Conceptual Smart City KPI Model: A System Dynamics Modelling Approach

Smart City is becoming increasingly popular all over the word, gaining the status of paradigm for steering urban and regional strategies oriented to improve the citizens' quality of life through IT-led solutions. Despite of its international relevance, still consensus on its most significant components and their reciprocal influence does not exist. Building on a wide scholarship on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for Smart Cities, this paper suggests that System Dynamics could provide an appropriate conceptual model for interpreting the dynamic interconnections among the core components of a Smart City -i.e., Smart Infrastructures, Smart Institutions and Smart People-. At this goal, this paper offers a novel application of System Dynamic, which is used to analyze a robust set of new data, collected in three different cities. The model allows modelling and interpreting the role played by each component in implementing the Smart City paradigm and offers a new perspective on how to diversify the concept of Smart City according to site-specific conditions. Findings show that whilst a Smart City in a mature stage is highly influenced by the people and the infrastructure, for a Smart City in a developing country it is mainly the smart infrastructure component that shall be emphasized.