A review of standards for
Smart Cities
Yannis Charalabidis
University of the Aegean, Greece
Digital Governance Research Centre
W3C/SHAREPSI 2.0 Workshop
25th November 2015, Berlin

Introduction
As the Smart Cities movement progresses around the globe, a common
question arises:
Are there any standards for Smart Cities ?
After observing the scarcity of answers to this question, in several relevant
workshops and meetings, this presentation tries to make a comprehensive
sum of what has come to my attention lately.
Several standards and standardization attempts are presented, all coming
from well known international organisations. 6 of them (from ISO, ITU and
BSI) are presented in detail.

1. The ISO 37120 standard
• The ISO 37120 Standard is titled “Sustainable development of communities -- Indicators for city
services and quality of life”
• The standard presents a set of (around 100) indicators to measure the performance of city
services and quality of life.
• The standard is applicable to any city, municipality or local government that wants to measure its
performance, in a comparable and verifiable manner, irrespective of size and location.
• The standard is available at the ISO web site (at a price). A free summary can be obtained here
(ISO preview facility)
• My view: a very good start for measuring your smart city initiatives. But, some indicators are
quite “indirect” and maybe difficult to gather. No real assessment of ICT infrastructures.

2. The ISO/DIS 37101
• This is a standard in draft status (DIS), published in September 2015.
• The standard, titled “Sustainable development of communities -- Management systems -
Requirements with guidance for resilience and smartness”, presents the main axes of activities
for a smart city.
• The draft standard is available at a cost from the ISO web site. A free preview can be obtained
here.
• My view: very helpful information on how to plan, manage and evaluate a smart city initiative.
Also includes the 10 main areas of smart city intervention types (e.g. health, energy, environment,
etc). More like a guideline than a standard though. Similar information contained in several
relevant papers or studies.

3. The ITU Technical Specification on
Smart Sustainable Cities
• The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities (FG-
SCC) published the technical specification “Key performance indicators related to the
sustainability impacts of information and communication technology in smart sustainable
cities”, on March 2015
• The technical specification is much like the ISO 37120 standard, adopting some of its provisions
on suggested metrics. ITU specification is generally “narrower” than ISO, going deeper on some
ICT issues.
• The specification is available free of charge, here (doc format, at the ITU website).
• My view: a valuable resource, open and reusable, able to shed some light in the ICT-related
issues of a smart city. Of course, measurement indicators are the target / not a cookbook of
practices.

4. The ITU Technical Report on Smart
Sustainable Cities
• The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities (FG-
SCC) published the technical report “An overview of smart sustainable cities and the role of
information and communication technologies”, in 2014
• The 40-pages long technical report is a well-structured description of the smart city concept,
trying to describe the intervention areas and some relevant ICT enablers.
• The technical report is available free of charge, here (doc format, at the ITU website).
• My view: a rather comprehensive but introductory resource. Valuable as a training material /
guide, will not enlighten the expert. Although it contains some example technologies, it fails short
from an all-inclusive map of smart cities technologies.

5. BSI PAS 181
• The British Standards Institute (BSI) has published the PAS 181 “Smart city framework – Guide to
establishing strategies for smart cities and communities” as a practical guide for smart city
development, in 2014
• The document contains a 12-areas map for smart cities (e.g. energy, water, waste, etc) and a
comprehensive action framework for planning and managing smart city interventions.
• The document is available for free download here, or as paperback at a price.
• My view: one of the best all-around documents for smart city design and development. I
definitely use the actions framework in my lectures towards municipality staff. Yet, not an all-
inclusive list of interventions with a model on how to choose, but still one of the best quality
material out there.

6. BSI PAS 182
• The BSI PAS 182 “Smart city concept model. Guide to establishing a model for data interoperability” is
aimed to be a practical guide for tackling the data-related challenges of Smart Cities, published in 2014
• The document describes a preliminary data model, to describe several aspects of smart cities, including
indicators, actors, infrastructure and other information elements.
• actors, contains a 12-areas map for smart cities (e.g. energy, water, waste, etc) and a comprehensive
action framework for planning and managing smart city interventions.
• The document is available for free download here, or as paperback at a price.
• My view: although can be of some use, as an indicative catalogue of data elements for (smart) cities, it
fails very short from the target of “achieving interoperability”. For that, much more are needed at the
ontological and semantic level (e.g. controlled vocabularies, extended metadata schemas, core
components, etc) that can however be adopted by standardization documents like the National
Interoperability Frameworks.

Other standards
Other relevant standardization attempts for Smart Cities are the following
documents, from BIS and ISO:
• BIS Smart city terminology (PAS 180)
• BIS Smart city overview document (PD 8100)
• BIS Smart city planning guidelines document (PD 8101)
• Research on smart infrastructure projects (PD ISO/TR 37150)
• A specification for KPIs for smart infrastructure projects (PD ISO/TS 37151)

Conclusions and further work
• During the last 18 months, smart cities standardization has done
some noticeable steps, providing a handful of documents for several
smart city aspects
• The metrics aspect appears to be the more progressed in
documentation, although ICT indicators and municipality-internal
elements do not have the proper attention, yet.
• An all-inclusive map of possible interventions is still missing, which is
more the work of researchers than standardization bodies.