Smart Cities Council welcomes standards update

The Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand (SCCANZ) has welcomed the release of updated and expanded smart cities standard ISO 37106 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

ISO 37106 is an important milestone in our collective smart cities journey, and SCC continues to embrace these important guidance documents and aligns our readiness program (including our Readiness Workshops) with them, said Executive Director, SCCANZ, Adam Beck. 

The first edition of ISO 37120 (Indicators for city services and quality of life in communities), published in 2014, has just been updated, offering even more indicators to help cities effectively improve the quality of life of their citizens and plan for a more sustainable future.

Bernard Gindroz, Chair of ISO/TC 268, Sustainable cities and communities, the technical committee that developed the standard, said ISO 37120 was updated due to city demand and a gap analysis that was performed, demonstrating the need for many new indicators, including those for culture, urban agriculture and food.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

As the smart cities agenda gathers pace, and deployment of solutions increases, it is critically important that we have a grounded strategy around investment in smart cities technology, Beck said. This means that smart cities efforts align with organisations’ existing goals, and that the transformation process to embrace technology and data solutions is seamless with other processes internally and externally, he said.

The release of ISO 37106 is an important milestone in our collective smart cities journey, and SCC continues to embrace these important guidance documents and aligns our readiness program (including our Readiness Workshops) with them, he said.

ISO 37120 will soon be joined by two other complementary standards on indicators for smart and resilient cities, providing a comprehensive suite of internationally agreed guidelines that help cities everywhere to thrive.

ISO 37122, Sustainable development in communities – Indicators for Smart Cities, and ISO 37123, Sustainable development in communities – Indicators for Resilient Cities, are due to be released later this year.

In addition, a third new standard has also been published to give city leaders guidance on how to develop an effective model for their city that can help them achieve their sustainability goals. ISO 37106, Sustainable cities and communities – Guidance on establishing smart city operating models for sustainable communities, provides a toolkit of ‘smart’ practices for managing governance, services, data and systems across the city in a collaborative and digitally enabled way.

The standards are part of the ISO 37100 series, which includes ISO 37101, the overarching management systems standard for sustainable development in communities.

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