Page 49 - U4SSC Factsheet, Valencia, Spain, June 2020

Conclusion

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

• Within the framework of the U4SSC KPIs refinement process, the ITU undertook a two-part approach
to the indicators by preparing a basic set of core indicators that can be easily reported 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. Valencia successfully reported 93 per cent
of all core U4SSC indicators and 78 per cent of all advanced indicators as well.

• It is expected that the key findings from Valencia's experience, capitalized by Valencia Smart City
Office, will also help towards improving the existing definitions of the U4SSC KPIs, to enable a
smoother data collection process again for Valencia and, potentially, other cities in the future.
• Valencia 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). Doing so will also allow for year-over-year
progress benchmarking and analytics.

• In particular, it is recommended that Valencia focuses on improving its performance in areas related
to:

– high youth unemployment

– low R&D expenditure
– high water loss

– ICT monitoring and demand response of the electricity supply
– high reliance on private vehicles and relatively low usage of public transport

– few pedestrian zones
– low recycling rates

– high electricity consumption
– high housing expenditure

– gender income inequity
– high poverty rate

• Valencia should collaborate on its SSC efforts with other European cities 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.

• It is recommended that Valencia focuses its efforts on further developing certain key economic
sectors, especially its R&D and technology sectors, as part of its SSC goals.

U4SSC Factsheet | Valencia, Spain | June 2020 43