Page 810 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

1 Scope

These Technical Specifications form part of a series of Technical Reports and Technical Specifications
focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) for smart sustainable cities (SSCs). It specifically
provides the KPIs related to ICT impact on city sustainability in the context of SSC. Evaluating these
indicators can help cities as well as their stakeholders understand the extent to which they may be
perceived as SSC. These Technical Specifications describe applicability of KPIs, principles, dimensions
as well as the definitions of corresponding indicators. To fit into the overall framework of city
indicators the present Technical Specifications re‐use the categorization of UN‐Habitat's City
Prosperity Index.

These Technical Specifications can be utilized by:
 Cities and municipal administrations, including the SSC‐relevant policy‐making organizations,
and government sectors, enabling them to develop strategies and understand the progress
related to the use of ICT for making cities smarter and more sustainable.
 City inhabitants and their non‐profit organizations, enabling them to understand the
development and progress of SSC with respect to the impact of ICT.
 Development and operation organizations of SSC, including planning unit, SSC‐related producers
and service providers, operation and maintenance organizations, helping them fulfill the tasks
of sharing information related to the use of ICT and its impact on the sustainability of cities.
 Evaluation agencies and academia, supporting them in selection of relevant KPIs for assessing
the contribution from ICT in the development of SSC.

The intention of identifying the KPIs is to establish the criteria to evaluate ICT´s contributions in
making cities smarter and more sustainable, and to provide the cities with the means for
self‐assessments. It is desirable that cities are able to quantify their achievement according to their
goals.

The ICT solutions include ICT goods, networks and services as well as ICT projects. An ICT project is
defined as a set of activities that uses mainly ICT goods, networks and services to implement a
specific task. At a city level, ICT projects particularly target the deployment of ICT in different parts
of society to improve the sustainability performance in SSC. The KPIs can be used to assess the city
sustainability before and after the implementation of ICT solutions.

These Technical Specifications list the core indicators that are chosen as applicable to all cities. The
goals for moving towards increased smartness and sustainability differs between cities. Thus, based
on their stage of economic development or/and population growth etc., the cities can also select
appropriate indicators among those listed in Appendix I and/or use new ones.

These Technical Specifications are applicable to both cities and city regions, which could be
organized in different ways:

 A single city organized as one or more administrative units, or
 A union of cities in the neighboring area that can share some services.

800 ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications