In recent years, the world’s population living in cities has been rapidly increasing. Cities are
transforming their infrastructure in a smarter and more efficient way so that sustainable development
forms part of their long-term strategy. However, this transformation does not always result in
expected benefits due to a variety of factors such as an absence of social acceptance, a lack of holistic
design and the development of unilateral interventions. An analysis of the scientific literature related
to the evaluation of the impact of smart city actions revealed a gap in the holistic methods for their
assessment. To this end, an accurate evaluation of implemented smart solutions focusing on the
energy domain is necessary in order to assess the expected and realized impact of each solution.
This paper proposes a seven-step methodology for assessing the impact of smart city interventions
and presents a use case for the city of Espoo. A number of major findings were the outcome of our
research and development work, such as the need for a thorough analysis of the long-term vision of
the city, a combined top-down and bottom-up approach and the ongoing cooperation between all
stakeholders involved in urban planning and transformation, in which necessary Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) are defined.