Systematic review of smart cities and climate change adaptation

Purpose Understanding policy consequences for cities is very important in an urban setting, especially in this era of developing solutions for grand challenges. Climate change adaptation and smart cities are emerging topics in the climate change and sustainability domain. Therefore, this paper aims to achieve a better understanding of policy consequences and exploring synergies of climate change adaptation and smart cities are valuable for both research and practice. Design/methodology/approach This paper systematically reviews synergies of smart city applications in urban climate change adaptation literature. A systematic literature review and content analysis are carried out to answer the research questions and a theoretically based smart cities concept matrix with synergetic coproduction theory is used to assess the empirical studies. Findings Key findings are that the model of synergetic coproduction could identify the benefits co-existing in smart city and climate change adaptation. While smart people and smart government play the fundamental roles, synergies could co-occur in other smart city dimensions. Smart city applications in climate change adaptation could increase competitiveness in cities by exploiting the opportunities as well as reducing the harmful risks. Originality/value This study combines two emerging topics in the assessment, climate change adaptation and smart cities, and represents a new way of assessing literature and possibly policy outcomes for the cities. By using the theoretical framework from smart cities and theory of coproduction, a theory-based framework is developed for assessing the empirical studies of climate adaptation in cities. The findings from the systematic literature review indicate relations among smart city dimensions in a clear manner and also identify the synergies of smart cities and climate adaptation.