Context-sensitive measurement: Addressing the local context in smart city assessment

Various organizations and researchers have developed Smart Cities Measurements (SCM) to monitor the advance of Smart Cities (SC) initiatives worldwide, yet there is no consensus about their impact on local governments. Local managers implement SC and SCM projects differently depending on their contexts, but few studies have analysed these measurement initiatives from local governments’ perspective. To address this gap, this paper aims to identify how municipalities use SCM and adopt indicators according to local context. Data were collected by in-depth semi-structured interviews with representatives from seventeen Brazilian cities, including different regions and population sizes. The results describe how local governments adopt measurement frameworks, expanding the literature on SCM.

Keywords: Smart cities, Measurement, Context-sensitive indicators