(A.) Policy and legislation
(A.1) Policy objectives
Smart urban technologies can make a significant contribution to the sustainable development of European cities. 75% of the EU population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is growing as the urbanisation trend continues, both in Europe and worldwide.
A smart city is an entity that uses ICT effectively, to integrate the requirements of its urban community, in terms of energy and other utilities (production, distribution and use), environmental protection, mobility and transport, services for citizens (healthcare, education, emergency services etc.) and with proper regard for security, both of individuals and their personal data, and use it as a driver for economic and social improvements. This would also increase the deployment of smart technologies and solutions in rural communities, contributing to the development of businesses and creating conditions for making smart communities attractive to the population.
In standards terms, there are some over-arching requirements, concerning standards for common terminologies, for citizens’ interface with their local authority, etc. But mainly, smart city standards topics relate to the need to ensure commonalities —as far as these are appropriate and cost-effective— between the approaches taken by the different application areas, to enable the city to derive the best horizontal advantage from its overall approach and above all benefit from interoperability. The standards requirements as such for these application areas are specified in the Rolling Plan elsewhere at the appropriate points.
The core components in such a complex system are the frameworks that assist companies, cities and other actors to provide appropriate solutions that prioritise economic, social and environmental outcomes. Solutions should address the whole lifecycle, optimising environmental, social and economic outcomes through the seamless transfer of information.
Beyond engagement in European standardisation activities, ensuring a strong, common European voice in international standardisation fora is also very important.
(A.2) EC perspective and progress report
The Commission has created the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP SCC) which has established a smart cities stakeholder platform, with ESO participation, and a high-level group advising the Commission. The high-level group released in early 2014 a strategic implementation plan (SIP) setting out a joint vision, a common target and proposals for implementation, which contain standardisation aspects. The EIP-SCC has not prolonged its mandate. However, the initiative's stakeholder platform is continuing as Smart Cities Marketplace on the EUROPA domain.
Within the Smart Cities Marketplace, the Action Cluster on Integrated Infrastructures and Processes, an initiative of 110 cities and 93 industry partners, created, among other deliverables, a reference architecture and design principles for an open urban platform, which became a standard of DIN and is moving towards a standard in the international SDOs. Complementing their work, the European project SynchroniCity developed the first version of the Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) consistent with the Smart Cities & Communities guidelines and comprised of commonly agreed industry standards and best practice and tested their validity on a large scale (more than 50 implementations), now overseen by the Open & Agile Smart Cities network. Adopting the EIP-SCC goal to scale up these solutions into a real life deployment in the majority of EU cities with 300 million citizens benefiting from services running via urban platforms, the stakeholder community with the support of the European Commission launched the Living-in.EU initiative and declaration, bringing together like-minded cities and communities as well as supporters for the digital transformation ‘the European way’.
Benefiting from valuable contributions from our stakeholders, the Commission fostered the creation of a common interoperability language called SAREF (Smart Appliances REFerence ontology), which became a standard of ETSI and OneM2M (the Global initiative for Internet of Things standardisation) in 2015. Since then a new version of the SAREF standard has been released that made SAREF modular and extensible via extensions. The initial SAREF became the first extension for Energy together with two more extensions (Buildings and Environment) followed at the beginning of 2019 with standardisation of three more extensions (Smart Cities, AgriFood and Manufacturing) and later developed into new extensions (automotive, health, water and wearables) turning SAREF into the IoT smart city ontology. SAREF and SAREF4City are part of the MIMs and the MIMs plus set of specifications, together with INSPIRE and other key policies.
It is important to ensure the cooperation between the different initiatives that bring together cities with the work of the SDOs, in particular for the definition of (high) level requirements and feedback about their implementation. Example initiatives are:
- The (EIP-SCC) memorandum of understanding (MoU) on urban platforms (18/09/2017)
- List of signatories of the EIP-SCC MoU on urban platforms (18/09/2017)
- The Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) initiative and the actual implementation of technical specifications like MIMs through Living-in.eu.
- Urban Agenda for the EU and the recently adopted New Lepizig Charter
- Smart Cities Marketplace
(A.3) Local Digital Twins for Smart Communities
Digital Twins meet the agreement from the EU standardisation strategy, COM(2022) 31, whereby: EU Member States, EU standardisation bodies and EU industries do not effectively coordinate and share resources in support of international standardisation processes and principles of the World Trade Organization (WTO), such as openness, transparency and consensus. This has led to a situation whereby in sensitive areas like data privacy, cybersecurity or AI-based applications such as facial recognition, other world regions are taking the lead in international technical committees promoting their technological solutions, which are often incompatible with the EU’s values, policies and regulatory framework.
A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical system (described as a set of entities and their relations over time) which is used to perform simulations on the system to predict its behavior and to inform decisions regarding the system. Application areas include any situation where a virtual simulation offers insights on the functioning and impact of the system which would be otherwise too costly, impractical, unethical, dangerous or even impossible to obtain. This could be a group of buildings before they are built, an energy system before it is installed or a transportation system before it is rolled out. Digital twins can also be an integrated way of optimizing operations to future conditions. Local Digital Twins can be understood as place-based application of more general virtualisation of objects (such as a car) or more global simulation of conditions (such as the weather forecast systems). It could also be a complex combination of such general and global functions applied to a certain territory.
Concretely, a Local Digital Twin is a representational system made up of a combination of mathematical and statistical models of dynamical systems applied to and generating discrete data sets. However, the added value of a digital twin is not defined solely by its accuracy in representing a physical system in the highest possible detail, but rather its usefulness in a given process, e.g. bringing down cost, reducing risk, improving planning and providing better responsiveness to societal needs.
