Page 3 - U4SSC Collection Methodology for Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities

Collection Methodology for Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities

Overview

These indicators have been developed to provide cities with a consistent and standardised method to collect
data and measure performance and progress to:
 achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
 becoming a smarter city; and
 becoming a more sustainable city.
The indicators will enable cities to measure their progress over time, compare their performance to other
cities and through analysis and sharing allow for the dissemination of best practices and set standards for
progress in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the city level.

Each indicator forms a part of a holistic view of a city’s performance in three dimensions; Economy,
Environment and Society and Culture. Each of these dimensions provides a separate view of progress and
when reported together provide a holistic view of a smart sustainable city.
Within each dimension, there are sub dimension that focus on more specific areas of performance and
progress. An example is the ICT Infrastructure sub-dimension which provides a more in-depth view of how
ICTs are deployed and used within a city.

The indicators are further subdivided into core and advanced indicators. Core indicators are those that should
be able to be reported on by all cities, provide a basic outline of smartness and sustainability and higher levels
of performance can generally be achievable. Advanced indicators provide a more in depth view of a city and
measure progress on more advanced initiatives; however, they may be beyond the current capabilities of
some cities to report or implement.
These indicators will also form the basis for the U4SSC Smart Sustainable City Index. The index will collect the
reported indicators values along with data about the profile of the city to provide a comparative ranking of
cities.

Each indicator has been chosen through a process of review and input by international experts and UN
agencies, programmes and secretariats to ensure that the data collected supports the SDGs , is relevant to
measuring progress to becoming smarter and more sustainable and provide a basis for comparison.
To ensure that cities are more easily able to collect data and to ensure that reported indicator values are
consistent, each indicator has a description for:

 the rationale for choosing the indictor;
 how the indicator should be interpreted;
 what benchmarking trends are considered desirable;
 the methodology for calculating the value to be reported; and
 potential sources of data.
This collection methodology for the Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities provides cities
with a methodology on how to collect data or information from key performance indicators (KPIs) for smart
sustainable cities (SSC). This set of KPIs for SSC was developed to establish the criteria to assess the
smartness and sustainability of a city, and to provide cities with the means for self-assessments towards
SDGs.

iii