TO DO 1: CHOOSE A PLATFORM FOR MONITORING
of KPI’s
The first TO DO for the CHECK stage is to choose a platform for monitoring of KPIs. There are multiple existing, user-friendly monitoring tools for collecting and storing data with specific information about date and time. For this reason, cities are encouraged to list current platforms and check which platforms are appropriate for their smart and sustainable development, before looking for a new platform. Most of the time, city administrations already have comparable tools in different sectors or departments, but in this case, it is important to centralise these data in one (virtual) single platform. For this TO DO, the team should identify the tools that are essential for an efficient and successful management of the projects, and investigate in detail the interfaces issued to avoid barriers between the different tools.
EXAMPLE: PUBLIC MANAGEMENT OF URBAN DATA SUPPORTS INTEGRATED APPROACH
The holistic, integrated approach of smart city features in the Lyon-Confluence lighthouse project area, worked very well to improve the environmental performance of this urban area in the Horizon2020 SCC-01 project Smarter Together (Smarter Together, 2019).
Main achievements of the project are:
- A combination of energy infrastructures by implementing a district heating network powered by renewable energies and doubling the photovoltaic production of this area;
- Energy renovation works for 50,000 m2 of existing buildings: 500 apartments (private and social housing), office spaces, and public facilities;
- The commission of 40 electric charging stands, the development of an e-car sharing system, and a test of electric autonomous shuttles;
- The collection of data on the Lyon-Confluence area through the city platform (from district heating system, electric grid, new and refurbished buildings, electric mobility services, photovoltaic installations) to monitor the environmental performance of the area.
Some valuable lessons learnt for the Lyon-Confluence urban project and Lyon Métropole (Greater Lyon area) are:
- The energy renovation of existing buildings can be accelerated with an integrated approach, consisting of requirements of high energy performance, transforming buildings into low-energy buildings, integration of renewable energies (e.g. district heating and/or photovoltaic), and collection and sharing of energy data on the city data platform:
- New business models for the production and distribution of renewable energies (e.g. collective self-consumption, blockchain technologies) were tested and proved promising;
- The collaboration between public and private stakeholders for a public management of urban data (energy & mobility data) is a key success factor;
- In the Lyon-Confluence neighbourhood, it’s the first time that Lyon Métropole collect and work with energy data. There is a high replication potential at a larger scale, in the rest of the Greater Lyon metropolitan area.
WHY?
The monitoring information needs to be brought together in one, recognisable (virtual) place, the so-called platform. This might be the same as the urban platform that is part of the DO stage, but it is usually an entirely different platform dedicated to only monitoring.
TO DO 2: ALIGNMENT WITH OTHER CURRENT REPORTING OBLIGATIONS
to prevent double work
After that, it is important to ensure alignment with other on-going reporting obligations, to make an efficient use of the resources of the city administration and stakeholders for monitoring activities. It is very well possible that monitoring activities of this action plan or project can be aligned with other reporting obligations, for instance for SE(C)AP, SUMP, eea quality management related or ISO 37101 related.
EXAMPLE: STANDARDISATION OF URBAN DATA FACILITATES CROSS-DOMAIN COLLABORATION
The ESPRESSO (systEmic Standardisation apPRoach to Empower Smart citieS and cOmmunities) project developed a “Conceptual Smart City Information Framework”. The project involved a wide range of stakeholders, including cities active as Smart City, SMEs, governmental owned organisations, investors, SDOs, and research institutes, and aimed to facilitate communication between them. ESPRESSO identified standardisation priorities of smart cities and related initiatives and fast-tracked them. In addition, the project identified technologies and different information models for smart cities, and established an interface between sector data sources and the Smart City platform. This contributes to alignment with other reporting obligations. ESPRESSO project was developed to create a platform that shows which standards are really urgent and missing, for example, management standards, operational standards, framework standards, or interoperability standards and so forth. Potential gaps and overlaps among the standards which are used in smart cities and smart city initiatives were identified. ESPRESSO provides guidelines, how to use standards in a smart city, and develop roadmaps. Besides, ESPRESSO created a conceptual interoperability framework for smart cities that can help in classifying standards and smart city projects. This facilitates the identification of best practices that are relevant to the city administration’s goals and sharing of this practice with interested city administrations and stakeholders (ESPRESSO, 2019).
