Page 856 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

6 Conclusions

This Technical Report collects a number of indicators that have been developed for cities by global,
national, regional, academic and company stakeholders. The analysis evidenced the broad set of
perspectives and approaches that exist in this field, but most importantly and common to all, it
showed the importance attributed to measuring, monitoring, and learning from ICT usage in smart
sustainable cities.
The content and supplementary information contained in this Technical Report allows the following
general reflections:
 Although the specific categorization used differs between indexes, frequently used
categories are economy, environment and – to some extent – governance. These are areas
that have been recognized to be at the core of SSC strategies.
 The social aspect of sustainability is addressed in different ways by specific sets of indicators.
Some have a main category for social aspects and add sub‐categories, others do not include
the social as an individual category, but instead use several categories that are related to
social aspects.
 Despite the specific and sometimes diverging approaches to measuring the role of ICTs in
smart city contexts, the sources reviewed confirmed the relevance of the key dimensions
and sub‐dimensions identified by the FG‐SSC for the development of SSC KPIs. They also
suggest the appropriateness of looking into ICT aspects, environmental sustainability,
productivity, quality of life, equity and social inclusion, and non‐ICT infrastructure
development, as crucial components of smart sustainable cities.

The comparative review conducted provides a valuable background for the discussions held by the
members of ITU's FG‐SSC, particularly for the exchanges that took place among the members of
Working Group 3 focused on KPI and metrics.
The review also helped to inform, complement and substantiate the development of the FG‐SSC
series of KPIs Technical Reports and Technical Specifications, specifically “Technical Specifications
on overview of key performance indicators in smart sustainable cities”, “Technical Specifications on
key performance indicators related to the use of information and communication technology in
smart sustainable cities” and “Technical Specifications on key performance indicators related to the
sustainability impacts of information and communication technology in smart sustainable cities”.

846 ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications