🇳🇵
Kathmandu
- Country
- Nepal
- Population
- 1.4M
- Projects
- 3
- First project
- 2017
- Best evidence
- Official
- Last verified
- 7 August 2026
- In the atlas since
- 16 July 2026
Each of Kathmandu's three systems works, and each one's reach stops well short of the valley. Eighteen sensors make the air legible in a city notorious for winter smog. GPS tracking has covered a transit cooperative's whole fleet since 2017 — a fleet of forty-four buses, in a valley served by thousands of vehicles. A SCADA control room manages a rebuilt water network whose single source closes every monsoon. The instruments are real and locally owned; what they measure is a fraction, and in the water system's case what they mostly manage is scarcity.
The atlas documents 3 projects in Kathmandu, the earliest dating to 2017: 3 still running without a verdict. Every entry carries an evidence grade — the strongest here is official (2 entries) — and links its sources.
How Kathmandu got smart
Kathmandu's oldest layer belongs to a cooperative rather than the city. Since September 2017 Sajha Yatayat has streamed GPS positions from its whole fleet — 44 buses when the trackers went live — with a rider app alongside, and since April 2024 the tracked fleet has included 40 electric buses charged at 24 stations. The limits are equally visible: the layer covers one operator's vehicles, and the app has stayed officially in beta for years.
The water network was rebuilt around a control room. Distribution now runs through ten new reservoirs holding 74,500 cubic metres, 77 km of bulk lines and over 1,800 km of new pipes, watched from a central SCADA room that also tracks turbidity and chlorine, with 14 of 33 planned district metered areas handed over by mid-2025. The bottleneck is not the network: since floods destroyed the source headworks in June 2021 the tunnel has run on temporary intakes and closes every monsoon.
The newest layer is the city acting for itself. On World Environment Day 2025 the metropolitan government launched Nepal's first city-run air-quality network — eighteen solar-powered sensors at hospitals, schools, ward offices and busy intersections, streaming live readings to a public dashboard. In a valley notorious for winter smog, it is the local government, not the national one, making the air legible.
All 3 projects in Kathmandu
On a time axis, by the year each one started — 2017 to 2025. Pick a dot to read what it was.
All 3 projects in Kathmandu, as a list
✔ Every published entry is checked against the public sources it cites before publication.
Outcome: 3 ongoing — Evidence: 2 official · 1 media
What's next
Plans and announced trajectories — not yet documented results.
Each of Kathmandu's three layers measures something the city cannot yet control: one operator's buses rather than the valley's transit, a distribution network whose single source closes every monsoon, and an air quality no reading is empowered to change. That is not a criticism of the instruments — automating distribution is the easy half — but it sets the test for what comes next, which is whether any of these readings acquires a consequence.
Compare with other cities
🇰🇪 Nairobi
Digital Matatus Open Mapping Framework
Two answers to untracked transit: Nairobi mapped informal routes once; Kathmandu's Sajha streams GPS from its own fleet only.
🇺🇸 Chicago
Array of Things
Open-data air sensing, a decade apart: Kathmandu launched its city network in 2025; Chicago's pole nodes published readings 2016–21.
🇫🇷 Paris
Plan Vélo Digital Infrastructure Mesh
Two live city-run open-data dashboards: Kathmandu maps PM2.5 by location (2025–); Paris publishes hourly bike counts (2021–).
🇨🇴 Bogotá
TransMilenio Zero-Emission Electric Bus Fleet
E-bus fleets with a data layer: Bogotá's concession publishes performance data, Sajha reports little beyond its beta app.
Show 5 more comparisonsShow fewer
- 🇲🇽 Guadalajara: Jalisco Transit Routes Published as GTFS This started at the live position of a few buses, Jalisco at the timetable of 275 routes. Neither yet has both.
- 🇹🇷 Istanbul: ISKI Centralized SCADA Water Balancing Strategy Both rebuilt distribution around SCADA + metered districts; İSKİ measures losses falling, KUKL still rations a seasonal source.
- 🇧🇩 Dhaka: Dhaka WASA District Metered Areas and SCADA Two South Asian capitals running SCADA on water they cannot yet deliver everywhere; the instrument works where the network reaches.
- 🇲🇱 Bamako: EDM-SA Published Load-Shedding Schedule for Bamako Same axis: a utility publishing scarcity — Bamako schedules blackouts, KUKL schedules taps when Melamchi closes each monsoon.
- 🇩🇪 Gründau: Community Heat Map Two live public environmental dashboards: Kathmandu maps neighbourhood air quality; Gründau maps summer heat over its playgrounds.
Official strategy and sources
↗ Kathmandu Metropolitan CityThe organization driving the city's smart-city work.
📎 Cite this city
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Smart-city projects in Kathmandu, Nepal.” The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/cities/kathmandu/ (last verified 2026-08-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.