CITyFiED

The objectives of the CITyFiED project represented a mix of demonstration, innovative technologies and business models towards the smart city of the future:

• A strategy towards the Smart City of the Future

CITyFiED project aimed to develop a replicable, systemic and integrated strategy to adapt European cities and urban ecosystems into the smart city of the future.

• Demonstration Sites

An extensive demonstration action was carried out as part of CITyFiED involving a relevant number of cities and the necessary technological stakeholders in a cluster, with the aim of maximizing the impact and replication potential from three high level and very ambitious demonstration projects that implemented in Laguna de Duero (Spain), Soma (Turkey) and Lund Sweden).

These cities have addressed holistic interventions for district renovation. All of the main technological aspects (retrofitting of buildings, district heating system and distributed low voltage generation) have been addressed by means of a systemic approach in each city, in order to achieve significant energy savings, very low energy buildings and very low CO2 emissions. Each location has its own entity with respect to the demonstration capability, because the foreseen interventions were in-depth, covering ambitious energy targets and providing very high replication potential.

• Innovative retrofitting methodologies

In parallel with the demonstration actions, as a part of the integrated strategy to adapt the cities, CITyFiED developed an innovative methodology and procedures for planning, deploying and replicating energy efficient district retrofitting actions. This approach considers the technological availability for building retrofitting, district heating facilities and distributed electricity generation and contributes to achieve low energy and CO2-emission urban districts. Renewable energy sources and waste energy recovery play a key role in this approach towards a clean energy city strategy that aims to reduce drastically the CO2 emissions.

• Dissemination, communication and exploitation

Another key objective of the CITyFiED strategy was a very ambitious dissemination, communication and exploitation activity, in which a cluster of 11 cities was created and properly integrated to maximize the replication potential of the project results. Clear messages about the benefits of the energy efficiency in the city environment were conveyed to professionals, academic audiences and the citizens. Not only regarding the energy issues related to buildings, but also complementary issues such as the business models for district retrofitting and non-technological barriers were communicated in order to modify the user behaviour towards a more sustainable awareness.

To maximise the impact and reach of the project results, CITyFiED set up a Community of Interest involving 44 cities and organizations, which eases the access to more than 100,000 people in all of Europe by means of a wide dissemination and communication plan that uses the more innovative media technologies.

Moreover, throughout the different stages of the project the exploitation potential of CITyFiED exploitable results was assessed. As a consequence, tailor made exploitation strategies were inferred to support their market deployment.

• Scientific and Technical objectives

The most important scientific and technical objectives are represented by the development of a systemic methodology for holistic district renovation and urban ecosystems' planning and the identification of sound technologies, methods and solutions to further improve:

• Residential district retrofitting
• District heating systems
• Integration of renewable energy sources
• Distributed generation

Figure 1. CITyFiED Scientific and Technical objectives