Author: ISOCARP Institute

Position Paper “A Smart City Ecosystem Enabling Open Innovation” published

Posted on August 20, 2019 by - News

Abstract

“In this position paper we present IT-centered challenges that lie in designing an architecture for a flexible, open, transferable, and replicable smart city ecosystem spanning a plethora of suppliers and systems. The background is the smart city and energy project +CityxChange. Its vision is to enable the co-creation and development of Positive Energy Blocks in smart sustainable cities. It will include the development of a framework and supporting tools to enable a common energy market, supported by a connected community and city integration. It will explore influences of the energy transition into city operations and urban planning, the integration of e-Mobility as a Service (eMaaS) into positive energy communities, and the growth of local trading markets and new business models. Digitalization, open architectures, and open data need to support these processes for open urban innovation in the ICT-enabled city.”

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Podcast on Creating a Positive Energy City Centre in Limerick | August 2019

Posted on August 20, 2019 by - News

“In 1900, only 14% percent of the world’s population lived in a city. Today, for the first time in history, more than half the planet’s population reside in urban areas. These urban centres are now racing to become the smart cities of the future. Limerick has received a major boost in the race to become a smart city through its designation as Ireland’s first ‘Lighthouse Smart City’ through the Positive City Exchange Project. Rosie Webb, Senior Architect, Limerick City & County Council and Deputy co-ordinator of the Positive City Exchange Project and Professor Merritt Bucholz, founding Professor of Architecture at the University of Limerick, who is also an investigator on the project join us to tell us more about this project to shape Limerick’s future.” (episode description, podomatic)

A Smart City Ecosystem Enabling Open Innovation

Posted on August 14, 2019 by -

Abstract

In this position paper we present IT-centered challenges that lie in designing an architecture for a flexible, open, transferable, and replicable smart city ecosystem spanning a plethora of suppliers and systems. The background is the smart city and energy project +CityxChange. Its vision is to enable the co-creation and development of Positive Energy Blocks in smart sustainable cities. It will include the development of a framework and supporting tools to enable a common energy market, supported by a connected community and city integration. It will explore influences of the energy transition into city operations and urban planning, the integration of e-Mobility as a Service (eMaaS) into positive energy communities, and the growth of local trading markets and new business models. Digitalization, open architectures, and open data need to support these processes for open urban innovation in the ICT-enabled city.

Year: 2019

Authors: Ahlers, Dirk; Wienhofen, Leendert W. M. Wienhofen; Petersen, Sobah Abbas; Anvaari, Mohsen

Citizen Participation in Co-creation | June 2019

Posted on August 8, 2019 by - News

From governance in ‘Campus development’ to governance in ‘Smart cities’ – Savis Gohari

On the 21st of June, 2019, our new colleague, Savis Gohari, gave a presentation on governance processes on smart city initiatives, linking in this way her PhD research (Governance in the planning and decision-making process: The co-location case of university campuses in Trondheim, Norway) to +CityxChange project.  

Accordingly, the research objective was to analyse ‘governance structures’, i.e. the way actors stand in a network and interact with each other across levels, together with ‘governance processes’, i.e. the interrelation between actors’ attributes (such as interests, resource, power and roles) at different levels and rounds of decision-making. Part of the empirical research was conducted in one of the +CityxChange Demonstration Areas in Trondheim, namely, Campus Gløshaugen. Citizen participation is one of the main pillars upon which +CityxChange is based on. However, participatory processes remain a complex task, especially when trying to transit to new forms of policy-making in a smart city context.

Savis’ discussion on how to govern ‘smart cities’ pointed out that the formal mechanisms of transitioning to sustainability are ill equipped to address and conform with the political and power dimensions in smart cities. Furthermore, there is no determined blueprint for sustainability transitions and the existing governance systems hitherto have been inefficient and implicated in unsustainability.

During her work as a postdoc which is directly linked to research on citizen participatory processes for +CityxChange, Savis will try to conceptualise the co-creative governance and the dynamic interplay between power relations in the face of conflict of interests. Thereby, she aims to go beyond the traditional division of governance network between private, public and academia to investigate the political structure underpinning the functionality of governance.

Click here to download the presentation.

