WCCD partners with i-Valley to create world's first Smart+Sustainable Rural Region
For Immediate Release
April 25, 2018
Mayors Gather in Roundtable with VIP Guest as Global
First Beckons for Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia
The mayors in Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, Canada are
gathering on April 30th to discuss the Valley’s certification as the
world’s first ‘Sustainable and Smart’ rural region. Dr. Patricia McCarney,
President of the World Council on City
Data (WCCD), is travelling from Toronto for the Executive Roundtable. The WCCD certifies communities under ISO
37120, the first international standard for sustainable and smart communities.
The Executive Roundtable will focus on demonstrating the Region’s attractiveness
for investment, through the use of standardized, community-level data in making
communities prosperous, sustainable, resilient, smart and inclusive. “This initiative will help to create
smarter, more sustainable, prosperous and inclusive communities,” said i-Valley President Terry Dalton. “We will be
compared to the most progressive global communities, through high-calibre, standardized
and independently verified data. This
will be immensely attractive for global investors.”
“This mutual inquiry by our Valley Partners
is an opportunity to inform our process and guide our future partnerships and
collaborations,” said Peter Muttart,
Mayor of the hosting Municipality of Kings.
“It crosses our artificial municipal boundaries and takes in the common
needs and concerns of all of the citizens of the Valley. We may well determine that positioning
ourselves as being favourably, globally comparable through standardized ISO
measurement, opens doors for other levels of government to partner with us, as
well as enhancing and telegraphing our competitive position in the
broadband-internet field – not just for our current citizens and businesses -
but to future investors from all regions of the world.
“Globally comparable data is the starting
points for smart and sustainable communities,” stated Dr. McCarney. “The WCCD
believes that building a culture of data and having globally comparable, standardized
city data enables communities to learn from each other and drive forward more
prosperous communities. Standardized, globally comparable and independently
verified community data is key to building the case for investment
attractiveness. Gone are the days when companies were solely interested in tax
and other incentives that communities were willing to offer. They increasingly
want to know about air quality, the safety of citizens, and educational
attainment in the community. ISO 37120 provides all of these measures in both a
local and global comparative context.”
The Valley
Regional Enterprise Network (Valley REN) has supported the project from the
start. Deborah Dennis, the
newly-appointed CEO of the Valley REN explained, “We need to bring both rural
and urban dwellers up to the best of global communications capabilities. That is why we support the Smart Region
initiative.” Ms. Dennis, who is
delivering the closing remarks at the Roundtable, added that “Data that is being
gathered across major themes like economy, finance and education, will help
with municipal management. It will allow
for informed decision-making based on analysis of evidence-based information
and will benchmark areas for improvement that will support collective growth.”
Danny
Silver, Director of Acadia University’s Institute for Data Analytics, added that he was
pleased to bring his organization’s strengths to bear as a partner in the
project: “Digital technologies and data
analysis make meaning out of the unprecedented amount of information available
to managers today.”
About i-Valley, WCCD, ISO 37120
i-Valley is a not-for-profit
movement to create Smart Regions and Communities in the Annapolis Valley and
elsewhere in Nova Scotia. Smart Communities mobilize citizens to achieve faster
economic growth, better health care and greater sustainability, through the use
of advanced enabling technologies.
The Toronto-based World Council on City Data (WCCD) is leading the international and local implementation of ISO
37120 Sustainable Development of
Communities: Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life, the first
international standard; created by cities, for cities. ISO 37120 defines a
comprehensive set of 100 standardized indicators that enables any city, of any
size, to assess their performance and measure progress over time and also draw
comparative lessons from other communities and cities locally and globally.
WCCD ISO 37120 Certification has a number of significant benefits for
municipalities including the opportunity to demonstrate, through high calibre,
independently-verified and comparable data the attractiveness of a city as a
location for investment. A rapidly growing number of cities in Canada and
globally are seeking and achieving WCCD ISO 37120 certification. For more
information, please visit www.dataforcities.org.
For further information please contact Barry Gander,
Co-Founder, i-Valley: Barry.Gander@i-valley.ca or
James Patava, Vice President – Public Affairs, WCCD: james.patava@globalcities.ca