Framework for Assessing the Smartness Maturity Level of Villages

In this work, we have developed the first version of a smartness assessment framework that allows the representatives from a village to make a self-evaluation of its current status based on smartness criteria identified by an international group of experts. The framework allows a detailed evaluation of six different aspects including Mobility, Governance, Economy, Environment, Living, People, with weightings of the criteria using the multi-criteria analysis Electre Tri. In addition, the results enable further data analysis and offers an input for different functionality like identification of best practices and collaboration and matchmaking among potential stakeholders. In addition, we show the effectiveness of the proposed framework by means of a case study on a test area around the European Alpine space.