Smart Cities

The Ad Hoc Group operates at the intersection of smart city development and Europe’s climate-neutrality ambitions. While these two agendas are frequently linked in policy discussions and strategic frameworks, their joint implementation in practice remains limited. The group identifies standards as a vital tool to scale and replicate successful practices across Europe.

Our work focuses on creating and consolidating synergies between existing European initiatives, programmes, and platforms working toward climate-neutral and smart cities. By scoping these efforts, we assess how they support the twin transition—digital and green—of urban areas, and showcase the innovation capacity and competitiveness of Europe.

In doing so, the group aims to identify gaps in the standardisation landscape, bring together key stakeholders, and mobilise critical resources to catalyse Europe’s transition. A key to our success has been the strong integration of cities and communities, whose stories, needs, and ambitions have shaped our work.

Key References and Alignments

The EU Mission “100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030” and Local Green Deals

This flagship mission has received strong recognition at both European and global levels. It provides a solid foundation for standardisation efforts in smart and sustainable urban development. When aligned with the legacy of the Intelligent Cities Challenge and its experimentation with Local Green Deals, it offers models for stakeholder integration and the formation of strong alliances to drive the twin transition.

The Digital Europe Programme

This key funding instrument supports the EU’s digital transformation goals, aligned with the 2030 Digital Compass and the Path to the Digital Decade. It has produced important outputs—such as frameworks on data spaces, local digital twins, and emerging concepts like the Metaverse and Citiverse. These digital tools empower local authorities to address climate challenges and accelerate Green Deal implementation.

Highlights from the Ad Hoc Group’s Work

The Ad Hoc Group submitted a comprehensive report with recommendations for the CEN/TC 465 work programme on climate-neutral and smart cities. This includes:

• A curated overview of relevant EU projects and initiatives

• A series of online and two in-person stakeholder events

• Five strategic guest presentations, including contributions from CEMR and DG RTD

• Eight city case studies on the twin transition, sharing key lessons, needs, and barriers

A formal liaison has also been established between CEN/TC 465 and the NZC project, reinforcing collaboration and knowledge exchange.

The recommendations are informing a joint policy brief by ICLEI and OASC, which will be published shortly. Furthermore, the report will be a key input to a broader NetZeroCities (NZC) analysis on standardisation opportunities. A joint NZC session on this topic included participation from Mission Cities and DG RTD.

The group’s work was also featured in the IEC Webinar on Positive Energy Districts (PEDs).

The presentation highlighted PEDs as nuclei for climate-neutrality implementation, but also cautioned against an overemphasis on technology at the expense of integrated, systemic approaches. True transformation, we argued, requires coalitions of industry, local governments, innovation centers, and citizens.

Standards are not just technical tools—they are enablers of scalable, inclusive, and impactful urban transformation. The work of the Ad Hoc Group demonstrates how coordination across initiatives, strong local engagement, and strategic standardisation can move Europe closer to its climate and digital goals.

The work was supported by:

• StandICT
• TIPS4PED
• NetZeroCities

I was fortunate to co-convene this group together with Martin Brynskov.

The IETF Internet-Draft, titled "Challenges and Opportunities in Management for Green Networking" [1], explores the environmental impact of networking and identifies strategies to make it more energy-efficient and sustainable. It highlights several key challenges, opportunities, and approaches to achieving green networking. The draft aligns well with the principles and goals of smart cities, offering solutions that support sustainability, IoT integration, resource optimization, and scalability.

• Sustainability: Smart cities aim to minimize their environmental footprint by optimizing energy usage across various systems, including transport, utilities, and ICT (information and communication technologies). The draft’s focus on energy-efficient networking complements these objectives by addressing the power demands of urban communication networks.
• IoT Integration: Networking is a critical enabler for IoT devices, which are the backbone of smart city systems, such as smart grids and intelligent traffic management. The draft’s emphasis on energy-aware management practices directly supports the efficient operation of IoT devices and the networks they depend on. 
• Resource Optimization: Smart cities rely on real-time data to manage resources effectively, from energy distribution to public services. The draft’s approach to leveraging data for optimizing network performance aligns with this core requirement of smart cities. 
• Scalability: As smart cities grow, they require scalable and sustainable communication infrastructures. The draft addresses this need by proposing green networking practices that maintain efficiency even as networks expand, ensuring sustainable growth.

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-irtf-nmrg-green-ps/

Within Smart Cities Lifts, Escalators and Moving Walks are essential. Safe transportation of all users and accessibility for all is a precondition that those cities can be filled with live and all social processes are working. ISO/TC 178 covers currently 44 published documents (25 standards, 8 technical specifications and 11 technical reports), 12 documents are under development and totally 21 projects initiated. https://www.iso.org/committee/53970.html

Until 2022 no dedicated ICT standard was available within ISO/TC 178 Lifts, Escalators and Moving Walks, where the philosophy was to incorporate all subjects into the core product standards.
Given the importance of this topic and lacking in comprehensive coverage, given its rapid advancement, under my chairmanship ISO/TC 178/WG 12 “Cybersecurity” was found in 2019 and ISO 8102-20 “Electrical requirements for lifts, escalators and moving walks - Part 20: Cybersecurity" published in 2022.
In addition, ISO/TC 178/AHG1 was found with the mission to provide a study in the field of new technologies and how to deal with this topic in the future.

