Measuring What Matters: Outcomes of Smart-City Innovation for Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Introduction and Rationale

Sustainability commitments require reliable indicators and appropriate data to demonstrate effectiveness, target audience, and conditions. Although SDG-aligned frameworks now guide the measurement of performance across city services, quality of life, digitalization, and resilience, existing indicator sets still differ in terms of coverage, comparability, data quality, and relevance to decision-making. After a decade of pilots and proofs of concept, a pivotal question remains: which smart-city innovations measurably deliver sustainability outcomes at the city level? This Special Issue brings together cutting-edge research on meaningful metrics for governing and investing in sustainable smart city innovations. We invite submissions that demonstrate how data infrastructures, platforms, IoT systems, and urban analytics can lead to decarbonization, climate resilience, social equity, health and well-being, and fiscal value. We are interested in works that go beyond outputs to demonstrate verified outcomes and, where feasible, measurable impacts. We particularly welcome work that bridges project-level interventions and citywide transitions aligned with SDG 11.

Focus and Aim

We seek contributions that strengthen the quantification of environmental and social outcomes, such as reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (including those beyond municipal boundaries), improvements in air quality, mitigation of urban heat risk, modal shifts, safety gains, accessibility, inclusion, and affordability, while also testing the causal pathways that link digital and organizational capabilities to sustainability impact. Of particular interest are studies that illuminate the complementarities between governance and technology, the role of policy instruments, the connections between indicators and procurement and budgeting processes, and the operational practices that enable scaling up. Submissions may propose next-generation metrics, such as Scope 3 or consumption-based emissions, heat exposure inequality, ecosystem services, digital inclusion and service uptake, data governance quality, and algorithmic accountability. Submissions may also demonstrate how indicators inform budgets, procurement, and investment decisions, including cost-effectiveness and distributional analyses. Finally, submissions may show how top-down comparability and benchmarking can be reconciled with place-based priorities and co-created metrics.

Scope and Methods

We welcome designs suited to causal learning and decision support, including randomized and quasi-experimental evaluations, mixed-methods and realist evaluations, longitudinal and panel analyses, comparative city studies, systems modeling, digital twins, and simulations. Meta-analyses and systematic reviews of indicator ecosystems are equally valued, as are policy design studies that connect metrics to implementation. Submissions that align indicators with recognized frameworks, such as international city indicator standards and GHG protocols, and that report decision-relevant KPIs with an explicit treatment of uncertainty, sensitivity, and external validity are encouraged. Replication studies, open datasets and code, and evaluations that explicitly examine harms, unintended effects, and equity trade-offs are particularly welcome.

Relation to Existing Literature

The field has matured from vision statements to deployments across mobility, energy, buildings, public safety, health, and public space. Yet, a persistent gap remains: evidence ready for attribution that smart initiatives advance climate neutrality, resilience, and justice at the city level rather than in isolated pilots only. Concurrent agendas such as mission-oriented cities, climate-neutrality pathways, and climate-city contracts create fertile ground for outcome-based evaluation, investment logic modeling, and cross-jurisdictional learning. This Special Issue builds on previous syntheses by emphasizing robust evaluation, transferability across geographies and income contexts, and outcome-driven governance that links data to budgeting, regulation, and collective decision-making.

Article Types

We invite original research articles, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, standards and benchmarking analyses, methodological notes on indicator design and causal inference in city contexts (including uncertainty analyses), and policy and governance analyses addressing procurement, financing, regulatory design, participatory governance, and data ethics.

Dr. Jiří Remr
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• smart cities
• SDG 11
• impact evaluation
• climate neutrality
• climate resilience
• urban analytics
• indicators and KPIs
• equity and inclusion
• data governance
• comparability and transferability