Andreas Littkopf
Director International Affairs
Environment Agency Austria (EAA)
Austria

Biography
He holds a degree in agriculture (terrestrial ecology) from the Humboldt University in Berlin (1986) and a degree in business management (2000). After working as head of the department in a local environment agency, he acted as Pre-Accession Adviser and Residential Twinning Adviser in Poland and Slovenia implementing environment related EU directives. Since 2007 he has led the European Topic Centre for Land Use and Spatial Information and from 2011-2012 the European Topic Centre for Spatial Information and Analysis. He also coordinated research activities of the University teams and was involved in several Research projects related to land management and spatial information. In July 2012 he started working at the EAA Environment Agency Austria, where he is responsible for project development with European organisations and international financial institutions. He is currently coordinating a Central Asian project on environmental monitoring and is building up a team on sustainable urban development.

Abstract
Austrian smart cities indicator set

The Environment Agency Austria developed as a research project with Partners and cities an “Austrian smart cities indicator set” where the status could be described, compared and the progress measured. Based on an intensive participative process good results were achieved and published. This approach was used for developing an indicator set for transition countries and are currently tested in the United Smart Cities project of UNECE. A selection of simple and measurable indicators out of 450 was chosen and are being tested in Armenia. In transition countries local monitoring processes and data collection are major issues and some information gaps cannot be closed. Therefore, the involvement of local expert knowledge and qualitative assessments have to accompany the indicator assessment. An adapted Pyramid workshop (SDG 2030 process) has provided crucial information and allowed to establish a knowledge base which provides information for the development of a strategy for sustainable urban development and its implementation plan.