Page 46 - A U4SSC deliverable - Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies

The role of standardisation in driving frontier technologies

International standards can play a significant role in defining the technical and environmental
requirements needed to scale up frontier technology solutions. This standardisation process would
depend on the purpose of the technologies as different requirements are needed to support their
deployment within smart cities.

Box 1: ITU-T Study Group 20 on IoT and Smart Cities and Communities (Source)

ITU-T Study Group 20 on IoT and Smart Cities and Communities

Since its creation in May 2015, ITU-T Study Group 20 has been the lead study group addressing
the standardisation requirements of the Internet of things (IoT) technologies, with a specific
focus on IoT applications in smart cities and communities (SC&C).

Accordingly, SG20 has been developing international standards for the coordinated development
of IoT technologies, including machine-to-machine communications and ubiquitous sensor
networks.

Within the realm of its smart city focus, SG20 has extensive ongoing standardisation work to
leverage IoT technologies to address urban-development challenges in line with the Sustainable
Development Goals.

One of the most common challenges in deploying IoT in cities is the issue of interoperability. Legacy
systems and the latest IoT infrastructure are often not compatible with one another. The ability of IoT
nodes and systems to communicate with each other is crucial for integrating IoT into city services.
Delivering effective city services or verticals requires different layers of architectures, platforms and
third-party applications to interact with one another. For example, in the case of smart tourism, in
order to send personalised and real-time information to the tourists, the necessary data have to be
collected from sensors and analysed through a smart city platform, which may require cross-platform
interactions, following which the information will be delivered to the tourists’ mobile devices.

To this end, international standards are crucial for harmonising the requirements of IoT systems and
architecture. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has developed a series of standards
(called ITU-T Recommendations) to support smart cities and communities to define these requirements
and tackle interoperability issues in IoT. These standards are as contained in the Recommendation ITU-T
Y.4000 series “Internet of things and smart cities and communities”. Within this series, Recommendation
ITU-T Y.4201 on “High-level requirements and reference framework of smart city platforms” defines
129
the framework of smart city platforms (SCPs), while Recommendation ITU-T Y.4200 on “Requirements
of the interoperability of smart city platform” provides the specifications of reference points of SCPs.
130
Recommendation ITU-T Y.4402 on “Requirements and functional architecture for the open ubiquitous
sensor network (USN) service platform” provides guidance for setting the requirements of an open
131
USN service platform.

36 Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies | A U4SSC deliverable