Singapore has joined the ITU’s two-year pilot project to evaluate the feasibility of the ITU’s key performance indicators for smart sustainable cities. The ITU aims to develop an internationally standardised set of of the indicators that can be used as the basis of a Global Smart Sustainable Cities Index.
The pilot project will test and verify the key performance indicators as a contribution to their international standardisation by ITU-T Study Group 5 (Environment and climate change). Singapore and Dubai are the first two cities to join the pilot exercise, and ITU expects other cities to follow suit.
The results of the pilot project are also expected to assist the standardisation work of the new ITU-T Study Group 20 (Internet of Things and its applications including smart cities and communities). The first meeting of ITU-T Study Group 20 is scheduled for 19-23 October 2015 at ITU Headquarters in Geneva.
The key performance indicators were developed by an ITU-T Focus Group , which offered an open platform to identify the standardisation requirements of smart sustainable cities. The group concluded its activities in May with the release of twenty-one technical reports and specifications.
The reports and specifications, in addition to key performance indicators, detail the requirements of smart sustainable cities in areas as diverse as the management of electromagnetic fields, smart water management, climate change mitigation and adaptation, intelligent buildings, open data, and cybersecurity and data protection.
The ITU says: “The key performance indicators focus on the elements of a smart city that rely on ICT, offering a measure of progress relevant to ICT aspects of urban-development master plans.”
According to Chaesub Lee, director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau, Singapore is an ideal testbed for the indicators because it is making good progress in its Smart Nation initiative.
