ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 143 2 SSC definition The emergence of the 'Smart City' notion has been accompanied by a plethora of definitions and terminology related to smartness, sustainability and innovation within urban settings. Recognizing the need for a standardized definition of SSC, the FG‐SSC commissioned the preparation of a technical report aimed at exploring available literature on the subject, analysing existing definitions of smart cities and sustainable cities from academic, private sector, government, and NGO sources, and identifying the factors that lay at the core of the SSC's concept. Box 1 – FG‐SSC: Composition and Scope of Work Established in February 2013 by ITU‐T Study Group 5, the Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities provides a platform to share views, develop a series of deliverables, showcase initiatives, projects, policies and standard related activities that are taking place in the area of smart and sustainable cities. It also analyzes ICT solutions and projects that promote environmental sustainability in cities. It is composed of four Working Groups (WG), focussing on the following tasks: Working Group 1 is focused on providing an overview of current state‐of‐art of SSC. The most important results of this group is the proposed definition of SSC and an overview which define the different parameters which currently outline a smart sustainable city and the role of ICT in this urban environment, as the glue which integrates all the other elements as a foundational platform. Working Group 2 is responsible for identifying the technologies and city service infrastructures needed in the city, specially focused on ICT. It aims to look into future trends and to identify standardization gaps. This working group has developed several technical reports focused on the infrastructure and ICT based services needed in SSC, including: smart buildings, smart water management systems, security and resilience structures, among others. Working Group 3 focuses on defining the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will allow the evaluation of the city's transformation into a smart sustainable city, using a new integration model of technology vis‐à‐vis city services. This working group has also identified the standardization roadmap gaps which is helpful for the standardization activities related to the development of SSC. Working Group 4 is responsible for identifying all the stakeholders that need to be involved in a smart sustainable city, as well as identifying the major challenges that they could face in its implementation. This group also has the task to identify key stakeholders within the SSC standardization and non‐standardization activities worldwide, in order to disseminate and share the outcomes of the focus group. Source: ITU (2014). Further information is available at: http://www.itu.int/en/ITU‐T/focusgroups/ssc