A Fuzzy DEMATEL-based approach for analyzing the causal relationships among different dimensions of the sustainable smart cities

New urban planning paradigms have provided a new framework based on sustainable cities for urbanization. nowadays, a smart solution is submitted by day and these solutions make citiesradically change the way, they are managed today. according to this view, various dimensionscan be offered for a sustainable smart city. to determine the smart sustainable city concept, itis needed to define the dimensions of a specific city are smart and sustainable. therefore, thisstudy aims to analyze the causal relationships of sustainable smart city dimensions. as a result, afuzzy dematel solution is developed and presented. the population is 42 urban developers whoare chosen reasonably. a pairwise matrices questionnaire was made to compare and match eachcouple of criteria. a group of experts evaluated the correlation between criteria. then, the linguisticvariables were put into triangular fuzzy numbers and then their opinion about the criteria wascollected. after that, the crisp total direct relation matrix, the fuzzy, and the normalized matrix ofdirect relation were calculated. findings showed that policy factors affect all six other factors andare influenced by all the other factors except environmental factors. governance factors influenceall six other factors and are affected by policy and business factors. economic factors affect all theother factors except governance factors. environmental factors are affected by four other factors.the inhabitant factors have the most interaction (influence/influence) with other criteria andsince (d_i - r_i) is negative for inhabitant factors, so this criterion is a net effect. the governance factors after inhabitant factors have the most interactions with other criteria and since (d_i - r_i) is positive for governance factors, so this criterion is a net cause. given that the value (d_i - r_i) is positive, the criteria of policy factors, economic factors and environmental factors are also net causes. this approach can develop a robust management approach that can be used in different smart city environments.