The UN initiative U4SSC United for Smart Sustainable Cities has appointed Tania Marcos, who is responsible for the Smart Cities in the Spanish Association for Standardization (UNE), as its new Vice-chair.
This appointment recognises the Spanish experience and leadership in standards for the sustainable development of Smart Cities. In fact, several of the standards of technical standardisation committee's (CTN by its Spanish acronym) 178 have been the basis for developing ITU International Recommendations, where UNE has represented the Spanish Government.
For Javier García, Chief Executive Officer of UNE, "Spanish standardisation is characterised by an increasing international projection, which translates into a benefit for the competitiveness of our economic sectors and companies. An illustrative example is that Spanish experts already direct nearly 130 international and European technical standardisation bodies, which are responsible for developing standards that effectively respond to the major challenges of organisations."
The United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) is a United Nations initiative aimed at helping cities achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, which aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. It is coordinated by ITU, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and is supported by 15 other United Nations agencies.
UNE, signatory of the Spanish Network of the Global Compact, will perform different roles from this new position of responsibility: as a Spanish standardisation body, it will set Spanish standards in Europe and Latin America and will act as a lever for optimising R&D results. In addition, it will have a key role as a partner for international cooperation and technical assistance projects. It will also contribute to the implementation of the Urban Agenda and the deployment of smart cities in Spain and will serve to strengthen UNE's position as a strategic ally of organisations to achieve the 17 UN SDGs: more than 4,000 UNE standards help companies to achieve tthese goals.
