Smart City Index that takes citizen engagement into account

A team of researchers from IMD in Switzerland and SUTD in Singapore put together the Smart City Index.

For the first time, researchers attempted to assess people’s perceptions of technology – as opposed to the quality of the technology itself – as a way to characterise the “smartness” of a city. They did this by conducting a massive survey among citizens of 102 cities, to assess how favourably they viewed the technology made available to them, reports, Arturo Bris, one of the researchers, in The Conversation.

Smart cities, in short, only make sense when technology meets citizens’ needs.