ARCHIVES: This is legacy content from before Sustainable Cities Collective was relaunched as Smart Cities Dive in early 2017. Some information, such as publication dates or images, may not have migrated over. For the latest in smart city news, check out the new Smart Cities Dive site or sign up for our daily newsletter.

Top 4 Portuguese Smart Cities: Bragança, Lisbon, Oporto, and Oeiras

Author

Vitor Pereira

A recent study developed by IDC - Analyse The Future, places Bragança, Lisbon, Oporto and Oeiras at the Top 4 intelligent cities in Portugal.

This study, presented in Lisbon at the Analytical Cities event, organized by the Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy, was developed with the intent of creating an independent evaluation instrument, creating reference points and pointing out the good practices in areas such as energy, environment, government, mobility, buildings, services and communication.  

In analysis three indicators were highlighted:

  1. People: Citizen's average age; population growth (2001-2011); population with no level of education; population with college degrees.
  2. Economy: purchasing power per capita; growth of purchasing power per capita (2009-2011); Gross Value Added (GVA) per capita; growth of the GVA (2009-2012), unemployment rate; growth of employment:
  3. Information and Communication Technologies: Number of students per computer in middle school and high school; online tax returns; information and technologies expense per habitant.  

5 other intelligence vectors were considered:

  1. Smart Government: online access to the municipality's expense; Open Data policy and number of data sets available, level of integration of the administrative process and data sharing in back-office; digital urban planning; existence of online participatory budgeting; availableness and quality of relating with citizens gateways; level of online contact with the municipal administration; online certificate requests.
  2. Smart Buildings: quantified sustainability goals; energy efficiency policy directed to new buildings; buildings with A and A+ energy efficiency certificates; building with energy monitoring systems and automatic lighting control.
  3. Smart Mobility: incentives for reduced emissions vehicles; carpooling/car sharing initiatives; intelligent traffic lights; traffic information gateways; public transport information systems for passengers; traffic and congestion monitoring systems; telework policy.
  4. Smart Services & Living: implementation of video surveillance in public spaces; fire prevention sensors and control system; flood control predictive systems and sensors; digital access to urban planning documents; Wifi hotspots in public places; quality of the tourists destined gateways and apps.
  5. Smart Energy & Environment:Environmental sustainability strategy and adherence to the Covenant of Mayors Europe Initiative; industrial water treatment plants; selective waste collection, environment expense per capita; electric vehicles charging stations; green public transportation; electric vehicles in the city's vehicle fleet; public lighting control systems automation; emission monitoring system.  

Analysis of all of the vectors was based on public statistics (INE, Pordata, IDC, DGAL), by performing interviews in 50 cities and analysing each one's websites.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE STUDY