For the purpose of the Rolling Plan, a digital twin is characterised along four overall aspects: scope, modality, type and fidelity, as given in the table below.
|
Scope |
Modality |
Type |
Fidelity |
| Sectorial | Physical | Static | Finite |
| Territorial | Semantic | Data-driven | Statistical |
Overall, digital twins can be divided in territorial and sectorial digital twins, respectively. The territorial digital twins cover the cross-cutting issues relating to digital twins as they are linked and applied to a particular place, either physically, administratively, functionally or even culturally, and they will be treated under the heading of Local Digital Twins for Smart Communities. The sectorial digital twins cover application areas by sector and related to particular technologies, and they will be treated under the heading of Digital Twins for Sectors and the Computing Continuum. Both scopes of digital twins will consider different modalities, types and fidelity levels of digital twins. In order to ensure interoperability and integrity across sectors and systems, the principle of Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) is followed, outlined below.
Local Digital Twins for Smart Communities
Local Digital Twins are envisioned to become a key instrument in governing and optimizing living conditions for European citizens, whether in urban, peri-urban or rural areas. The focus is delivering on concrete local goals which are felt in everyday life while taking into account more general and longer-term objectives relating to social, environmental and economic well-being. It is also a way to govern in more transparent and direct response to demand and in dialogue with citizens without losing sight of the strain on resources.
Many standards exist that are related to the registration of the physical environment, including the geospatial standards underpinning the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) directive and CityGML, an international standard for spatial data exchange issued by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO/TC 211. But as the opportunity to share data across systems offers both great value and challenges to different sizes of communities, further work is needed, and Europe should take decisive action in this field, including but not limited to actions relating to the Interoperable Europe policy, the Digital Europe Programme, the European Green Deal, the European Missions and the European Energy Union.
Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs)
MIMs provide a minimal but sufficient set of capabilities and functional requirements that a city needs to achieve a certain objective described by each individual MIM, along with guidance to help provide a useful level of interoperability between different technical solutions that may be used to achieve that set of requirements. MIMs address in fact the interoperability of technical solutions between buyers, suppliers and regulators across the various governance levels.
MIMs are now evolving under the umbrella of the Technical Subgroup of the Living-in EU movement and Go Li.EU project. There are now 10 MIMs, including Personal Data Management and Fair AI (championed by the cities of Helsinki and Amsterdam, respectively).
MIMs are also undergoing a normalisation process to harmonise the way each of them is described according to a new template. The upgraded version of MIMs will become part of the backbone of the Digital Twin toolbox to support cities and smart communities to develop and roll-out Local Digital Twins. Finally, a recommendation for MIMs standardisation (y.MIMS) is being discussed at ITU-T Study Group 20 dealing with Internet of Things, smart cities and communities , to position MIMs as a global standard that every community can benefit from.
Within it, the Living-in EU technical group drafted a consolidated report setting a technical common ground of specifications. It is referred to as MIMs Plus and it consolidated in one place the above-described achievement plus the work of relevant standard initiatives such as:
- OneM2M for a holistic interoperability reference for smart cities. The work continues to evolve the MIMs Plus with relevant European policy and technical elements, and the current version is v5.5, while two new version are in preparation (mid of 2023 and end of 2023).
- NGSI-LD, as specified by the ETSI Industry Specification Group on Context Information Management (ETSI ISG CIM), provides an API for managing and requesting context information and an underlying meta model based on entities. This is one of the specs fulfilling the requirements for MIM 1.
- A MIM7 standard proposal developed jointly with JRC-ISPRA and supporting the evolution expected from the current INSPIRE directive.
(A.4) References
- Strategic Implementation Plan of the EIP-SCC
- COM(2012) 4701: Smart Cities and Communities — European Innovation Partnership
- COM(2017) 228 final: Mid-Term Review on the implementation of the Digital Single Market Strategy - A Connected Digital Single Market for All
- COM(2016) 176: ICT Standardisation Priorities for the Digital Single Market
- COM(2015) 192: A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe
- COM(2021) 205 final: Fostering a European approach to Artificial Intelligence
The "United for smart sustainable cities" (U4SSC) initiative coordinated by ITU, UNECE and UN-Habitat and supported by 13 other UN agencies and programmes to advocate for public policy to emphasize the importance of ICT in enabling the transition to smart sustainable cities (see the ITU section below for more details).
CitiVerse
New services such as virtual worlds will have a profound impact on the way people will interact. One example is the so-called CitiVerse that will be built on top of urban platforms and local digital twins, through a series of interconnected and distributed hybrid and virtual worlds representing, and synchronized with, their physical counterparts. It will offer new administrative, economic, social, policy-making, and cultural virtual services and capabilities to city and community actors such as citizens, and urban planners.
A CitiVerse [23] is a series of interconnected and distributed hybrid and virtual worlds representing, and synchronized with, their physical counterparts. It offers new (administrative, economic, social, policy-making, and cultural) virtual goods/services/capabilities to city and community actors such as citizens, represented as digital avatars.
(B.) Requested actions
Action 1: Concerning Local Digital Twins, the following should be undertaken:
- A Toolbox for Local Digital Twins will be developed as an initial repository of mechanisms, and as a basis for validation leading to formal standardisation.
- Facilitation of the European Task Group on Local Digital Twins, including secretariat support.
- Facilitating the development of a work item on ITU-T SG20 coordinated e.g. with the IEC Smart Cities Systems Committee, JTC1, ISO/TC 268, CEN Sector Forum on Smart and Sustainable Cities- Task Group on Local Digital Twins, ETSI Task force on Digital Twins and ISG on cross-cutting Context Information Management (ISG CIM), and OGC.
- Develop the necessary preparatory steps for relevant proposals on the standardisation of MIMs Plus: the Living-in.EU Technical Group.
Action 2: SSDOs to consider the recommendations of the ETSI Technical Report 103 455 “Smart cities and communities; standardisation for citizens and consumers” and review how they could incorporate the proposals for organizational improvements to benefit smart city standardisation’s coverage of citizen/consumer issues, and for guidance material, codes of conduct and standards.
Action 3: Taking into account the results of the EU funded projects ESPRESSO and SynchroniCity, and in cooperation with city-led initiatives like the Smart Cities Marketplace demand-side group on Urban Platforms, the Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) network and Living-in.EU, SDOs should continue developing standards and technical specifications needed for a global market of open service platforms and applications for cities and communities,including for local digital twins, aligning their activities and integrating different standards and complementing protocols and communication standards. Possible actions in this sense could be:
- An open catalogue of the best practise and lessons learned of Smart Cities in using standards
- More promotion at local and regional level of the existing standards and their functionalities ("outreach to the grass roots"), levering Living-in.EU.
