3 Indian cities ISO Certified, Tata Trust & WCCD initiative
Tata Trusts in partnership with the World Council on City Data (WCCD) announced recently an initiative to build high caliber data in Indian city. City data is an important component of the smart city mission launched by the Indian government.
It is an important to mention that three cities, Pune, Surat, and Jamshedpur has been recognized as the first ever in India to achieve WCCD ISO 37120. The cities have been rated highly for its city services and quality of life, according to an international rating agency. As per the WCCD Global City Registry, published by the Toronto-based World Council on City Data, Pune has been bestowed with a platinum rating, while Jamshedpur and Surat got gold. The WCCD certification has been granted to 46 cities across the world till now. The three cities will also be featured in a panel discussion on the City Data for India Initiative at the Global Cities Summit in Dubai, March 7-9 2017.
Cities have to comply with ISO 37120 to get listed by WCCD in the registry. There is a comprehensive set of 100 indicators, of which 46 are core, across 17 themes that enables any city of any size to measure and compare its social economics and environmental performance in relation to other cities from around the world. All cities in the global registry provided third party verified data to the WCCD open data portal, allowing city-to-city comparison, cutting-edge visualisation and customised trend analysis.
As cities grow, useful data is extremely vital for urban planning and decision making and it will act as a catalyst to create truly smart, sustainable, resilient, inclusive and prosperous cities of tomorrow. Being part of the ISO 37120 Sustainable Development of Communities: Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life imply that these three cities have committed to be innovative cities, to improving services and quality of life with open city data and to providing a consistent and comprehensive platform for standardized urban metrics. This will allow for city data to be available on a common platform so that it is globally-comparable and will offer decision makers real-time information to measure a city’s social, economic, and environmental performance in relation to other cities. The ISO 37120 is applicable to any city, municipality or local government that undertakes to measure its performance in a comparable and verifiable manner, irrespective of size and location and has been extensively tested by more than 250 cities worldwide.
Tata Trust and WCCD announced last month in a national roundtable held in Mumbai opened by WCCD President & CEO Dr. Patricia McCarney and Chairman of Tata Trusts Mr. Ratan Tata, launch of a joint initiative to drive the mission to develop high caliber data in Indian cities. The goal of the initiative is to empower city leaders, decision-makers and citizens from cities across India to make data-informed decisions to improve planning, infrastructure investment and operational performance management using ISO standardised, comparable city data.
As per the official WCCD website, “Tata Trusts is amongst India’s oldest, non-sectarian philanthropic organizations that work in several areas of community development. Since its inception, Tata Trusts has played a pioneering role in transforming traditional ideas of philanthropy to make impactful sustainable change in the lives of the communities served. Realizing the value of data, Tata Trusts has actively taken up the agenda of striving towards ‘Data-Driven Governance’, to inform, impact and improve policy making, with a view to facilitate holistic development in India.
The long term goal of the City Data for India Initiative is to contribute to improved infrastructure services, inclusive prosperity and quality of life for millions of Indian urban citizens. It will empower city leaders, decision-makers and citizens from cities in India to make data-informed decisions to improve city planning, infrastructure investment and operational performance management using ISO standardized, comparable city data.”
Reference Links: 1) http://indiablooms.com/ibns_new/finance-details/6364/tata-trusts-announces-the-city-data-for-india-initiative-in-partnership-with-world-council.html
2) http://www.dataforcities.org/ – Official Website of WCCD
