Page 8 - U4SSC Factsheet, Mashhad, Iran (Islamic Republic of), September 2021

Background: The United 4 Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) Initiative

The United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) is a UN initiative created to foster the standardization,
integration and interoperability of digital technologies within cities to make them smarter and more
sustainable.
The initiative has developed a set of international key performance indicators (KPIs) for Smart Sustainable
Cities (SSC) to establish criteria to evaluate ICTs' contributions towards making cities smarter and more
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sustainable, and to provide cities with the means for self-assessment in the move towards smartness and
sustainability.

The aim is to help cities worldwide use technology to serve the best interests of the people, and of the
environment. For this reason, environmental aspects, as well as socio-economic factors, also play a key
role in the U4SSC framework.

Helping cities become smarter and more sustainable: The U4SSC KPIs
The U4SSC KPIs offer a common format to report the progress of smart sustainable city strategies.
These indicators also enable cities to measure their progress relative to the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).
ITU’s objectives for the U4SSC KPIs for SSC project in cities are as follows:

• Assisting cities with implementing the KPIs in order to measure and evaluate a city’s progress
in becoming smarter and more sustainable as they move towards meeting the SDGs within the
local context.
• Learning from cities’ experiences, and sharing the rich and varied knowledge, insights and
feedback with other cities around the world, in order to set them on the path towards enabling
them to refine their own smart sustainable city strategies.
• Evaluating the strengths of this system of KPIs, and identifying any areas for improvement, and to
obtain practical and actionable feedback towards supporting the international standardization
work of ITU-T Study Group 20: Internet of Things, and Smart Cities and Communities.
• Providing cities with a consistent and standardized method of collecting data and measuring
performance and progress.

The KPIs are categorized into three dimensions:

ECONOMY SOCIETY AND CULTURE

ENVIRONMENT

2 U4SCC Factsheet | Mashhad, Iran (Islamic Republic of) | September 2021