- Guidelines or specifications for federating Smart City data spaces (selective access) and for data marketplaces across cities and communities
- Referencing of ITU-T FG DPM work in ETSI work, to reduce “parallel evolution” between the ESOs and ITU
- Interworking of NGSI-LD on top of the oneM2M platform
- Further recommendations for SAREF extensions and evolutions to cover wider applications in different (urban) vertical applications and across applications.
- Operational guidelines on modelling of real-world systems in ways that are extensible and shareable so that Smart City engineers and technical decision-makers have blueprints to speed their work and ease re-use of Big Data.
- Activities to promote standardised ontologies (as is beginning in the SmartGrid area) to improve cross-border efficiencies
- Guidelines or specifications to ensure NGSI-LD could be installed with SAREF family of ontologies
- Guidelines or specifications for NGSI-LD on how to add the provenance of information to each dataset, so that licensing, GDPR information, and appropriate security/confidentiality features can be enabled.
- Development of open Test Suites for standards-based solutions, not limited to particular software implementations, to allow improved efficiency in procurement ("does it meet the Tests?") and assessment ("does the system run as expected?")
Action 4: Define a set of standards and related criteria, value proposition and applicability statements for the deployment of platforms for cities and communities under the Digital Europe Programme. The set will be based on the EIP-SCC Reference architecture and design principles for urban platforms, the OASC Minimum Interoperability Mechanisms, OneM2M, NGSI-LD and SAREF and will further specify the minimum standardisation requirements to be met to achieve the goal of Interoperable European ecosystem of platforms and applications.
Action 5: Related to the CitiVerse, define a pre-standardisation roadmap to cater for a set of well-stablished technical standards to address the technological challenges and constraints arising from vertical technologies, and key enablers touching intrinsic EU-values, such as trust, security, privacy, sustainability and accessibility, openness, interoperability. All of it, driven by concrete use cases focusing on citizen’s engagement and predictive services for city’s efficiency.
(C.) Activities and additional information
(C.1) Related standardisation activities
CEN
CEN/TC 465 ‘Sustainable and Smart Cities and Communities’ has been created by CEN in October 2019. The TC is intended to address specific European needs through a consistent approach with the activities of ISO/TC 268 ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’.
CEN-CENELEC-ETSI
The Coordination Group on Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities has published a report at http://www.cencenelec.eu/standards/Sectors/SmartLiving/smartcities/Pages/SSCC-CG.aspx and is now following up the recommendations, through a series of five specific activities. It proposes to lead in relation to the EIP action cluster on standards. It was proposed that the SSCC-CG activities will be taken over by the new CEN-CENELEC-ETSI Sector Forum on Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities (SF-SSCC).
The SF-SSCC, created in January 2017, is a long-term joint group of the ESOs that acts as an advisory and coordinating body for the European standardisation activities related to Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Coordination efforts by the SDOs, shown at the World Smart City Forum (July 2016 Singapore), further developed in 2017.
The CEN-CENELEC-ETSI Sector Forum on Smart Cities and Communities created a mapping, which aims at listing relevant standardisation activities and published standards, relevant for the development of Smart Cities. It lists also the different policy and research initiatives in this context. This mapping is designed as a living document, to which any interested stakeholder can contribute ftp://ftp.cencenelec.eu/EN/Europeanstandardisation/Fields/SmartLiving/City/SF-SSCC_Overview_of_Standards_for_SmartCities.pdf
ETSI
ETSI is providing specifications relevant to city needs and service scenarios for their citizens and infrastructure, including concrete examples that reflect the importance of environmental factors and sustainability objectives.
ETSI’s Human Factors committee (TC HF) has published a technical report (TR 103 455) to assess the needs of consumers and citizens that must be addressed by smart city standardisation, including accessibility, usability, personalization, interoperability and personal data protection.
ETSI’s Access, Terminals, Transmission and Multiplexing committee (TC ATTM) is developing standards for sustainable digital multi-service cities to support the deployment and roll-out of smart city infrastructures. This work includes a TS detailing measures to ease the deployment of smart new services and their multiservice street furniture within the IP network of a single city or cluster of cities.
From digitizing industrial processes to creating smart services for citizens, it is essential to accurately record data together with its context information, the so-called metadata, and to transfer these without misinterpretation to other systems. Single-purpose solutions work well within a known context but are not suitable for multi-system interoperability.
ETSI’s ISG on cross-cutting Context Information Management (ISG CIM) has published Group Specifications (GSs) for applications to publish, discover, update and access context information (ETSI ISG CIM GS009 V1.7.1), initially for a broad range of smart city applications and later for other areas, facilitated by a high-level information model for capturing the structure of physical environments as a graph which can be efficiently serialized as linked data (ETSI ISG CIM GS 006 V1.2.1). New reports related to ‘Usage of geo-information’ (ETSI ISG CIM GR CIM 049), including consideration of CityGML and IFC as well as ‘Using NGSI-LD in the context of Building Information Management (BIM)’ (ETSI ISG CIM GR 051) are planned for 2024.
ETSI’s ISG F5G looks at the advances that may be needed in optical technologies to provide fast, reliable and secure connections for smart-city applications. Some use cases address these applications.
In 2021 ETSI expects to complete a number of specifications on security and privacy issues, and on interworking with important IoT frameworks such as oneM2M.
ETSI published an extension to the SAREF ontology for Smart Cities in July 2019.
ETSI’s ISG on Operational energy Efficiency for Users (ISG OEU) is working with ICT users’ support, industry and communities included, on suitable solutions for sustainable digital multiservice in communities. OEU describes digital multiservice solutions leading to total interoperability which is a factor of sovereignty and digital sobriety for communities.
