The paper Orchestrating infrastructure for sustainable smart cities is the sixth in a series of White Papers whose purpose is to ensure that the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) can contribute to solving global challenges through its International Standards and Conformity Assessment services.
Cities are facing unprecedented challenges related to climate change and other environmental pressures, the extremely rapid pace of urbanization and requirements to meet stringent targets imposed by commitments and legal obligations. Smart technology integration offers major opportunities for cities to improve efficiency, enhance economic potential, reduce costs, open the door to new business and services, improve the living conditions of its citizens and build resilience of the city to environmental shocks.
This White Paper presents the "what, who and how" of smart cities. It explains what it will take to make a city "smart", calling for collaboration between many specific stakeholders, including political leaders and managers and operators of the local government; public or private service operators (water, electricity, gas, communication, transport, waste, education, etc.); end users and prosumers (inhabitants and local business representatives); investors (private banks, venture capitalists, pension funds, and international banks), and solution providers (technology providers, financiers and investors). It also calls on other international standardization bodies to ultimately lead to integrated, cost-efficient, and sustainable solutions.