ITU establishes focus group on smart cities

ITU-T has established a new focus group on smart sustainable cities to assess the standardization requirements of cities aiming to boost their social, economic and environmental sustainability through the integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their infrastructures and operations.

ITU-T Study Group 5 - Environment and climate change - agreed the formation of the new focus group at its meeting in Geneva on 29th January to 7th February, 2013.

The creation of the focus group on Smart Sustainable Cities answers a call to action on "Smart Sustainable Cities" proposed in September 2012 at ITU's 2nd Green standards week in Paris. "Smart Sustainable Cities'' is also the theme of ITU's 3rd Green ICT Application Challenge.

Cities are powerful engines of economic growth, fueled by intensive interpersonal communication and high concentrations of specialized skills. Urbanization's advantages are however mirrored by significant sustainability challenges, with cities today accounting for over 70 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 60-80 percent of global energy consumption.

Given that an estimated 70 per cent of the world's population will live in cities by 2050, sustainable urbanization has become a key policy point to administrations across the world. Here ICTs have a crucial role to play by increasing environmental efficiency across industry sectors and enabling such innovations as intelligent transport systems (ITS) and smart water, energy and waste management.

The focus group will act as an open platform for smart-city stakeholders - such as municipalities; academic and research institutes; non-governmental organizations (NGOs); and ICT organizations, industry forums and consortia - to exchange knowledge in the interests of identifying the standardized frameworks needed to support the integration of ICT services in smart cities.

The focus group will be headed by Silvia Guzman, chairman, Telefónica and will focus on: defining the role of ICTs in environmentally sustainable smart cities, and identifying the ICT systems necessary to the development of a smart sustainable city; Collecting and documenting information on existing smart city initiatives and technical specifications, focusing in particular on the identification ofstandardization gaps; Identifying or developing a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to gauge the success of smart-city ICT deployments; and developing a roadmap for the ICT sector's contribution to smart sustainable cities.