Developing Smart Regions: Proposal and Application of a Model for Island Territories

Transforming a city into a smart city is a long and complex process. If the aim is to modify large areas (regions/territories), the problem becomes significantly harder. Contrary to what might be expected, combining N smart cities within the same territory will not necessarily lead to a smart region. Although there are several smart-region experiments of an international nature, there is still no benchmark to facilitate this task. In the case of island territories, this task is made less complex due to the common problems that characterize them. This paper analyzes these characteristics, seeks common patterns and proposes a model for the smart development of island territories in an effort to harmonize and optimize the available resources by providing for smart planning that is more orderly, uniform and efficient. To compare the model, we used as a reference the Smart Island proposal designed by the government of Spain as part of its National Plan for Smart Cities (Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, 2015a).