Document Type

Article (Journal or Newsletter)

Scholarship Type

Faculty Scholarship, Student Scholarship

Publication Date

4-1-2019

Abstract

Multiple Indonesian cities currently aim to qualify as “smart cities.” Previous research on defining smart cities (e.g., the implementation-oriented maturity model) tends to focus on components over interrelationships, is challenging to apply to a specific context such as Indonesia, and offers limited support for policy-relevant questions. In this paper, we propose to address these shortcomings to support policymakers in identifying concrete action plans in Indonesia specifically. Our approach clarifies interrelationships for the context of use and supports structural (e.g., what aspects of a “smart city” are impacted by an intervention?) as well as what-if policy questions. We started with a systems' science approach to developing a cognitive map of the components and their interrelationships, as is increasingly done in participatory modeling and particularly in socio-ecological management. We transformed semi-structured interviews of 10 Indonesian experts into maps and assembled them to create the first comprehensive smart cities cognitive map for Indonesia, totaling 52 concepts and 98 relationships. While a cognitive map already provides support for decision-making (e.g., by identifying loops in the system), it is only conceptual and thus cannot form predictions. Consequently, we extended our cognitive map into a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM), whose inference abilities allow to examine the dynamic response of an indicator (e.g., “smart city”) in response to different interventions. As fuzzy cognitive maps include the strengths of interrelationships but not the notion of time, future research may refine our model using system dynamics. This refinement would support policymakers in investigating when to conduct and/or evaluate an intervention.

Comments

Open access publication of this article was supported by the Furman University Libraries Open Access Fund.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.