Based on this, ISO/TC 178/WG 13 “New technologies” was found end 2022 and 2 new projects being started in 2023:

• ISO TS 8102-21 Electrical requirements for lifts, escalators and moving walks — Part 21: On-site and off-site software updates
• ISO TS 8100-10 Lifts for the transport of persons and goods — Part 10: Building
  Information Modelling

Continuing the analysis for additional ICT standards this year another new project was started:

• ISO TS 8100-11 Electrical requirements for lifts, escalators and moving walks — Part 11: Interoperability between lift and other systems

Further on it was decided to start the revision of

• ISO 8102-20 Electrical requirements for lifts, escalators and moving walks — Part 20: Cybersecurity

to meet relevant EU regulation, which requires enhancing cybersecurity requirements to a state-of-the-art level. This work will be done under the Vienna Agreement to become EN ISO 8102-20 under ISO lead.

For all projects the dedicated development time, considering the ISO process with all the relevant voting’s will 3 years. If you're interested in more information, I'll be happy to provide it.

The green digital transition is an opportunity for communities to achieve environmental sustainability, address climate change, and meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The transition leverages digital technology to enhance energy efficiency, foster circular economy, reduce emissions, and boost resilience.

The green digital transformation relies on integrating processes, interfaces, data, and technology to improve city life and resilience. This includes collecting and analysing real-time data to understand a territory better and improve community welfare. Standards facilitate harmonious interactions and enable unrestricted information flow across city systems.

However, this digital integration poses challenges, such as privacy, data security, social equity, and resource management. These require careful planning, stakeholder engagement, and sound policies. The ISO 37101 standard supports sustainable development by enhancing municipalities' resilience and smartness, aiding transparent, effective transformations by introducing the necessary stakeholder engagement as well.

Meanwhile, the International Electrotechnical Commission's (IEC) SyC for Smart Cities addresses complex urban systems. SRD 63188:2022 provides a methodology for creating the Smart Cities Reference Architecture (SCRA), a versatile city systems architecture template. The SCRAM outlines desirable Smart Cities traits, SCRA perspectives, and model types, encouraging uniformity across architectures. Linking ISO 37101 with SRD 63188:2022 and SCRA can drive green and digital transformation.

With this fellowship, I address the following gaps that ISO/TC 268 and IEC work tackles:

• Addressing sustainable development in ICT standards: Sustainable development is agreed on highest levels as the underlying objective of our work in standardisation. However, the links and connections are yet to be more widely established. The work undertaken in this project aims at bridging this gap by blending the ISO 37101 and the SCRAM to create a vital contribution to the green and digital transformation of cities and communities. 
• Good governance – The new European standardization strategy underlines the need for wider stakeholder engagement. Standards often become challenging to understand because stakeholders are not engaged early in the process. Including relevant partners at the initial stages can help clarify standards, identify potential synergies, and ensure a more comprehensive understanding. Including city representatives into standardisation is often challenging due to the high workload in daily operations.
• European leadership in global standards - through the High-Level Forum, the Commission will set up a new mechanism with EU countries and national standardisation bodies to share information, coordinate and strengthen the European approach to international standardisation.
• Support innovation will require easier access and navigation of complex Standards: Transforming societal needs into innovation through standards cities can play an important role as they are the location where innovation, technology and societal needs meet. However, cities and communities find it challenging to navigate the multitude of overlapping standards in smart cities. The parallelism of the workstream and the overlaps in topics are adding to the complexity hindering effective integration, application and implementation.

By identifying and addressing these gaps, the process of standardization for smart, sustainable cities can become more efficient, inclusive, and effective.

My activity is to contribute to prepare the ISO/TC 204/WG 17 Intelligent transport systems document. I led the team that developed the ISO 23795-1:2022 standard. This standard specifies a method for the determination of fuel consumption and resulting CO2 emissions to enable fleet managers to reduce fuel costs and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a sustainable manner. The fuel consumption determination is achieved by extracting trip data and speed profiles from the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver of a nomadic device (ND). My activities during this fellowship allowed me to revise any relevant patent rights, use cases and any supporting documentation. It also helped start the harmonization with the SAE & other SDOs.

The existing Standardization Landscape, mainly related to the main 5G and T&L standardization organizations consists of:

• 5G Standardization Organizations
  • 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
  • European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
  • International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
  • 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP)
• Transport & Logistics Standardization Organizations
  • IEEE P1950.1 STANDARD FOR COMMUNICATIONS ARCHITECTURAL FUNCTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR SMART CITIES (focusing on smart mobility)
  • ETSI - TECHNICAL COMMITTEE (TC) INTELLIGENT TRANSPORT SYSTEMS (ITS)
  • Digital Container Shipping Association
  • Digital Transport and Logistics Forum
  • International Maritime Organization
  • GS1 Transport & Logistics

Based on the work performed in the VITAL-5G project (https://www.vital5g.eu) the API for the management of network slices on the interface between the VITAL-5G platform and the network slice management system deployed at the various sites can be standardized in 3GPP under SA5 Management, Orchestration and Charging.

Technical reports on:

• Balanced Wireless Crowd Charging with Mobility Prediction and Social Awareness
• Wireless Crowd Charging with Battery Aging Mitigation