An estimated 70% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050, so sustainable urbanization has become a key policy point for administrations across the world - cities today account for over 70 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 60-80 per cent of global energy consumption. Once again, all three participants in the World Standards Cooperation (IEC, ISO and ITU) have important contributions to make to help achieve the relevant SDGs.
ISO 18091 provides quality management requirements and guidelines for local governments aimed at achieving sustainable development at the local level, including the deployment of, and interaction with, national and regional policies. It includes a diagnostic tool that addresses good governance, as well as sustainable economic, environmental and social development. The ISO 37100 series of standards address sustainable development in communities, including management system requirements, indicators for city services and quality of life and performance metrics for smart community infrastructures.
Whilst the IEC does not have a single suite of standards aimed at Smart Cities, it provides many of the International Standards needed to safely connect and automate the city infrastructure that generates or uses electricity and contains electronics. Hundreds of IEC International Standards come into play to tailor the integration of energy generation, buildings, transportation, lighting, healthcare, safety/security and a multitude of city and financial services to the needs of each individual city. The IEC Systems Evaluation Group on Smart Cities is preparing a reference architecture and standardization roadmap in cooperation with many different organizations, including ISO and ITU.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has a crucial role to play in the development of Smart Cities by increasing environmental efficiency across industry sectors and enabling such innovations as intelligent transport systems (ITS) and “Smart” water, energy and waste management. The ITU Study Group on the Internet of Things (IoT), including smart cities and communities, develops international standards and acts as an international platform for smart-city stakeholders (municipalities, academic and research institutes, governments and ICT organizations among others) to exchange knowledge in the interests of identifying the standardized frameworks needed to support the integration of ICT services in smart cities. ITU-T L. 1440 gives guidance for environmental impact assessment of ICTs at city level, and a series of ITU’s international standards provides requirements and guidelines for key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and monitor smart and sustainable city transitions. More recently, ITU and UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) are developing a new Recommendation on KPIs for smart sustainable cities to assess the achievement of sustainable development goals, expected to be approved by the end of 2016.