ETSI SC USER has worked, within the project “User-Centric approach in digital ecosystem”. Also see section 3.1.3 on use cases for Smart cities. The next step is the Smart Interface based on the Smart Identity. This approach aims to improve the access and use of all the services provided by Smart Cities.
ETSI TC DECT has published updates of the DECT-2020 NR (New Radio) technology (ETSI TS 103 636 parts 1 to 5) during 2022. DECT-2020 NR supports Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC) and massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC).
TC DECT has produced DECT-2020 New Radio (NR) access profile for smart metering including smart electricity meters. Future work on access profiles will include other device types for smart building and smart city applications.
ETSI has recently created a Task force STF268 on Digital Twins, to identify different functionalities, use cases and the support needed for digital twins standardisation.
OneM2M
The oneM2M standard defines a middleware layer, providing common services for connecting IoT devices and IoT applications. With its data sharing capabilities, interworking capabilities (e.g. OGC), semantic interoperability, security and privacy functionalities oneM2M enables a wide variety of smart city use cases. Public authorities in Korea and India reference the oneM2M standard in their smart city projects. Interoperability and compliance testing as well as a Certification Program (onem2m.org) complement the standardisation activities. To focus on the sustainability aspects of IoT and Smart Cities, oneM2M established a Sustainability committee in 2021.
All oneM2M specifications are publicly accessible at https://www.onem2m.org/technical.
ISO, IEC
ISO TC 268 “Sustainable development in communities” is directly working on smart city-relevant issues, including terminology, management systems and indicators https://www.iso.org/committee/656906.html
- ISO/DIS 37122 Sustainable cities and communities - Indicators for smart cities (under development)
- ISO/FDIS 37104 Sustainable cities and communities -Guidance for practical implementation in cities (under development)
- ISO/DIS 37105 Sustainable cities and communities - Descriptive framework for cities and communities (under development)
ISO-IEC/JTC 1 WG11 “Smart cities”
JTC1 has established a Working Group on Smart Cities which serves as the focus of and proponent for JTC 1's Smart Cities standardisation program, focusing in particular on standardisation from the IT perspective around the strategic topics on Semantic Interoperability of City Data, Software Platform for Open City Data, date use in smart cities, city digital twin and city knowledge trustworthiness.
Current projects:
ISO/IEC 30146:2019, Information technology — Smart city ICT indicators (Published)
ISO/IEC 21972:2020, Information technology — Upper level ontology for smart city indicators (Published)
ISO/IEC DIS 30145-1, Information technology — Smart City ICT reference framework — Part 1: Smart city business process framework (DIS)
ISO/IEC 30145-2:2020, Information technology — Smart City ICT reference framework — Part 2: Smart city knowledge management framework (Published)
ISO/IEC 30145-3:2020, Information technology — Smart City ICT reference framework — Part 3: Smart city engineering framework (Published)
ISO/IEC 24039:2022, Information technology — Smart city digital platform reference architecture — Data and service (Published)
ISO/IEC 5087-1, Information technology — City data model — Part 1: Foundation level concepts (PRF)
ISO/IEC 5087-2, Information technology — City data model — Part 2: City level concepts (DIS)
ISO/IEC 5087-3, Information technology — City data model — Part 3: Service level concepts -Transportation planning ((Note: On Dec 2022, ISO/IEC 5087-3 was transferred to the JWG between ISO/TC 204 and ISO/IEC JTC 1)
ISO/IEC 5153-1, Information Technology — City service platform for public health emergencies — Part 1: Overview and general requirements (DIS)
ISO/IEC AWI TR 20169, Information technology — Overview of smart city standardization
ISO/IEC PWI 5217, Information technology — Guidance on smart city ICT infrastructure design — Overview(PWI)
ISO/IEC PWI 10311-2, Information technology — City service platform for public health emergencies —Part 2: Response resource management
ISO/IEC PWI 10235-4, Information technology — City data model — Part 4: Service level concepts for public health emergencies
ISO/IEC PWI 20822, Information technology — Domain knowledge trustworthiness evaluation for smart cities
ISO/IEC PWI 10267-1, Information technology—Data use in smart cities — Part 1: Framework
ISO/IEC PWI 10267-2, Information technology — Data use in smart cities — Part 2: Use case analysis and derived requirements
ISO/IEC PWI TS 10267-3, Information technology—Data use in smart cities — Part 3: Measurement, evaluation and reporting
JTC 1-ISO/TC 204 Joint Working Group:
To develop ISO/IEC 5087-3 (Information technology – City data model – part 3: Service level concepts – Transportation planning) using the framework defined for the ISO/IEC 5087 series on city data models where service city data standards are defined in terms of the foundation classes (ISO/IEC 5087-1) and city level classes (ISO/IEC 5087-2).
ISO, IEC, ITU
The IEC-ISO-ITU Joint Smart Cities Task Force was set up by all three SDOs with the key objectives:
- To build synergies and to promote minimization of overlap as applicable on ongoing works in ITU-T, IEC and ISO related to smart cities and communities;
- To maximize efforts in order to identify new areas of cooperation related to smart cities and communities;
- To develop a holistic view on smart cities and communities taking into consideration the scope, areas of work and expertise of ITU-T, IEC and ISO to support smart cities and communities’ development.
IEEE
IEEE standards for Smart Cities address the many applications found within this domain, including smart energy/grid, intelligent transportation, water management, waste management, smart streetlights, smart parking, environment monitoring, smart community, smart campus, smart buildings, eHealth, eLearning, eGovernment, etc. Many standards in all these different domains are also relevant in a Smart City. Featured projects include:
This standard specifies the architectural and functional framework for smart cities aiming to enable communications within and across smart city ecosystems.
This standard is focused on solving the discovery of the systems deployed in a smart city and enabling the sharing of objectives between these smart city systems to make them work towards a common goal.
This standard provides an architectural blueprint for Smart City implementation leveraging cross-domain interaction and semantic interoperability among various domains and components of a Smart City.
This guide provides a framework that outlines technologies and the processes for planning the evolution of a smart city.
