International organisation says further standard for smart cities should be published soon
The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has updated its ISO 37120 standard for the city indicators and said that it will soon add others for smart cities and resilient cities.
It said that it has amended the standard, which was first published in 2014, after a gap analysis showed a need for new indicators including those for culture, urban agriculture and food.
It gives city authorities a standardised approach to data that supports efforts to share information on their performance and learn from each other.
“Currently, nearly a hundred cities have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, the standard, and they have been very vocal in terms of what new indicators they want and need, which we have incorporated into the latest version,” said Bernard Gindroz, chair of the ISO/TC 268 technical group that developed the standard.
“For example, there are now more comprehensive indicators on housing, such as vacancy rates and living space sizes, all essential if future cities are to manage growing populations effectively.”
The ISO said that is now working on two other complementary standards on indicators for smart and resilient cities – ISO 37122 and ISO 37123 – and has published a third – ISO 37106 – to provide guidance on developing city models that support sustainability. This cover practices for using digital to manage governance, services, data and systems.
The standards are part of the ISO 37100 series, which includes ISO 37101, the overarching management systems standard for sustainable development in communities.
Image by Daniel Nisbet, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons