Archived Newsroom • Press Release |
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New global platform to assist development of Smart
Sustainable Cities
International standards to help achieve smart-city ambitions
Geneva, 18 January 2016 – The first World Smart City online
community was
launched today to assist city stakeholders in their efforts to develop Smart
Sustainable Cities. The new community aims to identify the top ‘pain points’
presenting challenges to city development.
The community launch is part of the build-up to the first World Smart City
Forum, organized by IEC in partnership with ISO and ITU. The Forum will be held
in Singapore on 13 July 2016, co-located with the World Cities Summit
www.worldcitiessummit.com.sg/ and Singapore International Water
Week www.siww.com.sg.
“The development of Smart Sustainable Cities has become a key policy point to
administrations around the world as well as to UN organizations,” said ITU
Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. “The recognition of the potential of smart cities
comes in parallel with recognition that building smartness into an existing
city, or developing a smart city from the ground up, is a complex undertaking,
calling for improved cooperation and more integrated decision-making by a
variety of city stakeholders and global standards bodies, such as ITU, IEC and
ISO.”
By year 2050, an estimated 66 per cent of the world’s population will live in
urban areas. City leaders face a major challenge in the need to supply these
populations with basic resources, such as safe food, clean water and sufficient
energy, while ensuring overall economic, social and environmental
sustainability. Cities need to achieve substantial improvements in the
efficiency with which they operate and use their resources.
Major efficiency improvements could be achieved by horizontally
interconnecting individual systems such as energy, water, sanitation and waste
management, transportation, security, environmental monitoring or weather
intelligence. A key challenge to this horizontal integration lies in the fact
that many of today’s city systems originate from different suppliers and are
maintained by various agencies, sometimes working in isolation. The
interconnection of these systems, both physically and virtually, will demand
standardized interfaces.
Frans Vreeswijk, IEC General Secretary and CEO: “Cities are giant systems
with countless subsystems. All of them depend on electricity and hardware to
move people and things, collect data and exchange information. Already now, IEC
work impacts all of them. More than ever before, many different organizations
will need to collaborate to help make cities smarter; technology integration is
a special challenge that requires partnerships and alliances. That’s what the
online community and Forum is trying to achieve.”
Kevin McKinley, Acting ISO Secretary-General: “Smart cities make sense: they
waste less, offer better quality of life and ensure a brighter future for the
next generation. But cities face many challenges in their quest to improve. ISO
Standards help cities measure and improve their performance, for example with
standards for city indicators, sustainable communities and city infrastructures.
These Standards provide best practices and harmonized solutions that can be used
everywhere, and allow city planners and decision-makers to benefit from global
expertise.”
Chaesub Lee, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau:
“The information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure of a Smart
City should ensure openness and interoperability, achieved by coordinated
adherence to common standards. Smart cities will employ an abundance of
technologies in the family of the Internet of Things (IoT) and standards will
assist the harmonized implementation of IoT data and applications, contributing
to the effective horizontal integration of a city’s subsystems. ITU
collaboration with city leaders builds on the requirements of cities to develop
standards that leverage IoT technologies to address urban-development
challenges.”
For more information, please
contact:
Sanjay Acharya
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information, ITU
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Gabriela Ehrlich
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
Skype:
gabriela.ehrlich
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About ITU
About the World Smart City community
This online community will gather relevant city stakeholders globally and
engage them in value-add discussions and high-level networking. This will help
to crystalize some pain points of Smart City development in areas such as
mobility, water, energy, cybersecurity and privacy. The community discussions
aim to both break down barriers and encourage communication to support faster
Smart City development activities, as well as shape the final programme of the
World Smart City Forum in Singapore. In addition to high-level VIPs, the
community aims to attract professionals such as city planners, architects,
consultants, utilities, transport planners, safety/security/data specialists,
standardization specialists, and industry (solution providers). Register
here.
www.worldsmartcity.org
About the World Smart City Forum, 13 July 2016, Singapore
Everybody wants to build Smart Cities but what is needed to make them come
true?
Which city pain points are hindering Smart City development and how can they be
best overcome? The Forum will explore how this can be accomplished and point to
some of the tools that are already available to help cities reach their
objective faster, more efficiently and with better outcomes.
The Forum is free of charge for those who register on the
www.worldsmartcity.org website as
well as for members and invitees of IEC, ISO and ITU, and for registered
participants of the World Cities Summit and World Water Week.
IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission),
ISO (International Organization for
Standardization) and ITU (International
Telecommunication Union) are the three global standards bodies.