Smart City Glossary

15-minute city An urban-planning ideal where daily needs — work, shops, school, care, parks — sit within a 15-minute walk or bike ride of home. Adaptive traffic signals Traffic lights that retime themselves in real time from live sensor data to match actual traffic, instead of running a fixed pre-set schedule. Air quality index (AQI) A scale, not a measurement: pollutant concentrations converted onto one number. National scales differ and are not comparable with each other. ANPR (automatic number-plate recognition) Camera technology that reads vehicle number plates automatically, used to enforce road-pricing and clean-air zones without toll booths. Automated speed enforcement (speed cameras) Automated speed enforcement uses roadside cameras to measure vehicle speed and mail fines automatically — distinct from plate-reading ANPR. Building performance standard (BPS) Building performance standard: a local law capping a building's energy use or emissions, tightening over time, with fines for exceeding it. Bus rapid transit (BRT) Bus service given metro-like speed and reliability through dedicated lanes, prepaid boarding and signal priority — pioneered in Curitiba in 1974. CBTC (communications-based train control) Radio-based railway signalling that tracks every train continuously, letting trains run closer together than fixed track blocks allow. Civic participation platform An online platform where residents propose, debate and vote on local policies and budgets, turning one-off consultation into a continuous process. Congestion pricing Charging drivers a fee to use busy roads at busy times, so traffic thins out and remaining trips flow more freely. Demand-responsive transit Buses or vans without a fixed route, summoned by app or assembled from grouped requests — coverage bought at a high cost per rider. Digital identity A verified electronic credential that lets residents prove who they are online and reach many public services through a single trusted login. Digital twin A living virtual copy of a real asset or city, kept in sync by live sensor data so planners can test changes on the model before the real thing. District heating District heating pipes carry hot water from one central source to warm many buildings at once; smart networks add sensors and AI demand response. District metering area (DMA) A permanently metered zone of a water network, used to localise leaks by watching how much water flows in when nobody should be using it. E-ticketing Paying for and validating public-transport journeys electronically — via contactless smartcard, phone or bank card — instead of paper tickets or cash. Fare capping Pay-as-you-go fares that stop adding up once a rider has paid what a day, week or month pass would have cost. Flood early-warning system A network of rain gauges, river and drain sensors, and forecasting that detects rising water and warns people or agencies before a flood. Fuel cell A device that converts hydrogen or another fuel directly into electricity via an electrochemical reaction, emitting mainly water not exhaust. Geofencing A boundary drawn in software that a vehicle enforces on itself — in this atlas, mostly a way to regulate shared fleets rather than a technology. GNSS tolling Road tolling that uses satellite positioning and an in-vehicle unit to charge by distance or zone — no toll booths or camera gantries. Government super-app One municipal app and login placed in front of every city service, usually built to replace an estate of one-app-per-department. Grades of Automation (GoA) A five-step scale (GoA0–GoA4) for how much of a train's driving is automated — and, above all, whether any staff are on board at all. Green wave A run of traffic signals timed so vehicles or cyclists travelling at a set speed hit consecutive greens without stopping. Greenfield smart city A brand-new city built from scratch on empty or reclaimed land, wired with sensors and digital systems from day one rather than retrofitted. GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) A zipped set of plain text files describing a transit system's stops, routes and timetables — the open format that lets journey planners show a bus. Integrated command and control centre (ICCC) A single room that pools a city's camera feeds, sensors and agency dashboards — the standard deliverable of India's Smart Cities Mission, now a global genre. Lighthouse project EU funding jargon for a demonstrator district: a few 'lighthouse' cities build it so 'follower' cities can copy it — replication is the step that often fails. LoRaWAN A low-power radio protocol that carries tiny bursts of data several kilometres, letting battery sensors run for years over a city-owned network. Low-emission zone An area where the most polluting vehicles are charged or banned, based on their emissions standard, to improve urban air quality. Microgrid A local power network with its own generation and storage that can run tied to the main grid or disconnect and 'island' to keep the lights on. