Page 21 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

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).

ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 11