WHY?
The main reason for this TO DO is to prevent repetition of work for city administration staff.
Reporting progress in many different domains is already an issue for city administrations, as it is very time-consuming. City administrations must report on many levels to authorities, such as the regional, national, EU and global level (such as UN SDGs). When the indicators for reporting are aligned in a way that a single set of KPIs can meet all or several reporting obligations, this will save a lot of time and resources.
However, not only the KPIs to be collected should be aligned in this TO DO, but also how their data represent them and how changes in their values are interpreted and used. When all values are available in similar data formats and can meet multiple reporting needs, corresponding to different uses of the data, monitoring activities are streamlined and efficiently organised.
Another reason for this TO DO is that the information collected in this streamlined manner, might also be helpful in identifying potential synergies with other action plans or projects not considered beforehand. This can lead to savings in hours or costs, but also create more impact because different targets may reinforce each other.
TO DO 3: ESTABLISH THE BASELINE AND START COLLECTING
monitoring information
After choosing the platform and aligning with all other current obligations, the actual monitoring activities for the earlier chosen KPIs, which reflect the targets of the action plan or project, should start. To be able to make comparisons later with the values of KPIs when the project started, it is important to establish a baseline or “snapshot”. This baseline reflects the current situation: the values of all KPIs before any actions were implemented.
EXAMPLE: BASELINE AND KPIS HELP TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT MEASURES FOR CLUJ-NAPOCA
Cluj-Napoca started their participation in eea in 2012 and used the eea method to establish a baseline. The first results compared to the baseline were quite low - 28 % of the city’s potential for sustainable climate protection, with underperformance for municipal buildings, internal organisation and mobility. The first measure was to establish an energy efficiency department, which has now five energy managers and then to hire the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca as energy manager. This department updated and elaborated the Energy Efficiency Programme for Cluj Municipality, with the following statistical key indicators: 3.500 GWh/yr city energy use, out of which 12% public users. Actions taken consisted of public communication of the city’s energy impact and seven editions of instruction, education and behavioural change workshops for public building administrators. Other actions entailed better co-ordination with the Energy Managers and Energy Action Plans of utility companies (district heating, transportation, water, energy, gas, waste) and the scheduling of substantial investments in sustainability, of which 11,2 M Eur has already been invested in a major renovation of four public buildings, leading to 9.400 MWh/yr energy savings and 3.300 tons/yr of avoided CO2 emissions. In 2018, eleven electrical buses started to be used in the public transportation with great success, bringing about around 60% energy savings and avoided CO2 emissions. The project is realised by efforts of the local transportation company and the Municipality of Cluj-Napoca, with the financial support of Swiss funds. In 2018 the training of eea consultants was held in Cluj-Napoca as an example of good practice. What is more, in 2019 Cluj-Napoca was chosen as Best European Energy Service Promoter. This shows that a good overview of the city’s key performance indicators can eventually lead to excellent smart solutions. In 2019 Cluj-Napoca is approaching the threshold of compliance with 50% of eea requirements, when it could possibly be awarded with the “European Energy Award” (eea, 2019).
EXAMPLE: CONTINUOUS MONITORING WITH SMART LAMPPOSTS COLLECTING DATA AND OFFERING SERVICES
Modern technologies can make our lives easier: take the example of traffic monitoring or access to data on air pollution, it is much easier and more accurate to collect information continuously than to send people to a certain place and have them count traffic or measure the pollution levels for one specific day. To generate important data for a Smart City, why not use something that already exists within the municipal infrastructure? Lampposts for example are spread all over the city. Equipped with an independent power supply, the right innovative sensors and an internet connection, they can be the ideal IoT access point to collect the needed local data in real time. So, let’s make our lampposts smart!
Within the Smarter Together project scope 60 smart lampposts were installed within the project area of Neuaubing-Westkreuz and Freiham in Munich by spring 2018. In addition to their lighting function, the posts have a separate second power supply that allows sensors to measure and capture local data such as air quality, weather and traffic data. The local data can then be transferred to a central smart data platform, edited and made available for further use: for urban planning topics, for display on a city map or incorporated in the Munich SmartCity App or portal that could allow local residents to access and use all kinds of up-to-date status reports. Working together with citizens, Smarter Together defined a framework for the selection of sensors. This framework includes the requirement that the sensors should not be able to collect personal data, recognise car number plates or recognise faces. In addition, all sensors exclusively face onto public spaces.
