The US National Committee to the International Electrotechnical Commission has announced its acceptance of a new IEC Systems Committee (SyC) that will develop standards for the electrotechnical aspects of smart Cities 

Scope: To foster the development of standards in the field of electrotechnology to help with the integration interoperability and effectiveness of city systems.

Purpose and Justification: In 2014, the IEC Market Strategy Board published a white paper titled “Orchestrating Infrastructure for Sustainable Smart Cities”. This white paper provided guiding principles and a high level overview for the needs of standardization in the domain of smart cities. The white paper also identified that electricity is core to any urban infrastructure system, and the key enabler of a city’s development; as such, the IEC has a specific role to play in the development of a smart city’s set of standards. IEC/Systems Evaluation Group (SEG) 1 Smart Cities was set up in 2013 in recognition of this role for the IEC. SEG 1 took a goal-oriented and hypothesis verification approach to research whether there is a need for electrotechnical system standardization in the domain of smart cities. As cities are complex and diverse systems, it has been complicated for SEG 1 to comprehensively identify all the potential standardization items and to examine the needs for system standardization for each item within the city during the two-year life span of the SEG. In spite of this, SEG 1 instituted a subjective methodology to identify some already perceived market needs for standardization in specific areas in the field of smart cities. As an end result, eight WGs were formed and over the course of the last 18-20 months, completed their research in order to verify the systems level standardization needs in their designated fields of study and the relations with other stakeholder

The areas within a city as identified by SEG1 where systems level standardization are needed are:

1. City service continuity
2. Urban planning and simulation system
3. City facilities management (CFM)
4. Use case – Smart home
5. Use case – Smart education
6. Smart cities assessment
7. Standards Development using cities effectively implementing Smart City projects as a piloting benchmark for Smart Cities Implementation
8. Mobility and logistics

Based on the conclusions from these working groups as well as recognized market demands, SEG1 confirms the need to establish an IEC Systems Committee (SyC) in the field of electrotechnical aspects of smart cities. The U.S. National Committee has indicated that it agrees with the scope proposed for this new IEC SyC and that it wishes to register as a Participating Member and intends to actively participate. If the USNC is to become a P Member, a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) will have to be established and a TAG Administrator will have to be assigned. NEMA has already indicated its interest to become TAG Administrator. If any other entities are interested in the position of TAG Administrator, they are invited to contact Tony Zertuche, USNC Deputy General Secretary, by WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2015 at tzertuche@ansi.org

We will place this item on the agenda of today’s teleconference of the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facility Committee.  Anyone may join the call with the login information provided on the committee home page: https://site.ieee.org/icps-ehe/