Smart City Profiles

Comprehensive and comprehensible climate and energy relevant city profiles were developed in close cooperation with the participating cities and the climate and energy development fund. The city profiles are presented via a multimedia visualization, to publically promote the benefits of a “smart” urban development, to publicize changes consciously and to better understand the stakeholders involved.

Initial situation

Smart City Profiles supports Austrian cities and municipalities in the development of smart and sustainable urban strategies and in the planning of measures. There is currently no internationally designated roll-call of Smart City Indicators that can apply generally for cities; there are, however, some best city-specific indicator sets with similar orientation. Thus, the present Smart City Profiles set of indicators is understood beyond Austria’s borders and shows Austria’s competence with regard to the Smart City concept.

Content and objectives

The approach of Smart City Profiles provides information on various aspects of urban development, taking into account particularly energy and climate-related factors for the improvement of urban development.

The project objective is the development of city profiles for Austrian cities that structure and comprehensively illustrate the characteristics and peculiarities of cities and towns and are reproducible for other cities. The indicators studied and the developed profiles form the starting point for a process of learning about urban spaces in order to intensify the Smart City information exchange between cities and communities and to enable participants to more easily make informed decisions about a “smart” urban development based on quantitative facts.

Project results

A total of 12 cities have been actively involved in building the Smart City indicators and city profiles. The results of the project include the development of 21 indicators with a focus on climate change and energy efficiency for five urban areas: building and settlement patterns, transport and mobility, technical Infrastructure, economy and population, and politics, administration and governance. The resulting city profiles provide information about significant factors in all areas of urban development, including economics, demographics, living conditions, strategic urban planning, governance, etc., but in particular on energy and resource consumption, as well as potential efficiency improvement. The results allow cities to better judge their own status quo and development relating to energy and climate change, but also with regard to other relevant aspects of quality of life and competitiveness.