif, L. A., Abdullah, S. D., & Sensuse, D. I. (2020, July). The smart islands vision: Towards smart city readiness in local government of Archipelagos. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1569, No. 4, p. 042006). IOP Publishing.
Backhouse, J. (2020, September). A taxonomy of measures for smart cities. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (pp. 609-619).
Backhouse, J.; Dhaou, S. B. (2020). Medidas de cidades sustentáveis e inteligentes: partindo do âmbito global para o local. In Tecnologias de informação e comunicação na gestão urbana: desafios para a medição de cidades inteligentes (pp. 76-108). NIC.br.
Bosch, P., Jongeneel, S., Rovers, V., Neumann, H. M., Airaksinen, M., & Huovila, A. (2017). CITYkeys indicators for smart city projects and smart cities. CITYkeys report, 10.
Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. (2020). Síntese de Indicadores sociais 2019. [link]
Brazilian Internet Steering Committee. (2022). Survey on the use of information and communication technologies in the Brazilian public sector – ICT Electronic Government 2021. [link]
Bright cities. (n.d.). Bright Cities. [link]
Caird, S. with Hudson, L., & Kortuem, G. (2016). A Tale of Evaluation and Reporting in UK Smart Cities. 53pp. The Open University, UK.
Cunha, M. A., Przeybilovicz, E., Macaya, J. F. M., & Santos, F. B. P. D. (2016). Smart cities: transformação digital de cidades. [link]
Desdemoustier, J., Crutzen, N., & Giffinger, R. (2019). Municipalities' understanding of the Smart City concept: An exploratory analysis in Belgium. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 142, 129-141.
de Oliveira, J. C., Mazieri, M. R., & Kniess, C. T. (2024). Smart Cities Indicators: How Regional Context and Its Stakeholders Are Essential to Name “The” Smart City. Journal of Urban Technology, 1-24.
Ependi, U., Rochim, A. F., & Wibowo, A. (2022, March). Smart city assessment for sustainable city development on smart governance: A systematic literature review. In 2022 International Conference on Decision Aid Sciences and Applications (DASA) (pp. 1088-1097). IEEE.
Esposito, G., Clement, J., Mora, L., & Crutzen, N. (2021). One size does not fit all: Framing smart city policy narratives within regional socio-economic contexts in Brussels and Wallonia. Cities, 118, 103329.
Fachinelli, A. C., Yigitcanlar, T., Sabatini-Marques, J., Cortese, T. T. P., Sotto, D., & Libardi, B. (2023). Urban smartness and city performance: identifying Brazilian smart cities through a novel approach. Sustainability, 15(13), 10323.
Fariniuk, T. M. D. (2020). Smart cities and the pandemic: digital technologies on the urban management of Brazilian cities. Revista de Administração Pública, 54, 860-873.
Fernandez-Anez, V., Velazquez, G., Perez-Prada, F., & Monzón, A. (2020). Smart city projects assessment matrix: Connecting challenges and actions in the Mediterranean region. Journal of Urban Technology, 27(4), 79-103.
Giffinger, R., Fertner, C., Kramar, H., Kalasek, R., Pichler-Milanovic, N., & Meijers, E. J. (2007). Smart cities. Ranking of European medium-sized cities. Final Report.
Gracias, J. S., Parnell, G. S., Specking, E., Pohl, E. A., & Buchanan, R. (2023). Smart Cities—A Structured Literature Review. Smart Cities, 6(4), 1719-1743.
Gregor, S. (2006). The nature of theory in information systems. MIS quarterly, 611-642.
Hajek, P., Youssef, A., & Hajkova, V. (2022). Recent developments in smart city assessment: A bibliometric and content analysis-based literature review. Cities, 126, 103709.
Huovila, A., Bosch, P., & Airaksinen, M. (2019). Comparative analysis of standardized indicators for Smart sustainable cities: What indicators and standards to use and when? Cities, 89, 141-153.
Karal, F. S., & Soyer, A. (2024). A systematic literature review: Setting a basis for smart and sustainable city performance measurement. Sustainable Development, 32(1), 555-573.
Khatibi, H., Wilkinson, S., Eriwata, G., Sweya, L. N., Baghersad, M., Dianat, H., ... & Javanmardi, A. (2022). An integrated framework for assessment of smart city resilience. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 49(5), 1556-1577.
Lai, C. M. T., & Cole, A. (2023). Measuring progress of smart cities: Indexing the smart city indices. Urban governance, 3(1), 45-57.
Lee, M. J., & Lee, D. E. (2014). Questioning beliefs surrounding urban sustainability: the need for a contextual urban model. Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 13(1), 163-170
Lopes, N. V. (2017, July). Smart governance: A key factor for smart cities implementation. In 2017 IEEE international conference on smart grid and smart cities (ICSGSC) (pp. 277-282). IEEE.
