# Smart City Actions Integrated into Urban Planning:
## 3 Materials and Methods  
The methodology was structured through a systematized literature search sup-ported by a cross-sectional study, and the results were analyzed using the multi-criteria method Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), which is a method that provides opportunities to solve the problem by generating new scientific knowledge [27]. The methodological path was based on a seven-stage methodological research diagram (Figure 1). The first stage includes the definition of the research problem to direct and systematize the remaining stages, covering two central aspects: understanding the problem, and identifying the cause and effect of the variables addressing the problem. Also, the first stage is guided by the following research question: How do thematic areas influence the performance of smart city management in urban space planning? For the second stage, the theoretical foundation was developed to guide the conceptual alignment and in-depth research approaching smart cities' thematic areas, by selecting articles from the Scopus and Web of Science databases (Figure 2). Figure 1: Methodological research diagram. In the systematized review procedure, the search strings were defined and applied to Scopus and Web of Science, returning 2532 articles. Also, duplicate articles were excluded (956 repeated articles). For the first selection (1576 articles), the classification criterion was the database citation number, calculated by dividing the number of citations by the article publication date. Thus, the articles were ranked, and a second criterion was defined for the final selection, named citation representativeness, selecting only articles that comprised 35% of citations. Therefore, 115 articles comprised the reference base. The information was systematized by category (author, title, source, publication year, number of citations, keywords, target audience, and thematic area) to provide publication details, structure the conceptual knowledge, and begin the bibliometric analysis. A bibliometric analysis was developed in the third stage, using the VOSviewer 1.6.20 software [28] to analyze the words' co-occurrence in the abstracts. The keywords were selected by grouping, being structured in clusters with a minimum database word frequency of 30 times. Also, terms unrelated to the area were disregarded. Next, in the fourth stage, the most prominent words in the co-occurrence mappings were listed and, through the relationships established, the thematic areas of smart cities were identified and systematized. Also, a reference matrix with the 11 thematic areas was created, covering the segmentation of activity areas in urban space management, generating innovative solutions in city services. For the fifth stage, an exploratory survey to collect experts' perceptions of the levels of influence between the thematic areas was created. Also, it was possible to estimate the influence levels between thematic areas using paired factors, judging the thematic areas based on their degree of influence [29]. To investigate the degree of influence between the thematic areas, a form with 11 multiple-choice questions was proposed, where each question investigated a thematic area, aiming to identify the influence received from and exerted on the other 10 thematic areas included in the reference matrix. The form was sent to Brazilian experts in four categories: smart cities researchers, municipal public managers, professionals working in the technological sector, and technology development business managers. The questions were structured with 5 possible answers: no influence (0), low influence (1), medium influence (2), high influence (3), and very high influence (4), as proposed in [11]. In the sixth stage, the interdependent relationships between the smart cities' thematic areas were identified using DEMATEL [30], allowing structures of cause-and-effect relationships to be visualized for decision-making [31].