This standard defines an architecture framework for a computational operation system, which is designed to enable intelligent cities.
This standard describes a protocol that enables interoperable, semantically compatible connections between connected hardware (e.g., autonomous drones, sensors, smart devices, robots) and software (e.g., services, platforms, applications, AIS).
In addition to the above, IEEE SA is involved in a number of key pre-standards programs:
- IEEE SA Industry Connection Program on AI-Driven Innovation for Cities and People: This program is focused on providing cities a governance mechanism to support responsible artificial intelligence systems (AIS).
- IEEE SA Industry Connection Program on Alliance for Best Practices and Standards in Smart Cities: This program aims to develop close collaboration between the technology industry and city leaders and stakeholders towards smart city solutions across cities and regions.
For more information please visit: https://standards.ieee.org/practices/foundational/smart-cities-standards/# and https://ieee-sa.imeetcentral.com/eurollingplan/.
ITU-R
Recent developments in the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and smart grids and meters are driving and supporting the development of smart sustainable cities throughout the world. Several ITU-R Working Parties contribute to the development of ITU-R Reports and ITU-R Recommendations that contribute to the improvement of smart sustainable cities.
Among the current study topics, ITU-R Working Party (WP) 1A studies the impact on radiocommunication systems from wireless and wired data transmission technologies used for the support of power grid management systems.
Electronic devices and their networks, including those not used for telecommunications, can produce significative electromagnetic disturbances that may affect the functionalities of current and future telecommunications systems such as IoT (Internet of Things) and their applications. Report ITU-R SM.2503 on “Evaluation of radiated electromagnetic disturbances of household appliances and their interferences over an IoT network in the 915 MHz frequency band” evaluates the levels of electromagnetic disturbances generated by household appliances and how these interferences may affect the functioning of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) operating in the 915 MHz band in some administrations, a system which is widely used within IoT due to its technical flexibility and low cost.
ITU-R WP1A has recently agreed on a draft new Question ITU-R on “Impact of unintentional radio frequency energy generated by electrical or electronic apparatus to the radiocommunication services”. It is expected that this draft ITU-R Question will be approved at the end of September 2022.
Resolution ITU-R 54 calls for studies to achieve harmonization for short-range devices (SRDs).
ITU-R WP 1B is responsible for the studies relating to spectrum management methodologies and economic strategies. Among its current studies, WP 1B deals with the harmonization of SRDs.
Report ITU-R SM.2153 on “Technical and operating parameters and spectrum use for short-range radiocommunication devices” provides SRD definitions and short descriptions of different applications using SRDs, e.g.: Telecommand, Telemetry, Voice and video, Detecting avalanche victims, RLANs, Railway applications, among others. This Report also indicates the typical technical characteristics and limitations such as the common frequency ranges or the antenna requirements, and it explains administrative requirements like the mutual agreements between countries and/or regions and the licences requirements. Finally, it also provides useful information on national and regional rules including technical and operational parameters and spectrum use.
ITU-R WP 1B has carried out studies with the aim to globally and regionally harmonize the frequency bands used by SRDs. Recommendation ITU-R SM.1896 on “Frequency ranges for global or regional harmonization of short-range devices” details the frequency ranges appropriate for global and regional harmonization. On the other hand, Recommendation ITU-R SM.2103 on “Global harmonization of short-range devices categories” contains guidelines for the categories recommended for SRDs requiring operation on a globally harmonized basis.
International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) are the on-going enabler of new trends in communication devices – from the connected car and intelligent transport systems to augmented reality, holography, and wearable devices, and a key enabler to meet social needs in the areas of mobile education, connected health and emergency telecommunications.
In this context, ITU-R WP 5D is responsible for carrying studies related to the development and enhancement of International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT).
In February 2022, the first revision of Recommendation ITU-R M.2150 containing the “Detailed specifications of the terrestrial radio interfaces of International Mobile Telecommunications-2020 (IMT-2020)” was approved. Similar to previous mobile generation technologies, this work is the basis for the development of 5G systems that provides great improvements and benefits to several ICT applications, including e-health, e-agriculture, e-manufacturing, intelligent transport systems, smart cities and traffic control, etc., to facilitate the development of the digital economy.
ITU-T
ITU-T SG20 “IoT and smart cities and communities (SC&C)” is developing a series of standards that coordinate the development of IoT technologies in cities, including machine-to-machine communications and ubiquitous sensor networks. Some of these standards include sensor control networks in NGN environment (ITU-T Y.4250), platform interoperability for smart cities (ITU-T Y.4200), reference model of IoT-related crowdsourced systems (ITU-T Y.4205), Reference architecture of artificial intelligence service exposure for smart sustainable cities (ITU-T Y.4470), Requirements and capability framework of smart environmental monitoring (ITU-T Y.4207), self-organization network in IoT environments (ITU-T Y.4417), Open data application programming interface (APIs) for IoT data in smart cities and communities” (ITU-T Y.4472), Requirements of IoT-based civil engineering infrastructure health monitoring system (ITU-T Y.4214), Data processing and management framework for IoT and smart cities and communities (ITU-T Y.4602).
More info: https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/index_sg.aspx?sg=20
ITU-T SG20 “IoT and smart cities and communities” developed various standards on SC&C including Recommendation ITU-T Y.4466 on Framework of smart greenhouse service and Recommendation ITU-T Y.4910 on Maturity model of digital supply chain for smart sustainable cities.
More info: https://itu.int/go/tsg20
U4SSC is a United Nations initiative coordinated by ITU, UNECE and UN-Habitat and supported by 16 other UN agencies and programmes, to help cities and communities become smarter and more sustainable. U4SSC is currently working on several thematic groups including (but not limited to) city platforms, Lessons Learned From Building Urban Economic Resilience at City Level During and After COVID-19, artificial intelligence in cities, procurement for SSC, Enabling People-Centred Cities through Digital Transformation, digital wellbeing and etc, accelerate digital transformation in cities and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
More info: https://u4ssc.itu.int/
Several U4SSC deliverables have been launched (since September 2020) including City Science Application Framework (containing 8 Case Studies), Guide to Circular Cities (containing 8 Case studies), Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies, Blockchain for smart sustainable cities, Simple ways to be smart, Guidelines on tools and mechanisms to finance smart sustainable cities projects, Digital solutions for integrated city management and use cases, Compendium of survey results on integrated digital solutions for city platforms around the world, Smart public health emergency management and ICT implementations, Redefining smart city platforms: Setting the stage for Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms, Smart tourism: A path to more secure and resilient destinations, Compendium of practices on innovative financing for smart sustainable cities projects, Procurement guidelines for smart sustainable cities and Reference framework for integrated management of an SSC.