Each post is internet-enabled, allowing to transfer the data securely to a central repository. Due to this fact they can also double as hotspots to provide free public wi-fi access via the city’s offer M-WLAN. This can bring direct benefits to adjacent cafes, bakeries and snack bars, as it might encourage guests to stay longer. The lampposts are currently used to run trials on different sensors. They are also described as “urban labs” or “real labs” testing digital services and the benefits they provide in the project area. Details can be found online in the transparency dashboard (Transparency Dashboard, 2019).
WHY?
Most projects in the field of smart cities and low energy districts, include monitoring activities with the aim of measuring progress. The baseline information is indispensable for this as it provides the point of departure. Monitoring is needed to keep track of progress in the action plan or project (see section 5.1), or to contribute to benchmarking databases, and the collection and interpretation of information must therefore start after the baseline is established.
DORIN BEU
“We must move from the situation when a city is run based on intuition or in a reactive mode. The European Energy Award helps cities to continuously improve by analysing six areas with around 70 measures and especially in East Europe, where few employees have a background in city administration, this will make them more professional, by using other cities experience. Now, data collection is an issue, but in a future smart city this will be done automatically from smart energy meters/ sensors and then, artificial intelligence will help city councils in quick and expert decisions”. Dorin Beu, president of Romania Green
TO DO 4: ORGANISE FREQUENT MEETINGS FOR ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
of the information from the team and from the monitoring system, to identify possible problems early
The next TO DO during the CHECK stage is to organise frequent meetings for analysis and interpretation of the monitoring information, provided by the team and by the monitoring system. Potential or expected problems must be identified as soon as possible (are there any red flags?). An efficient follow-up of progress needs regular and frequent analysis of the monitored data. The project team needs to consider the monitoring platform as a frequently used tool, which is not only used when the end of the project is nearing. Dependent upon which specific indicator(s) it concerns, this might entail daily, weekly or monthly checks. For example, air pollution will be measured more frequently than the share in the total housing stock of refurbished dwellings.
EXAMPLE: EUROPEAN ENERGY AWARD
An important example of both benchmarking and standardisation is the European Energy Award, see eea (2019) for more detailed information. As a quality management system and certification process, the eea establishes interdisciplinary planning and action as well as a process-oriented and long-term energy and climate protection policy in the municipalities. Under the eea system, a municipality’s scope of action regarding energy and climate protection policy covers six main areas:
- Mobility;
- Supply and disposal (electricity, district heating, renewable energy sources, water supply, sewage, waste, and so forth);
- Communal buildings and facilities;
- Urban planning and development model;
- Internal organisation (including continuing training, performance agreements, and planning and controlling);
- External communication & co-operation information.
Citizens are key partners and key players in the eea governance model. More than 1500 cities and communities in Europe have already implemented eea. The basic principle of the eea is the process based on the management cycle of “analysing – planning – implementing – auditing – adjusting” that is typical in the business world, supplemented by the “award”. eea is fully consistent with major global quality management systems standards, in particular ISO 50001 (Energy Management Systems) and ISO 37101 (Sustainable Communities Management system). Several municipalities have successfully implemented both schemes (ISO quality management systems and eea) simultaneously.
eea system
Before implementation, eea supports cities in defining their baseline from an initial review conducted by certified external experts/advisors. Based on this review, the potential for improvement can be identified. This helps the city administration to set ambitious but realistic targets and prioritise the actions. eea ensures, through external and certified auditors, a regular evaluation of the improvement, with possibly a certificate awarded when the targets are met. eea is thus a management system with certification principle, based on regular audits and sets of KPIs common to all cities.
ALAIN JUPPÉ, Former Prime Minister of France
President of the Greater Bordeaux area, Mayor of Bordeaux
“The European Energy Award is a methodological support tool designed to enhance and bring about recognition of the quality of the climate and energy policy that we are conducting in our territories. Our efforts are real and respond to the climate challenges of tomorrow. The continuous improvement process inherent to the European Energy Award has led us to go even further to build with all the local actors a territory resolutely directed towards the energy transition.”
