Smart Cities and Sustainability Metrics: From Sensors to Decisions

About This Course

Cities are rapidly turning into living, data-rich systems—filled with IoT sensors, edge devices, and digital platforms that constantly measure what’s happening in real time. But collecting data is the easy part. The real challenge is turning that data into clear sustainability indicators and decisions that actually improve city life.

This 3-week course takes you through the full journey: from how sensor data is captured, to how it’s cleaned and managed, to how it’s translated into sustainability KPIs and dashboards aligned with global frameworks like SDG 11 and standards like ISO 37120. You’ll explore practical monitoring approaches for energy, transport, water, waste, and emissions—and learn how cities use these insights for planning, policy, and performance reporting.

Aim

To help participants confidently collect, interpret, and apply sustainability metrics using smart-city data—so they can support stronger urban planning, better policy decisions, and measurable environmental outcomes.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Connect raw sensor data to real urban decisions

• Understand sustainability metrics and reporting in the context of city systems

• Use SDG 11 and ISO 37120 to structure urban sustainability measurement

• Improve data quality practices for reliable city monitoring

• Build and interpret dashboards for tracking sustainability KPIs

• Collaborate effectively across technology, planning, and policy teams

Course Structure

Module 1: Foundations of Smart Cities and Sustainability

• What “smart cities” really mean today (beyond buzzwords) + global trends

• Why sustainability metrics matter for city governance and funding

• A beginner-friendly walkthrough of key frameworks:

  • SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities)

  • ISO 37120 (City indicators for quality of life and services)

• Sensor basics: what cities measure, why they measure it, and where sensors fit in
  (energy, mobility, water, waste, air quality, emissions, infrastructure health)

Module 2: Data-Driven Urban Analysis

• How cities collect data: sensor networks, edge devices, platforms, and pipelines

• Data quality in the real world: missing values, noisy sensors, drift, calibration, bias

• Managing urban datasets for reporting and decision-making (practical approach)

• Interactive session (hands-on):
  Build a simple sustainability monitoring view:

  • picking KPIs

  • structuring metrics

  • designing a clear dashboard layout for city teams

Module 3: Applications, Case Studies, and What’s Next

• What successful smart-city sustainability programs did differently (lessons + patterns)

• Translating metrics into action: KPIs → insights → recommendations → impact tracking

• Group project: End-to-end workflow

  • sensor data → cleaned dataset → chosen indicators → dashboard → sustainability recommendations

• Expert-style discussion: common barriers (budget, governance, interoperability, privacy) + future opportunities (AI analytics, digital twins, predictive maintenance)

Who Should Enrol?

• Urban planners, municipal teams, and city administrators
• Civil engineers, architects, and infrastructure consultants
• Data analysts/data scientists, IoT engineers, and smart city developers
• Sustainability officers, ESG teams, and smart city startups
• Students and researchers in urban tech, sustainability, or environmental science