As a micro-unit of the smart city, smart communities have transformed residents’ lives into a world that connects physical objects. Simultaneously, though, they have brought community safety problems. Most studies of the smart community have only focused on technical aspects, and little attention has been paid to community safety. Thus, this paper aims to develop an evaluation system for smart community safety, which will further promote community safety development. On the basis of identifying evaluation indicators, an evaluation framework was built to assess the level of smart community safety by a comprehensive CRITIC-TOPSIS method. Five smart communities in Shenzhen city were selected as cases to validate the feasibility of the evaluation framework. There was an indication that the indicator with the highest weight was the ‘building monitoring’, and the indicator with the lowest weight was the ‘emergency shelter guidelines’. In addition, the Yucun community showed the highest safety level among these five smart communities. Some suggestions for enhancing the safety level of the smart community are proposed, such as strengthening the training of community safety management talents, establishing good emergency protective measures, and encouraging residents to participate in the development of community safety. This research not only provides an innovative community safety assessment method; it also enriches the knowledge of smart community safety.

As the basic unit of a smart city, the smart community has received considerable attention and problems in community governance have appeared simultaneously. Previous studies of smart community governance have failed to encompass all aspects, especially the evaluation tools for ensuring its outcomes. Therefore, this paper developed a comprehensive evaluation framework based on the CRITIC-TOPSIS method combined with the identified evaluation indicators. Seven smart communities from four cities in China were selected as cases to show how this evaluation framework could be applied to decision-making. The results indicated that the evaluation indicator ”Mediation of Conflict” had the highest weight while ”The participation of social enterprises in governance” had the lowest weight. Furthermore, the Yucun community presented the highest governance performance among these seven smart communities. Several strategies are proposed for improving the level of smart community governance, such as devoting significant resources to develop infrastructure in smart communities, facilitating communication among multiple participants, and increasing funding for the implementation of smart communities. This research contributes both to the innovation of community governance evaluation and to the improvement of smart communities.

Smart community enables a sustainable and livable community future, in which residents’ demands play an important role in its success. Though great efforts have been made to encourage residents’ participation in the implementation of smart communities, inefficient service supply still exists. Thus, this study aimed to classify residents’ demands for community services in smart communities and to explore relevant influencing factors based on the developed conceptual framework. Data from 221 respondents in Xuzhou city of China were analyzed by using binary logistic regression. The results indicated that more than 70% of respondents had demands for all community services in smart communities. Moreover, the demands were influenced by distinct factors, including sociodemographic characteristics, living characteristics, economic characteristics, and individual attitude characteristics. The types of community services in smart communities are clarified and fresh insights are provided into associated factors related to residents’ demands for these services in this study, through which enhanced provision of community services and effective implementation of smart communities can be achieved.