KPIs to Drive Smart City Assessment

Introduction

The concept of smart city is assuming more and more importance in the policy makers agenda during the last years; “smart” represents a term adopted and popularized by multinationals like Cisco and IBM with their typically American and hi-tech imprint, which over time have become almost a synonym for “technological” (Mattei, 2013). But there is more to it than that; a lot of cities, mainly those with a long history and culture, cannot be drawn in a unique picture, considering only some aspects. For instance, in Italy each town is different from the others, not only in architectural terms, but also in terms of life quality and lifestyle; almost all towns have a complex and challenging history, not homologable in a unique, albeit super-technological design. For this reason, specific indicators have been established in order to define a “smart city”: green urban areas, water, air, waste, built heritage, life quality, energy, healthcare, mobility and logistics (ibidem).

Within this context, it is undeniable that problems related to cities are becoming even more crucial over time. In this sense, it is possible to highlight that in 2010, 50% of the world’s population lived in urban areas and, according to a report from the Worldwatch Institute, this figure is forecast to rise to 70% by 2050 (Bencardino & Greco, 2014). Due to this increase in urban population, governments are required to figure out how to create future spaces for the citizens, taking into account and reasoning on the future quality of life in cities. For this reason, cities have started to think about how to assess their performance in terms of “smartness”, mainly from an “energy performance” point of view. In order to change cities behaviors two main activities can be performed: (i) the activity of “sensing”, which means collecting information by monitoring specific processes or situations; (ii) the activity of “actuating” which means reacting and finding solutions to the collected information (Ratti, Smart city, smart citizen, 2013). Furthermore, the forces that are actually guiding cities, such as energy, construction, transports etc., allow citizens to take a closer part in the management of the city itself. Indeed, in order to transform urban spaces, bottom-up actions are required, because “there is no smart city, without smart citizens” (Ratti & Claudel, 2017).

The objective of the chapter is analyzing the use of different evaluation methods developed over the years that use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to assess the performance of cities. Starting from the meaning and definition of indicators and their first application within the context of European or International projects, going through the analysis of the characteristics that KPIs must have in order to be relevant and meaningful, until their use as metrics of evaluation to develop Multi-Criteria Decision Approaches (MCDA). In particular, two different European projects funded by the 7^th Framework Program of the European Union have been deeply analyzed within this chapter. From one side, the INDICATE project, which analysed the use of sustainable indicators at city level in order to define a Common City Index (CCI) to benchmark several cities on the basis of specific common criteria. On the other side, the DIMMER project developed indicators at district and building level in order to benchmark different buildings in terms of energy performance and refurbishment strategies. At the end of the chapter, several experiences highlighting the use of indicators as metrics within the application of multi-criteria decision methods are presented, in order to show the great adaptability of these assessment approaches, which are really helpful in supporting decision making processes towards sustainability.