Integrated Infrastructures and Processes

Our action cluster initiatives seek to provide the insights, tools, proof points, and learning to help cities of all sizes across Europe overcome the barriers and tap into the value on offer. To develop once, share and use/tailor multiple times; rather than start every journey individually from first principles.

Achievement will require sustained commitment from multiple parties, and the Smart Cities Marketplace provides a platform for precisely that.

The Action Cluster includes four initiatives:

1. The “Urban Data Platform” initiative seeks to accelerate the adoption of common open urban data platforms and ensure that “300 million European citizens are served by cities with competent urban data platforms, by 2025”. Initiative oversight is provided by Graham Colclough, Albert Engels, Bart De Lathouwer, Lutz Heuser, Marcel van Oosterhout, and Alanus von Radecki. 
2. “Geospatial Cities”, led by Grazia Fiore, Eurisy, aims to raise awareness of the step-change potential that geospatial data and services offers cities, and advocate for the further development of services tailored to cities’ needs; that are adapted to the operational processes of public administrations, SMEs and NGOs operating in cities. 
3. “Small Giants” offers access to action-focused thematic networks by which very practical solutions can be developed tailored to the common needs of smaller cities – where most of us actually live. This is led by Trevor Gibson and Graham Colclough.
4. The “Humble Lamppost” initiative, led by Graham Colclough and Hans Nouwens, seeks to upgrade 10 Million lampposts across EU cities. To achieve this, the initiative takes an open component-based approach to package the solution, focusing on what is functionally common for all cities.

Recent developments and achievements

Over the last year, several activities have taken place:

1. Engagement of Smaller EU Cities

• The Small Giants held an online kick-off workshop on 1st June 2021 addressing challenges and needs for “Digital Responsiveness and Transformation”. This being one of a half dozen or so common themes that emerged from a survey of the smaller cities community. This resulted in a handful of very practical actions.
• Similar workshops will be held for the other priority themes.

2. Publication of the Humble Lamppost & COVID White Paper

• This 20p paper captures case studies from 6 cities worldwide on if and how they are using their network of street lighting to help Covid response and recovery.
• A few cities have implemented the necessary smart lamppost technologies and have piloted and proven the benefits of this to address Covid-related concerns (e.g. for crowd control). A significant number of cities have the equipment in place, however have not as yet exploited it to address Covid response needs. And the vast majority of the market has the opportunity to benefit from both a very bankable upgrade project, and at the same time, investment in smart services that will improve the safety and confidence of citizens.
• For further information access the report here (LINK):

3. Alignment of Geospatial Cities with the GEO 4th Priority on Resilience of Urban and Human Settlements

• GEO, an international member state and industry association that has launched their 4th priority on Resilience of Urban and Human Settlements, is working with the Geospatial initiative to capture practical use cases that can demonstrate the benefits of earth observation data for the initial use case that include Urban Heat Island, City Greening, and Air Quality. This will help address the awareness gap in cities.

4. Launch of the Urban Data Platform Survey

• More than 100 respondents from EU cities (many of which are members of the smart cities ‘Lighthouse’ community) engaged in this third UDP survey, which uncovered the state-of-play of UDPs in EU cities.
• For insights from the survey see report here (LINK):

Contact  

Get in contact with the Integrated Infrastructures & Processes Action Cluster at integratedinfrastructures@eu-smartcities.eu