Reframing Climate Governance: How an Internal Audit Makes Smart-City Resilience Enforceable in an Egyptian State-Owned Enterprise

Smart-city programmes in emerging economies often produce climate-risk registers, dashboards, and narrative reports that do not lead to real changes in technical specifications or budget decisions. This study examines how the internal audit function can transform such symbolic compliance into enforceable climate-governance practices within Egypt’s state-led smart-city developments. This paper applies an interpretive single-case study design, drawing on interviews, documents, and field observations to analyse how climate-risk signals move from operational systems into governance, procurement, and reporting routines. A unified risk-and-control framework is introduced that integrates enterprise risk management, internal control over sustainability information, and the requirements of the international climate-disclosure standards. The findings show that an internal audit provides the enforcement mechanism that converts climate-scenario breaches into mandatory amendments to design clauses, acceptance tests, and operating and capital expenditure decisions across critical assets such as coastal protection, water systems, district cooling, mobility, and data-centre infrastructure. This study offers a practical governance architecture—such as threshold-to-specification tables, climate-weighted procurement gates, quarterly compliance certifications, and verifiable data-lineage controls—that enables public managers to embed accountable and transparent climate resilience within smart-city programmes. This research contributes to sustainability governance by demonstrating how an internal audit moves climate-risk management from narrative reporting toward enforceable, auditable action.