See the U4SSC deliverables available at: https://u4ssc.itu.int/publications/
To complement the work of the U4SSC, the first U4SSC Country Hub has been set up in Vienna, Austria, which is hosted by the Austrian Economic Centre. The first U4SSC Country Hub in Africa has also been set up in Kyebi, Ghana. The U4SSC Hubs provide a unique platform to accelerate cooperation between public and private sector and helps facilitate the digital transformation in cities and communities, while enabling technology and knowledge transfer.
ITU-T Recommendations (ITU-T Y.4900, ITU-T Y.4901, ITU-T Y.4902, ITU-T Y.4903) have become the foundation of the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) initiative’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Smart Sustainable Cities project. Over 150 cities worldwide have already partnered with the U4SSC to pilot the indicators contained in Recommendation ITU-T Y.4903 and implement Recommendation ITU-T Y.4904 “Smart sustainable cities maturity model”.
More info: https://u4ssc.itu.int/u4ssc-kpi/
https://www.itu.int/en/publications/Documents/tsb/2017-U4SSC-Collection-Methodology/index.html
Four case studies (Daegu, Dubai, Singapore and Moscow) related to the implementation of the KPIs for SSC have been published.
In addition, City Snapshots and City Verification Reports have been developed on U4SSC KPIs. Six City Factsheets have been also published.
Find the published City Snapshots, Verification Reports, Factsheets and Case Studies available at: https://u4ssc.itu.int/u4ssc-kpis-report/
A Joint IEC-ISO-ITU Smart Cities Task Force (J-SCTF) has been created to develop an holistic view on smart cities and communities taking into consideration the scope, areas of work and expertise of ITU-T, IEC and ISO to support smart cities and communities development and share the ongoing development of the work items produced by the three organizations.
ITU, together with other UN agencies, developed a Toolkit on Digital Transformation for People-Oriented Cities and Communities. The resources contained in this Toolkit include international standards and guidance, the latest research and projections, and cutting-edge reports on a variety of timely topics relevant to the digital transformation of cities and communities.
More info: https://toolkit-dt4c.itu.int/
ITU, together with other organizations and UN agencies, is organizing a series of webinars on “Digital Transformation”. These webinars discuss topics related to cross-sectoral digital transformation and related standardization activities.
More info: https://www.itu.int/cities/standards4dt/
ITU-T Study Group 5 develops standards on ICTs related to the environment, energy efficiency, clean energy and sustainable digitalization for climate actions. Q13/5 is dedicated to work on Building circular and sustainable cities and communities. ITU-T SG5 approved Recommendations ITU-T L.1604 “Development framework for bioeconomy in cities and communities”, ITU-T L.1610 on City science application framework, ITU-T L.1620 “Guide to circular cities”, ITU-T L.1630 “Framework of a building infrastructure management system for sustainable cities”. Additionally, SG5 developed Recommendation ITU-T L.1440 “Methodology for environmental impact assessment of information and communication technologies at city level”. ITU-T SG17 is working on “Security measures for location enabled smart office services” (X.sles), “Security measure for digital twin system of smart cities” (X.smdtsc) and “Security measure for smart residential community” (X.smsrc).
https://itu.int/go/tsg17
ITU-T has just set-up in 2023 an expert focus group on metaverse (FG-MV) for one year to work on pre-standardisation matters. The group will analyse the technical requirements of the metaverse to identify fundamental enabling technologies in areas from multimedia and network optimization to digital currencies, Internet of Things, digital twins, and environmental sustainability.
This group is relevant for smart and sustainable communities (series of interconnected and distributed hybrid and virtual worlds representing, and synchronized with, their physical counterparts. It offers new (administrative, economic, social, policy-making, and cultural) virtual goods/services/capabilities to city and community actors such as citizens, represented as digital avatars).
IETF
The Energy Management (EMAN) WG has produced several specifications for an energy management framework, for power/energy monitoring and configuration. See http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/eman/documents/ for the details. The framework focuses on energy management for IP-based network equipment (routers, switches, PCs, IP cameras, phones and the like).
A recently published standards track specification (RFC7603) presents the applicability of the EMAN information model in a variety of scenarios with cases and target devices. These use cases are useful for identifying requirements for the framework and MIBs. Further, it describes the relationship of the EMAN framework to other relevant energy monitoring standards and architectures.
Many of the IETF Working Groups listed under section 3.1.4 Internet of Things above are developing standards for embedded devices that may also be applicable to this section.
OASIS
The OASIS Transformational Government TC Framework (TGF) advances an overall framework for using information technology to improve the delivery of public services. It is used in BSI's PAS 181:2014 as mentioned above.
AENOR
Over 20 Spanish standards at AENOR’s CTN 178 on e.g. platforms interoperability, open data in smart cities, smart ports, rural communities and smart tourist destinations, basis for ITU-T SG20 recommendations on these topics
http://www.aenor.es/descargasweb/normas/aenor-Spanish-standardisation-on-Smart-Cities-CTN-178.pdf
BSI
BSI's PAS 181:2014 Description: British Smart City Framework. A good practices framework for city leaders to develop, agree and deliver smart city strategies. Uses OASIS TGF (below).