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) Bundling buses, trains, bikes and shared cars into one app or card so a trip can be planned, booked and paid for in a single step. Non-revenue water (NRW) Water a utility puts into its pipes but never bills for — leaks and bursts, plus meter under-registration, theft and unbilled authorised use. Open data Information anyone is free to access, use and share, published by governments in machine-readable formats under an open licence. Open-loop fare payment Paying a transit fare by tapping the bank card or phone you already own, instead of a card the transit agency issues and controls. Participatory budgeting A democratic process in which residents directly propose and vote on how to spend part of a public budget. Pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) Waste charging where residents pay by the amount they throw away — by volume or weight — rather than a flat fee, to reward reducing and sorting. Personal rapid transit (PRT) Small driverless pods that carry a few passengers on demand along a dedicated guideway, point to point with no timetable or intermediate stops. Plate-number rationing Barring cars from the road on set days by the last digit of their plate — the cheapest way to ration road space, and the least reliably effective. Pneumatic waste collection Underground vacuum-tube systems that suck waste from street inlets to a central terminal, replacing bin-emptying collection trucks. Port community system A state-run single window where every party in a port files the same paperwork once — customs, lines, forwarders, terminals and banks. Prepaid metering A meter that holds a balance: the household pays first, and supply stops when the credit runs out, without anyone deciding to disconnect it. Public-private partnership (PPP) A long-term contract in which a private consortium finances, builds and runs public infrastructure for a payment stream, then hands it back. Reallabor (real-world lab) A 'real-world laboratory': a temporary, sanctioned zone where a city tests new technology or rules under everyday conditions before wider rollout. SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) The control-room software that watches an infrastructure network in real time and lets operators act on it remotely. Smart city index A published league table that ranks cities by how "smart" they are; the indicators and their weighting are chosen by whoever publishes it. Smart grid A power network laced with sensors and software that balances supply and demand in real time, making room for renewables and local generation. Smart meter A utility meter that not only records consumption but reports it back over a network on its own — the return channel, not the display, is what makes it smart. Superblock A small grid of city blocks with through-traffic removed from the inner streets, turning reclaimed roadway into public space. Tactical urbanism Testing street changes with cheap, temporary materials — paint, planters, movable furniture — before committing to permanent construction. Terminal operating system (TOS) The database and dispatcher behind a container terminal, tracking every box and move — the concessionaire's software, not the port's. Urban cable car Aerial gondola lines run as scheduled mass transit, carrying commuters over steep hills and dense districts that buses and rail struggle to reach. Urban data platform (UDP) An urban data platform connects data from multiple city systems so authorized users and applications can find, combine and reuse it. Urban heat island The tendency of dense, paved cities to trap heat and stay several degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside, especially after dark. Urban sensor network A web of small networked sensors spread across a city, measuring conditions like air, water and traffic and streaming the data to a shared platform. Use case A specific problem a technology is meant to solve, named with an owner and a measurable outcome — unlike a showcase, which exists to be demonstrated.

Claim A single factual statement inside an entry, held separately from the prose around it, so that clicking it shows the exact source that carries it and any caveat attached to it. Evidence brief A short answer to a single question, computed from the documented record rather than argued: the answer, a few figures, a table, the method, what it cannot tell you — and the data slice it counted. Evidence grade A one-word grade carried by every published entry, naming the strongest kind of source behind it: peer-reviewed, independent, official or media. It grades the sourcing — not whether the project was any good. Evidence Passport The full record behind a project page: every claim with a stable id, a dossier per source, the gaps written down as gaps, and a permanent copy of every earlier version at its own address. Landmark of the Week One exceptional, fully source-checked project singled out each week. Once chosen an entry keeps the mark permanently, so the gallery is a growing collection rather than a rotating slot. Source-checked The badge on every published entry: each load-bearing statement was checked against the public sources listed on that page before it went live. It is deliberately not the same claim as a line-by-line human fact-check. Standards & licences (in this atlas) The section listing which formats, protocols and open-data licences the documented projects actually run on — and which cities run each one. Not to be confused with the atlas's own editorial rules. Track record The part of the atlas that reads the whole corpus by outcome rather than by place: what failed, what worked, what it cost, who operates it, how well-evidenced it is and how it ages.