The impact of standardisation method on smart city ranking

Purpose: The main purpose of the work is to present the impact of standardisation methods on the ranking results. The second purpose of the article was to present Warsaw’s position in comparison with the capitals of countries from the Eurozone. Design/methodology/approach: Major European cities were assessed using Eurostat data. The proprietary Smart City Index (SCI) indicator is proposed for the study, referring to six areas of Smart City assessment. Two measures are indicated in each of them. The first is an objective measure, while the second is a subjective measure, based on the opinion of the city’s residents about the situation in the city, or their own situation. Building rankings of the cities, following normalisation methods were used and compared: unitisation, unitisation with zero minimum, normalisation in range [-1, 1], classical standardisation, Weber standardisation and two quotient methods. Findings: The best results were obtained for the classical standardisation. For this method we obtained the smallest number of consistent positions in rankings and the minimal maximum of distance between the positions in rankings. The position of Warsaw as a city in 16th position (20 of all) was confirmed regardless of the standardization method used. Originality/value: There is proposed an original method to assess cities based on Eurostat data. This method allows construction of Smart City ranking. The main value of the work is that the classical standardisation is recommended to transform the original values of individual indicators.