BSI has adopted and published the deliverables of the Demand-side group on Urban Platforms initiative of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities:
- Leadership Guide: a ‘train read’ document for city leaders (this now published under BSI logo)
- Management Framework: helping integrate across the functional silos (published under BSI logo)
BSI, Future Cities
Cities Standards Institute (CSI) was a joint activity to develop a strong network of cities, companies and SMEs that develop the next stage of the BSI's Smart City Catapult Framework. This was completed in 2017, the whole series include DIN SPEC 91347 (humble lampposts), 91357 (OUP), 91367 (mobile urban data), 91387, and lately 91397 (district level management systems – to be published in 2021).
DIN/DKE/VDE
The German Standardisation Roadmap Smart City
The DIN PAS Reference Architecture adopted from the Reference Architecture deliverable of the Urban platform initiative of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities and the ESPRESSO project is anticipated to be complete in summer 2017.
(C.2) Other activities related to standardisation
Adapt4EE/Ready4SmartCities
Activity related to eeSemantics: group was running a series of vocabulary camps addressing specific sub-areas.
Horizon 2020 call SCC-03-2015 Espresso
Development of system standards for smart cities and communities solutions.
The process for developing, maintaining and promoting smart cities and communities standards to ensure the interoperability of solutions, i.e. the adaptability of solutions to new user requirements and technological change and the avoidance of entry barriers or vendor lock-in through promoting common metadata structures and interoperability using /open standards as opposed to proprietary ones, together with open and consistent data. It should make relevant data and information as widely available as possible —including to third parties for the purpose of applications development— while using common, transparent measurement and data collection standards to ensure meaningfulness and comparability of performance/outcome measurements. The project together with the EIP SCC urban platform initiative is promoting the use of DIN SPEC 91357, freely available for the DIN website, by bringing it to the attention of European cities as well as promoting it worldwide. It is helping to bring DIN SPEC 91357 to CEN/CELELEC and ISO for international consideration. It also contributed to other standards such as the DIN smart "humble" lamppost standard.
Industry Memorandum of Understanding on Urban Platforms
93 organisations from industry and research have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on interoperable urban platforms. The group is led by SAP and developed a set of principles and a joint reference architecture framework to enable interoperability, scalability and open interfaces to integrate different solutions and to develop a joint data and service ontology to be used by individual Smart cities. In addition, they are working to accelerate the adoption of the developed framework by standardisation bodies and other stakeholders. The deliverables of the group (and most notably the reference architecture) have been standardised by DIN in DIN91357. The group is promoting the use of DIN SPEC 91357, freely available for the DIN website, by bringing it to the attention of European cities as well as promoting it worldwide. It is helping to bring DIN SPEC 91357 to CEN/CELELEC and ISO for international consideration.
Demand-side group (city-led) on Urban Platforms (within the Smart Cities Marketplace)
A total of 110 cities — individual cities and two city networks — have already agreed to cooperate more strongly in the area of urban platform by signing a Letter of Intent. The group is working within the urban platforms initiative of the Smart Cities Marketplace. This group is led by London and has already produced a requirements document for smart city interoperability (urban platform), which is currently being tested. The requirements document is being used by the industry group of the MoU on urban platforms within the Smart Cities Marketplace to create a reference architecture framework and standards landscape. The members of the group are committed to implement commonly agreed open standard urban platforms and foster the deployment of smart city solutions. Two other deliverables of the demand-side group are:
- Leadership Guide: a ‘train read’ document for city leaders
- Management Framework: helping integrate across the functional silos
BSI has adopted and published the latter two deliverables under the BSI logo.
Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC)
City-led initiative to create a market which addresses the complex needs of smart cities and communities, especially interoperability, portability, replaceability and comparability, in order to avoid vendor lock-in and to support local digital entrepreneurship. OASC maintains a set of technical Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) which are open and free. Launched in March 2015, a current total of more than150 cities in 30 countries, representing 100 million citizens and a combined GDP of 3.5t€, mainly in Europe, have already committed to adopting the OASC principles. OASC promotes standards-based innovation and procurement across application domains, and the MIMs are directly linked to the existing standardisation processes on national, European and international level, including CEN TC465, ISO TC268/JTC1 and ITU-T SG20. OASC also maintains the consolidated Open Standards Library, the Connected Smart Cities (CSCC) Catalogue of standards-based services and suppliers, the SynchroniCity Guide and the OrganiCity Experimentation-as-a-Service model, and operates the OASC Academy for training.
SynchroniCity
European IoT Large-Scale Pilot on Smart Cities (part of the 104m€ H2020 IoT-LSP Programme) with 8 core European cities (some are also EIP-SCC-01 Lighthouse Cities), 38 partners in total, a budget of 20m€ (15m€ EC contribution) and a running period of 36 months (2017-19). SynchroniCity aims to establish an open market for IoT-enabled urban services based on the Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs). The project validates the MIMs as well as other existing and emerging standards through around 20 pilots involving at least two cities, including an open call for new cities and companies to join. SynchroniCity actively builds upon and contributes to initiatives such as EIP-SCC, FIWARE and oneM2M, and both the validation results and new specifications are contributed to the relevant European and global SDOs, such as ETSI and ITU-T. Specifically, SynchroniCity partners are leading and contributing to the ETSI ISG CIM and to the ITU-T SG20 Open API work item and FG-DPM-IOTSCC.
Living-in.EU
A bottom-up initiative of major stakeholders such as OASC, Eurocities, ENoLL and EIP SCC supported by the European Commission and the Committee of the Regions to support the roll out of urban platforms and digital services and solutions based on the data provided by the platforms and a European communities data space. The technical group within the initiative, which consists not only of signatory cities but also of stakeholders from major standards developing organisations, industry and others, has developed a consolidated report of standards and specifications for vendor-agnostic interoperable roll out of digital infrastructure and services for smart communities unifying outcomes from the EIP SCC urban platform initiative, the SynchroniCity/OASC MIMs and specifications from standardisation initiatives and bodies such as OneM2M, TM Forum, OGC, etc. The report will be used as technical common ground by the European communities and within the Digital Europe Programme.
