Pilot project to assess city progress and inform urban-development policies
Geneva, 13 May 2015 – Dubai will be the world’s first city to assess the efficiency and sustainability of its operations using the key performance indicators developed by the ITU-T Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities. The two-year pilot project will evaluate the feasibility of the indicators with the aim of contributing to their international standardization.
The collaboration between Smart Dubai, an initiative to convert Dubai into a smart city, and ITU is part of ITU’s efforts to encourage the adoption of master plans for sustainable urban development by city administrations. The key performance indicators focus on the elements of a smart city that rely on information and communication technologies (ICT), offering a measure of progress relevant to ICT aspects of urban-development master plans. The ‘Smart Dubai’ initiative’s extensive application of ICT makes the city an ideal test bed for the use of the indicators and their subsequent refinement.
“ICTs have great potential to improve the quality of life enjoyed by city inhabitants,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “Dubai’s experience will assist ITU in developing a standard means to measure the success of smart-city strategies, and I commend Dubai for its will to promote urban sustainability at the international level.”
Assistant Director-General of the Executive Office of Dubai, Member of the Smart Dubai Executive Committee and Team Leader of the Smart City Taskforce, Dubai, Aisha Bin Bishr: “The Smart Dubai initiative is an ambitious one. We are transforming a thousand government services through innovative applications of ICT. The broad scope of the initiative makes for an excellent field trial of ITU’s key performance indicators as we have an opportunity to trace the efficacy of a wide range of ICT applications from root to maturity. Selecting Dubai to be the first city to assess the efficiency and sustainability of its operations using the key performance indicators developed by ITU is a challenge to showcase the achievement of our city in this field. We will work hard to make a successful pilot to open the doors for other cities to learn from the Dubai experience.”
Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori: “UAE is home to some of the highest ICT penetration rates in the world. We are creating the conditions necessary for government and industry to capitalize on this ICT ubiquity to build smarter, more sustainable cities that are highly responsive to citizens’ needs.”
The pilot project will test and verify the key performance indicators as a contribution to their international standardization by ITU-T Study Group 5 (Environment and climate change). Dubai’s experience will also assist ITU in the potential development of a ‘Global Smart Sustainable Cities Index’ derived from the set of indicators.
The agreement between ITU and the Executive Office of Dubai was signed at the ITU Forum on Smart Sustainable Cities in Abu Dhabi, 3-4 May 2015, hosted by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of UAE. The same venue played host to the final meeting of the ITU-T Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities, 5-6 May 2015.
The Focus Group has offered an open platform to identify the standardization requirements of smart sustainable cities, concluding its activities 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 spanning from the management of electromagnetic fields to smart water management, climate change mitigation and adaptation, intelligent buildings, open data, and cybersecurity and data protection.
The technical reports and specifications are available free of charge on the Focus Group’s homepage.