Maja, P. W., Meyer, J., & Von Solms, S. (2020). Development of smart rural village indicators in line with industry 4.0. IEEE Access, 8, 152017-152033.
Malek, J. A., Lim, S. B., & Yigitcanlar, T. (2021). Social inclusion indicators for building citizen-centric smart cities: A systematic literature review. Sustainability, 13(1), 376.
Marchetti, D., Oliveira, R., & Figueira, A. R. (2019). Are global north smart city models capable to assess Latin American cities? A model and indicators for a new context. Cities, 92, 197-207.
Masik, G., Sagan, I., & Scott, J. W. (2021). Smart City strategies and new urban development policies in the Polish context. Cities, 108, 102970.
Metwally, E., Samir, E., & Ayman, M. (2023). The indicators of the smartness to assess Egypt's New Administrative Capital as a smart city. Mansoura Engineering Journal, 48(6), 12.
Miller, H. J., Witlox, F., & Tribby, C. P. (2013). Developing context-sensitive livability indicators for transportation planning: a measurement framework. Journal of Transport Geography, 26, 51-64.
Nam, T., & Pardo, T. A. (2011, June). Conceptualizing smart city with dimensions of technology, people, and institutions. In Proceedings of the 12th annual international digital government research conference: digital government innovation in challenging times (pp. 282-291).
Patrão, C., Moura, P., & Almeida, A. D. (2020). Review of Smart City Assessment Tools. Smart Cities, 3 (4), 1117–1132.
Peter, C., & Meyer, C. (2023). Organizing for the Smart African City: Leveraging the urban commons for exerting the right to the city. Organization Studies, 44, 1725–1746.
Przeybilovicz, E., Cunha, M. A., & Meirelles, F. D. S. (2018). The use of information and communication technology to characterize municipalities: who they are and what they need to develop e-government and smart city initiatives. Revista de Administração Pública, 52, 630-649.
Przeybilovicz, E., Fernandes, V. B., Lima, C. F. C., Loureiro, Martinez. M. R. M., & Paseto, L. (2020). A experiência de ampliação de modelo de maturidade e indicadores de cidade inteligente para um país emergente. In Tecnologias de informação e comunicação na gestão urbana: desafios para a medição de cidades inteligentes (pp. 110-153). NIC.br.
Ribeiro, M. M., Macaya, J., dos Santos, M. P. R., Cunha, M. A., & Pitta, M. T. (2020, April). ICT usage in Contexts of Regional Inequalities. In 2020 Seventh International Conference on eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG) (pp. 231-236). IEEE.
Samarakkody, A., Amaratunga, D., & Haigh, R. (2022). Characterising smartness to make smart cities resilient. Sustainability, 14(19), 12716.
Sharifi, A. (2019). A critical review of selected smart city assessment tools and indicator sets. Journal of cleaner production, 233, 1269-1283.
Sharifi, A. (2020). A typology of smart city assessment tools and indicator sets. Sustainable cities and society, 53, 101936.
Shen, L., Huang, Z., Wong, S. W., Liao, S., & Lou, Y. (2018). A holistic evaluation of smart city performance in the context of China. Journal of Cleaner Production, 200, 667-679.
Shi, F., & Shi, W. (2023). A Critical Review of Smart City Frameworks: New Criteria to Consider When Building Smart City Framework. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 12(9), 364.
Skargren, F. (2020). What is the point of benchmarking e-government? An integrative and critical literature review on the phenomenon of benchmarking e-government. Information Polity, 25(1), 67-89.
Tomor, Z., Meijer, A., Michels, A., & Geertman, S. (2019). Smart governance for sustainable cities: Findings from a systematic literature review. Journal of urban technology, 26(4), 3-27.
Visvizi, A., & Lytras, M. D. (2018). It’s not a fad: Smart cities and smart villages research in European and global contexts. Sustainability, 10(8), 2727.
Walsham, G. (1995). Interpretive case studies in IS research: nature and method. European Journal of information systems, 4(2), 74-81.
Wang, X., Hopeward, J., Yi, I., McElroy, M. W., & Sutton, P. C. (2022). Supporting the Sustainable Development Goals: A context sensitive indicator for sustainable use of water at the facility level. Sustainable Development, 30(5), 1184-1199.
Yadav, G., Mangla, S. K., Luthra, S., & Rai, D. P. (2019). Developing a sustainable smart city framework for developing economies: An Indian context. Sustainable Cities and Society, 47, 101462.
Zhao, F., Fashola, O. I., Olarewaju, T. I., & Onwumere, I. (2021). Smart city research: A holistic and state-of-the-art literature review. Cities, 119, 103406.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Conference Proceedings Volume
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Manuella Maia Ribeiro, Erico Przeybilovicz, Delfina Soares
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
