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224 Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities Benefit and Cost Estimation For Smart City Transportation Services 225

city transportation services, then continue to improve the model incrementally
using such analytic techniques. The goal is to develop an advanced decision-
support system for smart city service evolution. This will take account of smart
city policy objectives and provide guidance on what services should be deployed
and the order in which the deployment would take place to optimize several fac-
tors. These include benefit-cost ratios, incorporation of legacy systems, and in
nature of prior investments. The definition of an optimum sequence of services
sets the scene for detailed prioritization and staging and the delivery of services
through the definition and implementation of projects. As noted earlier, proj-
ects are essential since they represent manageable units of deployment that can
be subject to schedule and cost control and represent a standalone step toward
future big picture. However, it must be recognized that value and benefits are
in fact delivered by the services that are enabled by the projects. Making use of
services to communicate the plan investment pattern also enables more effective
outreach to a range of smart city partners and to the public, or end users of the
proposed services.
Another important goal in defining a benefit-cost framework is to provide
guidance to smart cities on the data required for effective before-and-after eval-
uations. In prior investments in advanced transportation technology, before-
and-after data collection has been inconsistent, presenting a challenge to direct
comparisons of before-and-after situations and comparisons between cities [1].

11.4 Overview of the Approach

Figure 11.2 illustrates an overall approach to the estimation of benefits and
costs for smart city transportation services. Each step is described in the follow-
ing sections.

Define Smart City Transportation Services
The starting point in the methodology is to create a definition of the smart city
transportation services to be deployed. While these are likely to vary from city
to city the 16 services identified in Chapter 5 are used to explain and illustrate
the general approach. The 16 services are as summarized in Tables 11.1–11.3.
Note that these are copies of tables from Chapter 5, showing the objectives
mapped to the services. There are two reasons for this. First, objectives provide
some insight into the types of values and benefits that may be delivered by the
service, and second, it is desirable to reinforce the connection between services
and objectives. The primary goal in delivering the services is to achieve the pre-
viously defined objectives. The objectives are also grouped according to safety,
efficiency, and user experience objectives.