CRITIC-TOPSIS Based Evaluation of Smart Community Governance: A Case Study in China

As the basic unit of a smart city, the smart community has received considerable attention and problems in community governance have appeared simultaneously. Previous studies of smart community governance have failed to encompass all aspects, especially the evaluation tools for ensuring its outcomes. Therefore, this paper developed a comprehensive evaluation framework based on the CRITIC-TOPSIS method combined with the identified evaluation indicators. Seven smart communities from four cities in China were selected as cases to show how this evaluation framework could be applied to decision-making. The results indicated that the evaluation indicator "Mediation of Conflict" had the highest weight while "The participation of social enterprises in governance" had the lowest weight. Furthermore, the Yucun community presented the highest governance performance among these seven smart communities. Several strategies are proposed for improving the level of smart community governance, such as devoting significant resources to develop infrastructure in smart communities, facilitating communication among multiple participants, and increasing funding for the implementation of smart communities. This research contributes both to the innovation of community governance evaluation and to the improvement of smart communities.