Page 7 - Digital solutions for integrated city management and use cases: A U4SSC deliverable on city platforms

Executive Summary

The United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) initiative is a global platform dedicated to
supporting cities in becoming smarter and more sustainable. The U4SSC is coordinated by the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
(UNECE), and the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat), with the support
of 14 other UN bodies.

Smart city platforms are becoming a new digital urban infrastructure that facilitates the implementation
of smart city strategies to support new and additional city needs, while also assisting with the
efforts of addressing targets contained in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Smart city
platforms provide cities with a technological base to incorporate a multitude of elements that can
enable a city’s digital transformation to help achieve the city’s internal objectives, facilitate informed
decision-making by policy-makers, and promote cost-efficient and effective city operations. It has
served as the blueprint for evolution, supporting the transition from fragmented urban operations
to integrated management with data as the main asset.

Complex challenges facing cities, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, require managing information
from multiple areas of the city as well as from other institutions and private entities. Smart city
platforms include IT elements for interoperability of services, which are necessary to face these
challenges. This report provides a global perspective on how city platforms facilitate more efficient
and effective control of public infrastructure and services, improve economic efficiencies, enable
rapid development of new or complex services and play a critical role in the overall digital
transformation of urban areas.

A layered model of the reference technological architecture, as well as the enabling solutions, has
been illustrated in this report with the aim of briefly underscoring the basic functionality of the
common components or elements that constitute a city platform. In addition, reference is made
to the different regulations existing and contained in international instruments. The experience
of certain cities with the implementation and operation of city platforms is a prominent feature of
this report.

The description of core challenges faced by cities in strategic, technical, and operational aspects,
as well as the barriers encountered in the implementation of the city platforms, are adequately
elaborated on in order to provide interested stakeholders with additional guidance on commencing
their respective smart city journeys. Furthermore, the report concludes by outlining the technical
and non-technical challenges that cities are still facing when implementing the envisioned platforms
along with the pivotal role of international standardization in addressing them.

U4SSC: Digital solutions for integrated city management & use cases v