Smart City indicators: A tool for strategic management in Croatian large cities – Smart City

Commissioned by: The Institute of Economics, Zagreb; TvojGrant@EIZ
Project manager: Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović
Collaborators: Željka Kordej-De Villa, Mislav Šagovac
Project duration: February 19, 2018 – September 30, 2018
 
Summary:

Project goal was to identify significant indicators for measuring competitiveness of 25 Croatian large cities (defined as cities with more than 35,000 inhabitants and county centres) through six components of the Smart City model following Giffinger’s et al. (2007) Smart City methodology.

Expected project result was to publish an article on Smart City indicators for strategic management in 25 Croatian large cities in internationally competitive scientific journal indexed in databases Web of Science Core Collection (Social Science Citation Index) and in EIZ Working Papers, and present it at EIZ Science Tuesday and conferences.

Project activities included: (i) collection of available data to measure indicators through six components of the Smart City model: Smart Economy, Smart People, Smart Governance, Smart Mobility, Smart Environment and Smart Living; (ii) preparation of questionnaires to collect additional information to measure Smart City indicators; (iii) development of about 80 indicators to compare 25 Croatian large cities; (iv) estimation of city development index using principal component analysis; (v) ranking of 25 Croatian large cities by city development index, which enabled city majors and councillors to use available information in the preparation and implementation of strategic decisions.

The first task was to collect a set of data for 25 large cities from national and local sources. These data were essential for constructing Smart City indicators; they were used to elaborate the role of Croatian large cities in smart specialisation of the whole country and its potential on local development. We used web scraping techniques to collect publicly available data to measure indicators that represented degree of development of 25 Croatian large cities through six components of Smart City concept: smart economy, smart people, smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment and smart living. We prepared questionnaires to collect additional information and data to measure Smart City indicators. We developed around 80 Smart City indicators and estimated city development index using principal component analysis. We ranked 25 Croatian large cities by city development index. The aim of the city development index was a comparison of 25 Croatian large cities and an assessment of their comparative advantage in a wider international context. We provided explanation for every city rankings by analysing the structure of our city-level data.