United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) is a United Nations (UN) initiative coordinated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the UN Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat), with the support of 12 other UN bodies and groups. U4SSC’s goal is to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11: “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”
U4SSC has developed a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for cities to help them measure their progress in becoming smarter and more sustainable.
The U4SSC list of KPIs for cities is broken down as follows:
- Economy
- Environment
- Society and Culture
It then further distinguishes KPIs for cities through a number of sub-divisions and sub-sub-divisions.
These KPIs can be seen in the expandable links in each of three categories below:
Job creation, especially in the informal sector (known as “waste pickers”)
Energy generation at specialised waste-to-energy plants.
Value addition through recycling.
Provision of resources for other sectors (e.g. plant waste can be used as compost for agriculture).