UDPs are a vital enabler for smart cities; without which we will continue with fragmented silo solutions that cannot extract and sustain real cross-service, data-enabled benefits.
Complete the Survey on Urban Data Platforms
If you’re interested in and can influence how your city exploits data better, please complete this survey, or ask the person in your city that can. It’ll take you 30 mins. Thank you!
Smart City activities too often start with (pilot) projects that are confined to a specific ‘vertical’ service domain in the city, e.g. energy management or mobility. That may be good to learn about the specifics of that service, however they tend to do little in terms of city-wide benefits from data. Indeed, unless these projects do connect up their data across the city, they are very likely to be leaving potential benefits untapped! How then can we change things?
The EIP-SCC envisions Urban Data Platforms that cut horizontally across these verticals, bringing cross-silo data (virtually) together in one platform to enable better outcomes through fostering collaboration and innovation across multiple stakeholders . This vision is based on the following two premises:
- A truly smart city uses an Urban Data Platform to maximise the value from city data by managing data as an asset
- Every Smart City project, apart from being scalable in its own right, must be able to connect to an Urban Data Platform – sooner or later.
As part of the cross-SCC01 ‘Lighthouse’ collaboration Task Groups on ‘Business Models & Finance’, and ‘Data Management’, the Erasmus University Rotterdam is conducting European wide research about the state-of-the-art of urban data platforms in Europe. The research explores “what it will take to help speed cities in deploying solutions that help digitize their services, and connect across them to maximise the benefits of modern ICTs?”: How do European cities envision the role of urban data platforms in society? What are the drivers of urban data platform adoption, performance and impact? What role do they see for themselves and citizens in creating and using these platforms? What business and technical design choices have they made? And what are the drivers of success for urban data platforms?
This new study builds on surveys conducted in 2015 & 2018, explored ‘the state of play’ of Urban Data Platforms in European Cities. A summary of the results of the latter study can be found here. Based on the findings a blogpost on the EIP Marketplace was devoted to 10 key recommendations for de-risking investments in smart city projects.
The objective of the 2019 study is to assess the state of play, however from a much larger set of cities; with a focus on what drives adoption, and impact. We target all >100 Lighthouse Cities; and many more through the EIP Marketplace.
So, join in. Inform the thinking. Stimulate your city into action; or share the experiences of your work to date.
Our goal is to find a representative of the platform owner (usually the municipality) and platform manager for every city, to complete the survey. The insights will be openly shared, and will also inform the political discourse at the Government Mayors Summit in Porto, January 2020.
<<< START QUESTIONNAIRE : URL >>>
Please complete by December 6th 2019. By completing this questionnaire, you will be granted full access to the outcome of the research.
The research team can assist you at any stage of the process.
Please send the research team an email if you would like a personalized link to the questionnaire. The progress of participants using a personalized link will automatically be saved. You can continue later with the questionnaire using the same personalized link. A summary of your responses will be sent to you after you have completed the questionnaire.
About the study
The study is conducted under the guidance of
- EIP-SCC Marketplace Integrated Infrastructure Action Cluster - Graham Colclough, partner Urban DNA
- SCC01 Board of Coordinators: Philippe Fournand, Wavestone
- SCC01 Task group Finance and Business Models: Graham Colclough, partner Urban DNA
- SCC01 Task group Data management: Albert Engels, Programme director Ruggedised, City of Rotterdam
Research team:
Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, partner in Ruggedised
Dr. Marcel van Oosterhout
Dr. Haydee Sheombar
Dr. Tobias Brandt
Prof. dr. Eric van Heck
Prof. Liesbet van Zoonen
Julia Holst
In case of enquiries, please contact:
Julia Holst
Research Assistant RUGGEDISED
Email: urbandataplatform@rsm.nl