Enhancements for ISO 37120 “Sustainable cities and communities” from smart city concept

Abstract

Smart cities are cities where information and communication technologies are used to achieve an efficient management of resources and to increase citizen participation. To achieve sustainability is on of the main goals of these cities, leading researchers to adopt the expression “smart sustainable cities”. In order to achieve this goal, the following tools are necessary: assessment systems to target public intervention and investments, comparisons between cities and the replication of good examples. The most important assessment system is proposed by the standard ISO 37120:2018 “Sustainable cities and communities - indicators for city services and quality of life”. However, an appropriate assessment of smart cities requires specific indicators that take into account each city’s specific characteristics and their sustainability focus. Hence, a literature review was was performed, searching for previous studies that could be used as references for smart cities indicators systems, complementing the current ISO standard. The studies considered in this review take a holistic view of cities. As a result, this research project obtained indicator systems with ordinal quantitative and qualitative variables, as well as some indicators that overlap with ISO ones. As a conclusion, this study suggests two improvements: increasing the number of indicators suggested by ISO, and modifying some of the overlapping ones, so that they are in line with the smart cities concept.

Keywords:
Smart cities; ISO 37120; Smart sustainable cities; Indicators; Performance measurement