ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 11 An overview of smart sustainable cities and the role of information and communication technologies Executive summary This Technical Report describes the main attributes of a smart sustainable city (SSC) and provides readers with a better understanding of what constitutes SSC. It identifies the role and potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in SSC, and outlines at a high level the key ICT infrastructures which will enable SSC strategies. Economy, governance, environment and society are the four primary pillars which characterize a city. These are reflected via three overarching dimensions of a city: (1) environment and sustainability, (2) city level services and (3) quality of life. Each of these dimensions have multiple attributes which characterize them, some of which overlap. Sustainability and the environment are critical to the urban landscape since cities represent 75% of energy consumption and 80% of CO2 emissions on a global basis. The primary attributes in this dimension include infrastructure and governance, energy and climate change, pollution, waste, social, economic and health aspects. As for city level services, the key attributes include technology and infrastructure (e.g. transportation, buildings, healthcare), sustainability (e.g. water, air, waste), governance (e.g. organization, administration and leadership) and economy (e.g. financial, human capital, economic strength). The final dimension is the quality of life of the citizens. This reflects how the inhabitants of a city perceive their own sense of well‐being and the fact that they are constantly striving to better themselves – for example, in terms of wealth, health and education. All of the above need to be balanced for a successful smart sustainable city. Infrastructure is a pivotal aspect of a smart sustainable city. Traditionally, there have been two types of infrastructure: physical (e.g. buildings, roads, transportation, and power plants) and digital (information technology (IT) and communications infrastructure). There is also the concept of a service infrastructure which provides services which run on top of the physical infrastructure (e.g. education, health care, e‐government, and mass transit). The digital infrastructure provides the glue to enable the smart sustainable city to operate efficiently and in an optimal manner. Common physical and service infrastructures include: (1) smart energy, (2) smart buildings, (3) smart transportation, (4) smart water, (5) smart waste, (6) smart physical safety and security, (7) smart health care and (8) smart education. ICT has a crucial role in SSC since it acts as the platform to aggregate information and data to help enable an improved understanding on how the city is functioning in terms of resource consumption, services, and lifestyles. Examples of what ICT can achieve include: (1) ICT‐enabled information and knowledge sharing, (2) ICT‐enabled forecasts and (3) ICT‐enabled integration. Data prediction, analytics, big data, open data, Internet of things (IoT), data accessibility and management, data security, mobile broadband, ubiquitous sensor networks, all become essential in SSC and are predicated on a solid ICT infrastructure. Therefore, a smart sustainable city has an end goal to achieve an economically sustainable urban environment without sacrificing the comfort and convenience/quality of life of citizenry. It strives to create a sustainable living environment for all its citizens through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).