Innovative ICT Strategy for ‘Sustainable Smart Cities’ (SSC)

Background. Rapid urbanization as a global trend will be one of the most serious challenges of the 21st century. Currently, it is estimated that 54% of the world's population resides in urban areas, a percentage that is expected to reach 66-70% by 2050. The growth of the world's urban population and the problems emerging out of this trend forces us to re-think the traditional approaches to sustainable development and urban planning, in both developed and developing countries. During the period 1950 to 2010, small cities have grown in population (1.3 billion) much more than medium cities (632 million) or large cities (570 million). As per United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), for the first time in 2007-8, people living in cities were more than those in rural areas.

Due to migration of population from rural to urban areas, unprecedented growth in size of the cities, industrial growth, motorised transportation etc., urban areas are becoming more congested and unmanageable. These problems are adding pressure to the existing resource base, while increasing the demand for energy, water, sanitation, and public services such as education and health care. All these are leading to cities becoming major consumer of natural resources, consumers of enormous energy and the main producers of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (estimated at 75 % of the global energy consumption and 80% of CO2 emissions worldwide respectively). Cities across the globe therefore require innovative approaches to achieve sustainable development.

‘Sustainable Smart City’ (SSC) is a new and innovative concept that supports the key enablers for the achievement of the goals for sustainable urban development. SSCs aim to improve efficiency of all aspects of a city's operation and promote a higher quality of life (QoL) for its citizens. Even though there is an increased realization for innovative strategies for ‘sustainable development’, the concept and adoption of SSC is still in the early stages. There is an urgent need to better understand and foster the use of new technologies, particularly of rapidly developing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), including the new technologies for Social media, Cloud, Mobile, Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, GIS etc. City administrators and policymakers need to develop a better understanding of 'smart' technological innovations, and the challenges and solutions for ‘integrating the physical infrastructure and ICT solutions’.

SSC - Definition & Objectives. The concept of 'Smart City' has been defined in many ways across the globe with different terms to define the notion of ‘smartness’, ‘sustainability’, ‘technology’ and ‘innovation’ within urban development context. With adoption of ‘sustainable development goals’ (SDGs) by United Nations in September, 2015, the concept of smart cities needs to have the additional dimension of sustainability in additional to cutting edge use of new technologies. It is therefore important that initial smart cities initiative need to been re-defined as ‘sustainable smart cities’ to address all the factors that lay at the core of the sustainable development approach. A ‘Sustainable Smart City’ is defined as -  "an innovative city that uses ICTs and other means to improve quality of life, efficiency of urban operation and services, and competitiveness, while ensuring that it meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social and environmental aspects".  (Source: ITU-T FG-SSC, 2014). The SSC definition above includes the following key attributes that are intrinsic to this notion, most notably:

a) Growth and competitiveness – The city plans to aim for higher economic growth and provide better opportunities for livelihood and jobs.

b) Sustainability – This includes city's infrastructure, governance, energy and resource management, climate change, pollution and waste management, socio-economic aspects and health provision.

b) Quality of Life – Focus on improving the quality of life of the citizens and the efforts to continuously improve it, are vital to the strategic vision and identity of SSC.

c) Intelligence or Smartness – A notion of "smartness" requires an inherent aspiration to build a ‘more informed’ and ‘efficient decision-making mechanism’ to achieve the economic, social and environmental goals.

Innovative ICT Strategy & Solutions. The critical role of ICTs in development of ‘sustainable smart cities’ strategies needs to be articulated with broader and a more holistic vision of the smart city, aligned with urban development goals, supported by appropriate governance structures, and being responsive to the ‘needs of the citizens’ who are at the core of the city's functioning. The studies undertaken under the project, have identified the need for a structured approach to development of a SSC Project plan and suggests an ‘integrated city governance platform’ based on the concept of sharing information and data among multiple agencies working in a city to promote ‘coordination and collaboration’ among city decision-makers, as they tackle the challenge of transforming their cities into ‘sustainable cities’. This knowledge initiative of the supported by Korean Green Growth Trust, seeks to develop a knowledge-sharing platform to provide ULB managers and stakeholders with the information, good practices and guidelines for the implementation of the ‘SSC concept’ based on intensive use of ICTs, and address the specific technical aspects involved in the design and operation of SSC strategies. The concepts and definitions presented in the knowledge platform shall be based on good practices and guidelines recommended by the , ITU, global experiences and industry standards.