Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ESPRESSO (Systemic standardisation approach to empower smart cities and communities)

Teaser

Many a city has engaged and will start to engage in Smart City activities and initiatives – e.g. in the domains of Transportation (optimizing garbage truck routes through the city), Health (measuring and controlling air quality) or Energy (understanding where to put solar...

Summary

Many a city has engaged and will start to engage in Smart City activities and initiatives – e.g. in the domains of Transportation (optimizing garbage truck routes through the city), Health (measuring and controlling air quality) or Energy (understanding where to put solar panels) and that each have their own isolated ICT solution, and each producing datasets that are difficult to access and use, outside of that dedicated ICT solution.

If society want to fully benefit from the various Smart City initiatives (beyond just sensing the city or environment), the city needs to combine the various datasets (from the sensing) in many ways to produce services that have added value to its citizens (less air pollution, fluent traffic, cleaner environment). Datasets can only be flexibly combined, if they are based on open standards to achieve maximum data and service interoperability.

The objective of ESPRESSO (in support of the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities) is to define an Urban Platform, based on open standards to achieve interoperability, that responds to the needs of the cities, so that the industry knows what to build.

Work performed

ESPRESSO’s brought together a Smart City stakeholders community, the “SmaCStak” – everyone Smart City initiative (city, project, organisation) can sign up and be part of this virtual community. The SmaCStak Coordination Group (made up of city representatives, standards developing organisations, SME’s and European city networks. A web Atlas shows the registered community on a map, and available from the EPSRESSO website.

A consistent and shared definition of what is a Smart City today in terms of sectorial services has been made: a conceptual Smart City Information Framework based on open standards, including technological (transportation, energy, etc.) and non-technological domains (legal, cultural, societal, etc.) to guide cities strategy medium and medium-long term. This framework also defined the context of the pilots that the project will host in the cities or Rotterdam and Tartu.

Seamless Interoperability, based on open standards, is the key enabler for a market where both small and large solution providers can compete for the best solution – with no vendor lock-in. A cross-SDOs analysis on harmonization of Smart City standards document (made by the SDO that are on board in the project) is available to understand the gaps and overlaps in the standards landscape.

An Urban Platform, with a reference architecture and associated technical standards (over 400) have been identified (the project does not define new standards!). The reference architecture has already been picked up by DIN and used in actual project – it was made in close collaboration with the EIP SCC Urban Platforms, so it is supported by both the demand side (cities) and supply side (industry). ESPRESSO endorsed the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) from the CITYKeys project, providing continuity in the research and application of KPI’s.

Long term strategic considerations for adopting standards in the various sectorial domains, taking into consideration technological trends and positioning future has been made available, including identification of economic and financial procurement models, market opening actions (start up kits and deliverables).

The ESPRESSO project has been active to pick up on speaking slots at Smart City events (incl Smart City Expo in Barcelona) as well as actively organising our own webinars.

Final results

A recent study by the EIP SCC Urban Platforms, has indicated that:
- Cities need to exploit their data better for, need confidence in accessing a ‘validated’ open common urban platform design that prevents vendor lock-in, affordable solutions and has the potential to collaborate (smaller cities working together)
- Industry likes to increase demand and confidence that products will be picked up (secure the investment) and more SME\'s competing on functionality (and not being locked out of a market).
More importantly, the industry and cities see a swifter formation of cross-sector ecosystems, so that additional information and knowledge can be derived from existing data, using big data analytics.

More of the above requirement (from cities and industry) can be enabled by the Urban Platform: a core building block by which cities better manage the current explosion in volumes of city data and more easily share this data between city services in order to improve outcomes for society.

The ESPRESSO project (in close collaboration with other projects and initiatives) delivers many components for the Urban Platform (reference architecture, list of available standards, conceptual Smart City Information Framework beyond pure technical, including business side - and stakeholders talking to each other sharing best practices).

Overall, ESPRESSO has lead to strong awareness creation around the use of *open* standards to achieve interoperability between the various datasets. The ESPRESSO pilots in Rotterdam (measure the moisture level of the wooden beams that support the city and optimise the garbage truck route, based on the reading of the bin - all visualised on a 3D City Model. ESPRESSO collaborates with the Ruggadised project) and Tartu (improve energy efficiency of older buildings and building a 3D City Model) will provide evidence based value that the Urban Platform is the key enabler for self sustaining Smart City initiatives and growing a new industry - all for the well being of the citizens.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.espresso-project.eu.