Smart city ranking released by ABI Research

Analyst firm ABI Research has released its latest smart city ranking based on innovation and implementation.Smart city DubaiSingapore, Dubai, London, New York and Paris are top five smart city projects in the world. Singapore scores highest on all innovation criteria with a special focus on Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) and Freight-as-a-Service (FaaS).

Singapore has maintained its leading role as transportation and freight hub with driverless taxis and autonomous shuttles. Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative addresses a range of urban issues linked to high-density living.

Dubai is leading the way in the implementation of distributed ledgers with all government transactions to be processed via blockchain technology by 2030.

ABI Research has conducted the Smart City Ranking according to their innovation programs, strategies and implementation achievements measured through verifiable metrics for congestion, air quality, GDP, crime rates, and cost of living.

“Singapore and second-placed Dubai emerge as smart city leaders, excelling in innovation in terms of the adoption of next-generation technologies and disruptive smart city paradigms as structural solutions for hard problems,” said Dominique Bonte, Vice President End Markets at ABI Research.

Both Singapore and Dubai cities also score high across most of the implementation criteria like congestion management, crime prevention, and safety. Dubai actually has a “Happiness Index” which monitors the quality of public services and is aimed at improving overall citizen satisfaction.

London’s third place is largely due to its advanced open data policies enabling a wider ecosystem of smart city application developers and start-ups.

New York, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, and Los Angeles are engaging in multiple smart cities programs but often lack a more ambitious vision to adopt transformative technologies and paradigms, usually linked to the legacy nature of their aging infrastructure. They also typically struggle with one or more implementation metrics like crime, congestion, or cost of living.

Shanghai and Beijing, coming in at rank 9 and 10 respectively, were assessed as laggers. Despite both cities’ efforts to deploy technologies like smart meters and smart grids, bike sharing, vehicle electrification, smart parking, and smart cards, they continue to face formidable issues related to congestion and pollution and trail the other cities on economic development in terms of GDP per capita.

Shanghai and Beijing cities have huge potential to improve their ranking in the future as they continue to evolve their smart cities solutions from basic sensor-centric technologies to more advanced approaches while benefiting from expertise gained during trials in smaller cities in China.

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