The ITU has approved a new standard to assess the environmental impact of ICTs on cities.
The methodology provides cities with a uniform means of quantifying ICTs’ energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to assist cities in measuring their degree of success in promoting ICT-enabled energy and emissions savings.
The new standard – Recommendation ITU-T L.1440 “Methodology for environmental impact assessment of information and communication technologies at city level” – achieved final approval at a meeting of ITU-T Study Group 5 (Environment and climate change) in Geneva, 12-23 October 2015.
“ITU-T L.1440 will assist in making the case for smart sustainable cities, and in quantifying the success of smart-city projects,” said Chaesub Lee, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. “Cities are at the heart of our pursuit of environmental sustainability, and ITU is pleased to have another valuable standard to showcase at the upcoming COP-21 in Paris.”
Standards development to provide the foundations of smart sustainable cities is a high-priority work area to ITU-T Study Group 5.
ITU has launched a two-year pilot project to evaluate the feasibility of the key performance indicators for smart sustainable cities developed by the ITU-T Focus Group on Smart Sustainable Cities.
Dubai and Singapore were the first two cities to join the pilot project, and ITU expects other cities to follow suit