SOCIO-TECHNOLOGICAL PATHWAYS TO SUSTAINABLE SMART CITIES: A DEMATEL ANALYSIS OF IoT CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIC RESPONSES

Abstract

Smart cities are widely promoted as a response to urbanisation pressures, with the Internet of Things (IoT) providing the core enabling technology. IoT adoption at the city scale involves coupled technical, organisational, and financial challenges that are rarely studied as a connected system. This study applies the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method, grounded in a socio-technical systems perspective, to model the perceived causal relationships among five recurring IoT challenges (interoperability, scalability, data analytics, data security and privacy, and financial constraints) and five widely proposed strategic responses (standardisation of IoT protocols, microservices-oriented architecture, edge computing, data-protection regulation, and public–private partnerships). Twenty-five purposively selected experts engaged in IoT-enabled smart city projects in Malaysia provided the influence judgments analysed here. The analysis identifies data security and privacy as the dominant perceived causal driver among the challenges, financial constraints as the most prominent receiving challenge, and the standardisation of IoT protocols as the strategy with the strongest net influence and the broadest perceived reach across the challenges. Rather than asserting universal causal claims, the study provides a context-specific, expert-based prioritisation framework for Malaysian smart city implementation, with implications for how policymakers, urban planners, and technology providers sequence interventions in resource-constrained settings.