MARIE-PIERRE GRAMAGLIA, Principality of Monaco
Minister of Public Works, the Environment and Urban Development
“The eea is a tool that incentivizes action. It assisted the government in giving more prominence to its commitments toward its climate policies.”
WHY?
There are several reasons why this frequent joint analysis of monitoring outcomes is important. Foremost, the methods and solutions chosen earlier might not perform as expected.
It is only through regular analysis that possible problems can be detected sufficiently early to avoid irreversible or difficult situations, when it is often quite costly or complicated to make the necessary repairs or adjustments. Frequent analysis of monitoring information thus avoids the need for substantial extra human and financial resources. Similarly, circumstances might have changed compared to the start of the project or action plan, for example due to technological breakthroughs, new regulations and legislation, or political changes.
TO DO 5: EXPLORE HOW TO SOLVE POSSIBLE PROBLEMS AND IDENTIFY WHICH ADJUSTMENTS ARE NEEDED
in order to improve the project. Discuss these with internal and external stakeholders in the quadruple helix
The last TO DO for the CHECK stage is to explore how observed or foreseen problems might be solved. The team must identify which adjustments are needed to improve the project. Successively, these possible adjustments should be widely discussed with all internal and external stakeholders in the quadruple helix. Such a communication and dialogues with all stakeholders concerned with the project, while staying focused on the agreed targets, provide the best approach to finding the best and most efficient corrective action(s) while maintaining the engagement of all stakeholders.
EXAMPLE: SMART HOMES IN BRISTOL
As part of the SCC-01 lighthouse project in Bristol, monitoring information will soon give clues about if and how changes in energy demand can be brought about by using a remote energy management system to shift energy use in peak times, and by monetary and energy savings flowing from upgrading low-rated home appliances. Smart washing machines, tumble dryers and dishwashers have been installed into 152 households in Ashley, Easton and Lawrence Hill. The white goods are connected to smart home monitoring and control equipment that allow the households to fully utilise the benefits of the smart appliances. The monitoring equipment will also provide data to help us research how energy is used by households and how it could be saved in the future, as well as allowing our energy management system to shift the use of the appliances at peak times. REPLICATE funding is available for 240 homeowners living in Ashley, Easton and Lawrence Hill to install loft and cavity wall insulation, a new boiler and heating controls or solar panels to your home. Underpinning this, it is vital to incorporate community engagement to ensure the buy in and understanding of the citizens and communities utilising the technology (City of Bristol, 2019; REPLICATE 2019).
EXAMPLE: MONITORING OF USAGE AND ACCEPTANCE OF E-MOBILITY STATIONS
Within the Smarter Together project scope eight multimodal e-mobility stations were built within the project area of Neuaubing-Westkreuz and Freiham. In order to meet different needs, the mobility stations connect different offers for individual mobility: rental bikes, e-bikes, e-tricycles (all MVG), e-car sharing (STATTAUTO) as well as charging stations for electric vehicles, supplying 100% green electricity (SWM). A digital information pillar displays all available mobility options in the area – including easy access to the offered local services and public transport as well as map services. Additionally, the mobility stations offer free wi-fi.
Two mobility stations have also been equipped with so called “district sharing boxes”. These boxes make delivery, shopping and sharing possible on a 24/7 basis. Each set of boxes include compartments of different temperatures (cooling, refrigerated or at a constant ambient temperature) for different needs. The boxes can be used by local or online businesses as well as privately by the citizens to exchange objects such as tools.
In the coming months the usage and acceptance of the mobility stations will be monitored closely, and the City of Munich will learn from this data if and how they can be improved. Ultimate goal is for them to be a real contribution to a significant reduction of the number of private cars in the area and adding to the electrification of related transport means (Smarter Together, 2019e).
WHY?
To keep the project successful on track, information from monitoring must be interpreted. . If the results of the action plan or project are less than expected, the so-called non-conformities, the team has to explore how the results can be improved by corrective actions.
These exchanges must take place with a wider group of stakeholders, as the identified adjustments can have an impact on other parts of the action plan or project, as well as on other projects. Furthermore, it should be said that monitoring of the corrective actions can contribute to future scaling up and replication programmes, by concentrating on what works and avoiding what doesn’t within the current context. This is especially beneficial when different project teams will coordinate the scaling-up and replication programmes.