Ranking Smart Cities: Relevance and Challenges

Ranking smart cities remains an obsession for research companies, technology vendors, and governments. However, due to the lack of a clear definition of the smart city concept’s scope and boundaries, objective rankings remain elusive and there are as many doing the ranking as there are companies being ranked. There is no agreed upon standard for how to assess a city’s smart technology strategy and implementation in an objective and formal way. Smart city rankings can be based on any or all of the aspects and criteria described below:

• Technologies: Fiber, 5G, V2X, ITS, LPWA, AI, blockchain, sensors
• Single Point Use Cases: Smart street lights, smart waste management, smart metering, smart parking, camera surveillance, smart kiosks
• Business Paradigms: Sharing economy, citizen participation, sensor crowdsourcing, eGovernment, demand-response systems, crowdfunding,
• Holistic Applications and Cross Vertical Approaches:IoT platforms, standards, marketplaces,etc.
• Benefits: Livability, cost of living, saf…