Measuring the success of smart city initiatives

A Federation University researcher is developing a tool to help regional cities evaluate and monitor their capabilities and performance as they work towards becoming smart cities.

Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) researcher and PhD candidate Rida Mazhar says the concept of what makes a city ‘smart’ has evolved in recent years, and when studying existing research on the topic, she found there was little evidence to show whether cities could measure their progress.

Her research is using Ballarat as a case study and the tool will apply to regional cities with a population of between 50,000 and 200,000 people.

“The objective of the smart city concept is to employ advanced technical tools for contemporary urban management but you cannot manage what you cannot measure,” she said.

Ms Mazhar says a regional smart city is distinguished by a clear vision, sufficient resources, strong digital infrastructure, and effective public-private partnerships underpinned by sound governance. A smart city “thrives within a people-centric smart ecosystem, guided by a comprehensive implementation strategy, policy frameworks, and monitoring models, all while anchoring the sustainable development goals and preserving the regional architecture, heritage, lifestyle, and community values”.

“City decision-makers need an assessment strategy that measures the readiness of a city and enables it to understand its current situation and assess whether the actions they’ve taken are achieving the desired outcomes in relation to their pre-established objectives, which will help to plan future development efforts,” Ms Mazhar said.

The work will see the development of two frameworks. The first is a readiness measurement framework - a checklist to measure whether the resources are available to become a smart city.

The second is a performance measurement framework, which will show whether the project has performed well according to a group of sustainable development criteria aligned with the project.

“If a project starts without specific concepts like the capabilities and the resources that are needed, then the project might not get to the planned success level,” she said.

“My focus is city-based. We will look at the impact of the programs that are underway and calculate the performance according to the indicators we will be using. Using Ballarat as the case study, we will be testing and validating the tool by using data from the city – these indicators will be designed according to all the city’s requirements.”

Ms Mazhar says the definition of a smart city has evolved from just integrating technology which was the core focus until 2015.

“From then until 2020, the focus was about government integration and community participation, but since 2020, the focus has shifted to be human-centric and with an emphasis on sustainability,” she said.

“The core is that it is a city with sustainability as an outcome, using sustainable development goals to achieve this with smart governance. It has to preserve the community structure and the traditional values of regional cities because to make a city smart, you must keep the human component in mind.

“Regional cities have traditional values that are important to communities, so to make a regional city smart, it is important to preserve these. If you let go of these values, the community will not accept that.”

Ms Mazhar has a background in city planning and geoinformatics engineering. Her interest in regional smart cities began at home in Pakistan, where she lived in a regional area and worked on projects to enable cities to become self-sufficient.

“This is a problem not only in Australia but in Pakistan and other countries as well because many people move to a metropolitan area because of the better resources, the education system or the health facilities available to them,” she said.

“But what happens then is that many people move to the bigger cities, often to peri-urban areas. Then they must travel further to work, which adds to traffic congestion, fuel costs, and time in their lives.

“We need regional cities with the facilities and the many benefits people would have looked for in cities with larger populations.”