Smart Communities as a Vision for Digital Transformation in Europe: Policy Readiness Assessment and KPIs Methodology Development

This thesis aims to analyse the emerging concept of European Smart Communities with its background, foundations, impacts, and limitations as well as to explore the process of creation of the European approach for measuring and assessing the transition to “smartness”, especially in rural, peripheral, and remote areas. First, a review of the scientific literature on the topic will provide the reader with the current state-of-the-art and the progress of past and ongoing policies, programs and projects on the European level. Secondly, the definition and benchmarking for Smart Communities assessment will be discussed. The empirical part of the study relies on the H2020- AURORAL project which in real time explores the solutions for Smart Communities Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) development. Therefore, the existing approaches to KPIs will be analysed and reflected upon within the current project activities and an integrated approach will be presented with an aim to find a common framework that allows for clear vision for communities on how to become “smart”. The research methodology is based on the comparison of the existing approaches and available data for the indicators, policy documents analysis and elaboration of a framework that is fitting the goals of smart transition. One of the distinctive features of this close-to-practice research is the opportunity to give an insight into an ongoing research project and at the same time contribute to its outcomes through co- development, reflection and mutual learning giving an answer to the questions “what a smart community is and how do we know whether we have one in front of us”.