Prepared by Joshua Tan and Sokwoo Rhee

Scope

Cities are complex systems, and cities—i.e. local governments, local institutions, and private contractors—provide many services, each of which must be evaluated in its own way. But the provision of these services often impacts the provision of other services. Many existing smart cities solutions, such as those implemented in the GCTC Action Clusters, are designed to have a measurable impact on specific key performance indicators. For example, the success of a smart parking application may be measured by increased revenues from parking meters and decreased numbers of parking tickets. However, the parking solution, in optimizing the usage of parking spaces and, for example, identifying available parking spaces, may thereby decrease traffic congestion from drivers looking for parking spaces. Decreased traffic congestion may then have a minute impact on public health. Vice versa, a separate air pollution reduction project may negatively impact the city’s transportation system.

Most existing works on KPIs for smart cities applications present their findings in the form of ontologies. Correlations and tradeoffs between KPIs are not well considered. Many suggested KPIs measure only a single aspect and do not represent the “system of systems” nature of smart cities. In addition, many KPIs are still based on the Likert scale, which is qualitative and anecdotal. Lastly, the relevance and sensitivity of each KPI to specific projects is not well defined.

In this project, we will design a system of “hybrid KPIs” that helps city officials and smart-cities project directors measure the systemic impact of their smart-cities deployments. We will pilot this system in a few action clusters, including the Local Sense Lab, with an eye toward extending it to other action clusters in the GCTC program. We hope to answer four questions:

  1. For a given project or application, what are the right KPIs, or how do we choose the right KPIs?
  2. What are the (prior) relationships and interdependencies between multiple KPIs for a particular project?
  3. How do we measure the sensitivity of a KPI with respect to a given project or application?
  4. How do we predict the impacts (positive or negative) on multiple KPIs after the deployment of solution(s)?

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Data Sources

Possible Outcomes

  • Publication or technical report on hybrid KPIs in smart cities, “A science for measuring cities.”
  • A model that relates movement of KPIs to other KPIs.
  • A methodology for connecting this model to deployed applications and updating this model with respect to new data.
  • A pilot, web-based dashboard displaying KPIs related to deployed applications in Boston’s GCTC Action Cluster, the Local Sense Lab, and other participating action clusters..
  • A basis for exporting the methodology and tools developed by the research team, including Boston and others, to other Action Clusters and other participating teams.
  • A basis for improving Boston’s CityScore and smart city measurement methods from other SDOs and working groups.