Page 11 - U4SSC Factsheet Ålesund, Norway, June 2020
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Background: The United 4 Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) Initiative
The United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) is a UN initiative created to foster standardization,
integration and interoperability of digital technologies within cities to make them smarter and more
sustainable.
The initiative has developed a set of international key performance indicators (KPIs) for Smart
Sustainable Cities (SSC) to establish criteria to evaluate ICTs' contributions to making cities smarter
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and more sustainable, and to provide cities with the means for self-assessment in the move towards
smartness and sustainability.
The aim is to help cities worldwide use technology to serve the best interests of the people and the
environment. For this reason environmental aspects as well as socio-economic factors also play a key
role in the U4SSC framework.
Helping cities be smarter and more sustainable: The U4SSC KPIs
The U4SSC KPIs offer a common format to report the progress of smart sustainable city strategies.
These indicators also enable cities to measure their progress relative to the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).
ITU’s objectives for the U4SSC KPIs for SSC project in cities are as follows:
• Assisting cities with implementing the KPIs in order to measure and evaluate a city’s progress in
becoming smarter and more sustainable toward meeting the SDGs within the local context.
• Learning from cities’ experiences and sharing this rich and varied knowledge, insights and feedback
to other cities around the world, enabling them to refine their own smart sustainable city strategies.
• Evaluating the strengths of this system of KPIs and identifying any areas for improvement, and
obtaining practical and actionable feedback toward supporting the international standardization
work of ITU-T Study Group 20: Internet of Things and Smart Cities and Communities.
• Providing cities with a consistent and standardized method to collect data and measure performance
and progress.
The KPIs are categorized into 3 dimensions:
ECONOMY SOCIETY AND CULTURE
ENVIRONMENT
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