Page 190 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

Given that land use, buildings, electricity production, industrial energy use, transport, or waste
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management generate over 90% of GHG emissions sources in cities. Cities face climate change
mitigation challenges, particularly to minimize emissions or to optimize services that produce GHG
emissions on a local level. At present, existing technologies for climate change mitigation in cities
still require major technological shifts, new investments and integrated planning.

From a climate adaptation point of view, cities are the territorial areas of the planet that are the
most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. These specific impacts differ among countries,
regions and cities, and can vary from an increase in extreme weather events and flooding, to hotter
temperatures in particular locations, negatively affecting social welfare in cities. Floods for example,
are impacting major industrial activities or are exacerbating the conditions of poverty for inhabitants
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of vulnerable areas.
At the same time cities face challenges in implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation
policies. However, these challenges can turn into opportunities as cities provide the optimal
scenario to lead and foster the use of ICTs for climate change mitigation and adaptation. In this
respect, cities will need to invest today to reduce costs to adapt and transform their infrastructure
in the future in order to be able to optimize city services. Cities need low‐carbon services. Smart
technologies supported by ICTs can help achieve these goals (e.g. smart building or smart transport
solutions). From an adaptation point of view, the role of ICT infrastructure and services are critical
for climate adaptation planning, as well as for the implementation of disaster risk management
programs.
Cities that are in the process of becoming smart and sustainable, have a huge opportunity to include
in their climate change actions plans, ICT infrastructure and ICT solutions to improve efficiency of
their city services. As the intensity of urbanization is expected to increase, most of the urban
infrastructure that will exist in 40–50 years has not yet been built. Therefore cities are called on to
plan a long term strategy with ICTs in mind that may avoid locking themselves in costly, high‐
emitting and non‐climate resilient infrastructures.

 Shortage of SSC expertise
In order to succeed in the implementation of smarter and more sustainable cities, expert
professionals in this specific field are needed. This refers to urban planners, technologists,
economists, among other types of professionals, who must be prepared to deal with the challenges
of the new urban landscape. Apart from being experts on their specific field they should have a
general awareness of all the other aspects that define and shape cities. More importantly, this
transversal knowledge has to enable them to have a holistic and integrated view of the SSC
framework. In this scenario, an urban planner or an environmental expert would also have general
knowledge about the capabilities and functioning of the Internet of Things (IoT) applied to cities,
and the ICT infrastructure that is needed for that and can therefore have a holistic vision of the SSC.
 Growing inequality

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The World Economic Forum on its Outlook on the Global Agenda 2014 , ranked widening income
disparities as the second most significant global trend. A recent study by Oxfam suggest that "seven
out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years" and

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17 http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html
18 Guide to Climate Change Adaptation in Cities. World Bank. (2011)
19 http://www.weforum.org/reports/outlook‐global‐agenda‐2014

180 ITU‐T's Technical Reports And Specifications