Vincent Bernard
Smart and sustainable communities
"A Smart and Sustainable City is an innovative city that uses information and communication technologies and other means to improve quality of life, efficiency of urban operations and competitiveness, while ensuring that it meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social, environmental as well as cultural aspects." UNECE and ITU
We know that a lot of work to achieve the sustainability goals must be done at the local level. Therefore BDO has developed a Center of competence focusing on smart and sustainable urban development.
Our objective is to support the public sector in providing a systematic approach towards smart and sustainable development. This involves, among other things, creating a greater understanding of sustainable development, ensuring proper organisation and ensuring that sustainability goals are integrated into governing documents while taking into consideration all available technologies.
Once a master plan has been prepared we work on the development of relevant projects and the implementation of specific measures, as well as the monitoring and reporting of the results.
In line with the recommendations of the UN Program United 4 Smart Sustainable Cities U4SSC we work closely with the public sector to integrate the UN's sustainability goals into local and regional area and community plans. The U4SSC framework makes it possible to measure the performance and development of cities and regions through KPIs evaluations, and to compare them against global benchmarks.
We are also a driving force for collaboration across the public sector, business, residents, academia, research and non-profit organisations. BDO provides a range of sustainability services to the public sector, including:
- Citizen Surveys and Citizen Involvement
- Workshops, including training of internal sustainability resources in the municipality
- Process support for UN KPIs evaluation
- Sustainability reporting plans
- Process support
- Collaboration project with the municipality and the business community for sustainable development
- Renovation and transition scenarios & financing