Future Internet Public Private Partnership
Specifications and technologies developed under the Future Internet Public Private Partnership programme (FP7) that can be used within the context of smart cities:
FIWARE has developed an open source implementation of the ETSI ISG CIM GS 009 V.1.2.1 NGSI-LD API that provides a lightweight and simple means to gather, publish, query and subscribe to context information. This is an API for context information management. Such information can be indeed open data and/or linked data and consumed through the query and subscription API. It is possible to publish real-time or dynamic data and offer it as open data for the reuse by applications.
FIWARE CKAN: Open data publication generic enabler. FIWARE CKAN is an open source solution for the publication, management and consumption of open data, usually, but not only, through static datasets. FIWARE CKAN allows to catalogue, upload and manage open datasets and data sources, while supports searching, browsing, visualising or accessing open data. FIWARE CKAN is an Open Data publication platform that is used by many cities, public authorities and organisations.
EUROCITIES and GREEN DIGITAL CHARTER (GDC)
A strategic, city-led initiative aiming to improve cities and citizens’ quality of life through the use of open and inclusive digital solutions. GDC is a EUROCITIES initiative launched in 2009 and currently signed by 52 major European cities. It works at the highest level with CEN & CENELEC SF-SSCC, ETSI SDMC, the MoU on urban platforms and OASC.
Apart from GDC, EUROCITIES works with its member-cities for “Data” and “Standards & Interoperability” through the two respective working groups of its Knowledge Society Forum, a networking and collaboration mechanism for more than 70 European cities. http://www.greendigitalcharter.eu
H2020 CITYkeys
Following the SCC-02-2014 call of H2020, nine partners, among which five cities, developed the first public European framework for the performance measurement of smart cities and smart city projects. A set of around 100 key performance indicators (KPIs) and a framework of open-architecture, interfaces and standards help cities design, select, monitor, evaluate and promote smart city solutions. The smart city KPIs of CITYkeys were used by ETSI SDMC for the creation of TS 103 463, “Key Performance Indicators for Sustainable Digital Multiservice Cities”. http://www.citykeys-project.eu/
H2020 Smart Cities Lighthouse projects
Following the directions of the Strategic Implementation Plan of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC), a yearly Horizon2020 Smart Cities call for lighthouse innovation projects has been in place since 2014. The yearly budget is fluctuating, but it is in the ballpark figure of 100 M€/year and the funding of the individual calls is around 25 million per project. There are now 18 lighthouse projects at the moment (see also https://europa.eu/!u6YbvV). Within each project there are two to three leading cities implementing smart city solutions in the areas of energy and transport with the help of digital solutions, and a number of follower and observer cities that replicate the solutions developed for the leading cities. The projects are implementing among other things ICT urban platforms and are working together with their sister project ESPRESSO and the urban platform group within the Smart Cities Marketplace to implement open-standards based interoperable platforms.
Fed4IoT
The Fed4IoT project faces the interoperability issue, focusing on large-scale environments and addressing the problem at different and synergic levels: device, platform and information. The goal of the project is to federate IoT and Cloud infrastructures to provide scalable and interoperable Smart Cities Applications by introducing novel IoT virtualization technologies. https://fed4iot.org/
AIOTI:
AIOTI (Alliance for the Internet of Things innovation) is a member driven alliance which objectives include: fostering experimentation, replication and deployment of IoT, supporting convergence and interoperability of IoT standards, gathering evidence on market obstacles for IoT deployment and mapping and bridging global, EU, and member states’ IoT innovation activities. AIOTI welcomes membership input on any and all issues – from internal governance to future work streams.
WG 3: IoT Standardisation
This Working Group identifies and, where appropriate, makes recommendations to address existing IoT standards, analyses gaps in standardisation, and develops strategies and use cases aiming for (1) consolidation of architectural frameworks, reference architectures, and architectural styles in the IoT space, (2) (semantic) interoperability and (3) personal data & personal data protection to the various categories of stakeholders in the IoT space.
WG 8: Smart Cities
The topic for this Working Group refers to IoT solutions used by a city in order to enhance performance, safety and wellbeing, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens. Key ‘smart city’ sectors may include transport, energy, healthcare, lighting, water, waste and other city related sectors.
StandICT.eu
The StandICT.eu produced a standardisation landscape for the technology areas applicable to Smart Cities. The document is a static “snapshot” of a dynamically updated database compiled within StandICT.eu. The database is inclusive (from many different SDOs and organizations), re-useable (available for a liaison to other organisations), filterable (to choose a subset of documents and organisations appropriate to a particular use), and easily exportable (CSV, Word, ODT, Mind-map). https://www.standict.eu/landscape-analysis-report/landscape-smart-cities-standards
StandICT.eu landscape report on digital twins: https://www.standict.eu/landscape-analysis-report/landscape-digital-twins
In the topic of Virtual worlds, a new call has been launched including Citiverse topics. Moreover, a Technical Working Group (TWG) on Citiverse will be put together to deliver a landscape analysis report that maps all the current standards in the CitiVerse domain.
(C.3) additional information
There are already many activities going on around smart cities in various standards development organisations around the globe. Industry, therefore, welcomes that the Commission does not see a need to trigger further standards development at this point in time but relies on the industry initiatives which have started in organisations around the globe.
Broad coordination, including stakeholders, Member States, and the Commission, is important for making consistent progress in this area which covers a large field of sub-domains. The Commission supports and encourages the efforts of the International and European SDOs to move towards common standards in the area of Smart Cities within as short timeframes as producing viable results allows.
The Spanish Secretary of State has identified the need to establish certain requirements for city platforms to allow interoperability. This is an opportunity for specific European standardisation work which could be developed by CEN & CENELEC and ETSI.
Spanish national plan on smart cities, with a governance model including an innovative advisory board on smart cities http://www.agendadigital.gob.es/planes-actuaciones/Paginas/plan-nacional-ciudades-inteligentes.aspx
ITU and UNECE "United for smart sustainable cities" (U4SSC) initiative to advocate for public policy to emphasize the importance of ICT in enabling the transition to smart sustainable cities.
[23] Definition is inspired on ISO/IEC 23005 and IEEE 2888 standards