Development of a Maturity Model for Assessing Smart Cities: A Focus Area Maturity Model

Abstract

The concept of smart cities has gained significant attention due to the potential of smart cities to optimize city services and enhance citizens’ quality of life. Cities are investing in digital transformation to become smarter, sustainable, and resilient. Therefore, there is a need to build a comprehensive and holistic model to assess smart city initiatives. This paper aims to develop a model that can capture the maturity of smart city adoption across various functional domains. These domains are divided into focus areas that capture different dimensions of a smart city and grouped into seven groups: ICT, economy, environment, social, resources, services, and governance. Each focus area has a set of maturity levels that describe the capabilities and outcomes of the city at different stages of development. To develop the model, the focus areas were extracted from the literature based on 16 models that have been reviewed. Assessing these models helped in identifying gaps and building the foundation of the model. Using the information extracted from the literature, a focus area model was designed and developed. The model development included seven main phases, which were: scope, design, populate, test, deploy, and maintain. The current paper validates the proposed model using the Delphi method, which involves the participation of a panel of sixty field experts. The experts evaluated the model’s correctness and completeness based on their experience and provided feedback. This feedback was used to revise and finalize the model. The smart city maturity model provides a framework for benchmarking, planning, and improving smart city initiatives. Cities can use the model to measure their performance and evaluate their weaknesses and strengths. The model is also the most comprehensive in terms of the scope of the focus areas included, and the results show that the model has a high level of accuracy and consistency and can effectively assess smart city adoption.