Page 52 - U4SSC Factsheet, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, June 2020

Conclusion

This has been the first year of Riyadh’s collaboration with ITU on this project that is designed, in part,
to continue the evaluation of the feasibility of the U4SSC KPIs for SSC. The following conclusions have
been derived based on Riyadh’s experience in its U4SSC smart sustainable journey:

• As a part of the U4SSC KPIs refinement process, ITU undertook a two-part approach to the indicators
by preparing a basic set of core indicators that can be reported easily by most cities, along with a
list of advanced indicators. The advanced indicators can be reported by cities that have attained
good scores on the basic indicators. Riyadh successfully reported 98 per cent of all core U4SSC
indicators and 59 per cent of all advanced indicators as well.

• It is expected that the key findings from Riyadh's experience will also help towards improving the
existing definitions of the U4SSC KPIs, in order to enable a smoother data collection process again
for Riyadh and, potentially, other Saudi Arabian cities in the future.
• Riyadh should build on its first year of reporting the U4SSC KPIs by instituting the mechanisms
and further developing capabilities to quantify, measure, collect and report data relevant to any
remaining KPIs (that were not reported in its first year). The city should also adopt the various
recommendations contained in this report to its specific context, and report data in subsequent
years after the implementation of new measures. Doing so will also allow for year-over-year progress
benchmarking and analytics.

• Riyadh should collaborate on its SSC efforts with other cities in the region in order to leverage any
best practices and shared experiences with developing and instituting smart sustainable policies
and initiatives in the region. Regular knowledge-sharing and discussions with ITU members and
other international cities are also encouraged.
• Riyadh and its fellow aspiring smart sustainable cities should implement the recommendations and
best practices mentioned in this Factsheet to improve the applicability of the KPIs across their cities/
regions and accelerate the achievement of their SSC goals in line with international instruments
(such as the Paris Agreement, Connect 2030 Agenda, the UN Sustainable Development Goals and
the New Urban Agenda).
• The vital knowledge gained through Riyadh’s experience in implementing the U4SSC KPIs will
continue to be a part of ongoing efforts to make not only the U4SSC KPIs, but also U4SSC’s
upcoming Smart Sustainable Cities Index the most effective methods to measure progress and
provide guidance to cities around the world on their journey to becoming smarter and sustainable.

• Riyadh’s reported KPIs will also feed into ITU’s new maturity model. The ITU-T Recommendation
Y.4904: ‘Smart Sustainable Cities Maturity Model (SSC-MM)’ is an additional tool to not only set
and measure performance levels of each KPI by Riyadh and other cities, but to also measure the
progress of other key dimensions for the development of a SSC including strategy, ICT infrastructure,
data, services and applications and assessments, as further detailed in the box below.

46 U4SSC Factsheet | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | June 2020