City resiliency - World Council on City Data (ISO 37120)

Challenge

SLR led a group of talented individuals to design and develop a cloud based database and web server to assist WCCD to develop the world first ISO 37120 which assists cities in steering and assessing the performance management of city services and all service provisions, outlining sectors and services a city provides.

Solution

Stressing the relationship between sustainable development, resilient development, and smart development, the ISO 37120 standard was intended for use in conjunction with two international standards published in 2019: ISO 37122:2019, which specifies and establishes indicators specific for smart cities, and ISO 37123:2019 for resilient cities.

According to ISO 37123:2019 – Sustainable Cities and Communities – Indicators for Resilient Cities, these indicators are connected to floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, pandemics, chemical spills and explosions, terrorism, power outages, financial crises, cyber-attacks and conflicts.

Applicable to any city, municipality, or local government measuring its performance in a comparable and verifiable manner, ISO 37123:2019 details an expanse of areas to focus on resiliency, including economy, education, energy, environment and climate change, finance, governance, health, population, urban planning, transportation, and many others.

Impact

With this globally comparative quantitative data, cities can equip themselves with measurements to reduce vulnerability to risks.

In addition to creating a database and web server, or contributions to the project included:

• Providing Climate Data for various cities.
• Climate forecasting and weather prediction.
• Predicting likelihood of severe weather such as hurricanes, tropical storms and floods.