by Maria Lazarte on 17 February 2014

Our cities and communities are draining the planet's natural resources. A new ISO technical report on smart communities infrastructures gives practical advice to help us counteract this worrying trend.
The problem is clear: community services like energy, water supply, waste management and transport require large infrastructure systems which are important for economic and social development, but can also have a heavy cost on the environment.
Smart community infrastructures take into consideration environmental impact, economic efficiency and quality of life, in order to build prosperous and sustainable cities.
Currently there are a myriad of evaluation concepts and metrics causing unnecessary complexity, redundancy and lack of transparency for governments, city planners, investors and operators involved in planning and procuring smart community infrastructures.
The new ISO technical report, ISO/TR 37150:2014, Smart community infrastructures – Review of existing activities relevant to metrics, aims to do away with this confusion by reviewing relevant metrics and providing stakeholders with a better understanding of available solutions.