​Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General

Smart Sustainable Cities : A Rising Priority for Decision-Makers : Opening Remarks
3 March 2015, Reading, United Kingdom, Switzerland

Lord Erroll, Member of the House of Lords,
Alok Sharma, Member of Parliament,
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to welcome you today to this ITU Forum on Smart Sustainable Cities.

I would like to thank our host, Symantec – an ITU Sector Member since 2009 – for offering us these excellent facilities and for your active engagement in the work of ITU, the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies, ICTs.

I would particularly like to thank Lord Erroll and Alok Sharma for your participation. It demonstrates the importance of smart cities for the UK.

ITU has been following closely the work of the UK Smart Cities Forum which has brought together municipalities, industry representatives, ICT experts and government departments to identify and address barriers to the development and deployment of smart cities across the UK.

We invite you to share the results of this work through the platform provided by the ITU – an organisation of 193 governments and over 700 private sector entities, civil society and academia.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Unprecedented urbanization over the past 100 years or so means that cities are now the biggest consumers of natural resources. In a world where more than half of the global population lives in an urban environment, making our cities smart and sustainable must be a key priority.

Environmental reports consistently demonstrate that our levels of resource consumption – globally, but especially in the developed world – are unsustainable, and that the planet's ecosystem is beginning to suffer irreversible changes as a result.

Indeed, it has been said that if we continue to consume resources at current rates, it will not be too long before we need a Planet B. But as we all know, there is no Planet B – or at least no Planet B capable of providing us with the levels of comfort and security we enjoy here on Earth.

Unless we embark on a more sustainable future, we risk turning back the clock on the tremendous progress we have made in recent decades in eradicating hunger and poverty. And that sustainable future must include smart sustainable cities, underpinned by ICT applications and services which are rapidly becoming basic infrastructure.

There are three prime examples where ICTs will make a major difference: smart grids; smart water management; and intelligent transport systems. ITU is actively working in these three areas.

Smart grids will make huge improvements in the efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of power networks, both in terms of production and distribution – through applications such as smart metering, advanced recharging systems for electric vehicles, and improved consumer knowledge about appliance use and efficiency.

ICTs will be crucial in smart water management, helping in the mapping and monitoring of natural water resources, forecasting river flows and delivering advance flood warnings. ICTs are already essential to the efficient management of water distribution networks, and smart metering will play an increasingly important role reducing consumption particularly with regard to irrigation.

ICTs are also a key enabler of intelligent transport systems, helping to improve traffic flow and reduce pollution, enhancing the travel experience for all users, and generating time and energy efficiencies across the entire transportation system. This will be the theme of ITU's annual Future Networked Car event at this week's Geneva Motor Show.

Distinguished colleagues,

For the dream of smart sustainable cities to come true, we need to address a number of important challenges, including interoperability, security, and privacy. Addressing issues such as these is a key area of our work at ITU.

We do so by bringing together governments, industry, and academia to develop new standards and other relevant applications, so that solutions are interoperable, standards are worldwide and successful pilot projects can be scaled up.

Over the past seven years, we have made advances in this work in collaboration with a number of partners in particular the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC; the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP; and the European Commission.

The outcomes include a set of methodologies to assess the environmental impact of ICTs on the energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions of cities; the publication of many reports; and the organization of a number of seminars, forums, workshops and awareness-raising events.

Through the work of ITU's Standardization Sector, we have also developed a series of 'green ICT standards' applicable to smart sustainable cities.

There are some important UN conferences coming up this year and next year in which ITU is promoting the importance of ICTs: the Sustainable Development Summit in September in New York; the Climate Change Conference in Paris in December; and the Habitat III conference in Quito in October 2016. It will be very important to ensure that ICTs are mainstreamed in the Sustainable Develop Goals, and that smart sustainable cities are one of the key agenda items at the Habitat III conference. ITU will be holding side events at preparatory meetings for both events to raise awareness of the importance of ICTs, as we have done in the past few climate change conferences.

One of the activities supporting this is the Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities, which is also meeting here in Reading this week. Silvia Guzmán Araña, the chairman of the group, will be providing you information on the work of this group.

Distinguished colleagues,

Smart sustainable cities are within our reach – thanks in part to the many experts using ITU as a platform for building consensus on the technical and regulatory foundations for cleaner, healthier, more efficient, and more habitable cities.

To turn this promise into reality we will need your collaboration – so let me invite you to take advantage of ITU's work to interact, shape policy, and implement the international standards on which the smart, sustainable future will be built, so that we can help make the world a cleaner and better place for all.

Thank you all for participating. I thank in particular our speakers, and I wish you a very productive and informative day.