An Innovative Digital Maturity Assessment Model for Smart Cities

Many cities around the world have started to make investments in smart city projects to provide solutions to these challenges. In terms of city management applications, it is an essential requirement to benefit from a subsidiary tool that helps cities demonstrate their ability to adapt to Smart City principles and maturity competencies with a systematic procedure. In this article, first, a literature search is used to determine the qualitative and quantitative criteria sets needed to ensure smart city maturity. Then the importance of these criteria set is determined by interviewing experts and conducting questionnaires. It is found that technology management is the best main criterion. Finally, a digital maturity model, prepared using the Best-Worst Method, is proposed for municipalities to measure how "smart" their cities are, and according to the value obtained as a result of this measurement, to meet the conditions of the concept of "smart city" in their cities and to increase their scores. To show how it is used in practice, a real case study is conducted in the city of Istanbul.