A novel approach to cities’ assessment in terms of their implementation of smart city idea

In recent years, the smart city idea has become one of the most desirable and most willingly implemented in modern cities. Along with this trend, the problem with standardization of this concept appeared, which in this context means defining specific criteria for assessing the degree of introducing smart solutions to cities. Regarding the issue of measurable methods of assessing cities in terms of implementing the smart idea, it can be said that the existing works in this area usually present only values/levels that particular cities have achieved in specific criteria, on the basis of which rankings are then created. The indicators defined for the purpose of such estimates, however, give neither a picture of their initial conditions, with which particular cities started their development, nor their perspectives for the development. The solution to the described problem may be an assessment methodology in which, in addition to static indicators, dynamic or derivative indicators are being computed and assessed. The proposed dynamic indicators tell about the rate of progress or the regression in particular assessment categories. This approach, to a certain extent, shows the innovation and efforts made by particular cities towards introducing the smart idea.