Iran Fine-Tunes Smart City Regulations

The finer details of smart cities have been highlighted by the deputy minister of communications and information technology at a local conference held in Tehran this past week.

At the conference, technical details, economics, services and the environment were highlighted as part of the government’s plans to upgrade technology facilities in the country under the current five-year development plan, according to ICTNA, a local technology website.

A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple ICT and Internet of Things solutions in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets such as local departments’ information systems, schools and libraries.

“We have prepared the standards for setting up smart buildings. This has been done by drawing on international experience and taking into account international standards put forth by the International Telecommunications Union,” Nassrollah Jahangard said.

The ITU is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for issues that concern information and communications technologies.

Jahangard added that in any smart city, citizens should be able to receive the services they need as fast and as efficiently as possible.

“Aside from all technical matters that should be looked into, urban design is also a critical matter that should be taken into consideration,” he said.

“To this end, architects must take into account issues such as urban and historical ecology so that people’s living experience can thrive along with the technology services.”

Pointing to the electronic services launched by official organizations, he said several e-government services are being prepared and have advanced to a good degree.

“Currently, we are smoothing over the services so as to implement a unified system and improve and expand accessibility for the public,” he said.

Location-based services, mobile payments and smart postal services are the main areas that are being developed, “we hope that some of the projects will become operational by the end of the current Iranian year (started March 20)”, he said.

Jahangard noted that another important project underway is setting up public Wi-Fi zones in densely populated urban areas so that citizens are able to use these services with a portable device.

One recently launched service is the digital version of the country’s driving theory test, which allows trainee drivers to test their knowledge on mock tests.