D11.5 Data Management Plan – Initial Version

Posted on August 6, 2019 by -

The deliverable 11.5, Data Management Plan – Initial Version, was submitted by NTNU in January 2019. Following, the executive summary of the deliverable:

“This deliverable constitutes the initial Data Management Plan for the +CityxChange project (824260). It specifies Data Governance and handling of data in the project, what types of data are expected to be generated in the project, whether and how it will be made open and accessible for verification and re-use, how it will be curated and preserved, and details ethical, privacy, and security issues.  All beneficiaries are informed of the applicable regulations around human participation, informed consent, data processing, data security, and the pertinent regulations such as GDPR or H2020 Ethics or FAIR guidelines. When personal data collection or processing is started, the DMP information will be updated accordingly to include updated data summaries, consent forms, compliance, and institutional approval where necessary. Processing of personal data will respect Data Protection Principles. This document provides the overview of data handling in the project and provides the initial guidelines for the project. The project will support openness according to the EU principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” together with the project ambition of “Open by Default”.“

D11.3 Risk Mitigation Registry

Posted on August 6, 2019 by -

The deliverable 11.3, Risk Mitigation Registry, was submitted by NTNU in April 2019. Following, the executive summary of the deliverable:

“This deliverable contains the +CityxChange risk management process and a regular review and update of the risk tables. It defined detailed risk management and review processes and sets expectations, procedures, and responsibilities. It presents an extended version of the risk tables, updated with the state at the time of writing with new risks based on lessons learned, and defines more detailed criteria for each identified risk, leading to an operational risk management and tracking. This report also includes the process and first results from a state-of-the-art review of existing SCC-01 projects in order to identify gaps in the risk management strategy. The risk table is included as an annex.“

D9.3 Report on Attendance at Events Held By Other SCC01 Coordinators

Posted on August 6, 2019 by -

The deliverable 9.3, Report on Attendance at Events Held By Other SCC01 Coordinators, was submitted by NTNU in April 2019. Following, the executive summary of the deliverable:

“This report describes the participation and lessons learned by +CityxChange partners in events organised by other SCC01 projects, SET-Plan Action 3.2, EERA Joint Programme Smart Cities, SCIS, EIP SCC, and other European networks during the first six months of the project.

The report is Deliverable 9.3 of +CityxChange Task 9.2 “Extra-Project Cooperation with existing LHCs and FCs through clustering events and workshops run by existing SCC01 projects, EIP SCC, SCIS and other EU platforms”, in Work Package 9 “Inter-Project Collaboration and Clustering”. It complements Deliverable D9.2 “Report on Intra-Project Collaboration, Including Study Visits and Peer to Peer Workshops”.“

D9.2 Report on Intra-Project Collaboration, Including Study Visits and Peer to Peer Workshops

Posted on August 6, 2019 by -

The deliverable 9.2, Report on Intra-Project Collaboration, Including Study Visits and Peer to Peer Workshops, was submitted by NTNU in April 2019. Following, the executive summary of the deliverable:

“This report provides an overview of the study visits, peer to peer workshops, and other intra-project learning activities performed by the Lighthouse and Follower Cities in +CityxChange.

These activities form part of Work Package 9 “Inter-Project Collaboration and Clustering”, Task 9.1 “Intra-Project Lighthouse and Follower City Cooperation”. They are designed to address the needs of the participating cities and solution providers in an effective manner, to better align goals and priorities, to promote cross-cultural communication, understanding and collaboration between the partners, and to speed up the learning process and iteration of results across the entire value chain. This Deliverable is complemented by D9.3: “Report on Attendance at Events Held By Other SCC01 Coordinators”.

This report contains information regarding four main elements of Task 9.1 in the first six months of the +CityxChange project:

  • The first Partner Meeting, held in Trondheim on 7-9 November 2018;
  • The first Learning Workshop, held in Vienna on 2-4 April 2019;
  • A face-to-face meeting between the Lighthouse Cities Trondheim and Limerick, held  in Limerick on 20-22 March 2019;

Monthly online meetings between the Project Coordinator, Lighthouse and Follower Cities, i.e., the Executive Board.“

D9.1 Framework for intra-project collaboration

Posted on August 6, 2019 by -

The deliverable 9.1, Framework for intra-project collaboration, was submitted by NTNU in February 2019. Following, the executive summary of the deliverable:

“In this report (Deliverable 9.1), we describe a learning framework, based on open innovation, to foster a collaborative approach among +CityxChange partners and with external stakeholders. The report is structured in three main thematic chapters:

  • Open Innovation Framework for the +CityxChange project
  • Methods and Tools
  • Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Evaluation Framework

The report includes an overview of the main elements of the learning framework, and how it connects to other tasks, partners and stakeholders in the project. The learning framework will include study visits to the lighthouse cities as well as peer-to-peer workshops using participatory design methods, co-creation, forecasting, mock-ups, storyboards, future workshops, brainstorming and experience prototyping, and opportunities to build on experiences from the +CityxChange Innovation Playgrounds.

The report includes an ex-ante and ex-post evaluation framework of cross-cutting issues in clean energy, open innovation, gender, socio-economic science and humanities, that will enable us to document whether the transfer of knowledge and experiences among project partners and with external stakeholders led to better project results, and, if so, under which conditions this was achieved.

The report forms part of +CityxChange Work Package 9 “Inter-Project Collaboration and Clustering”, dedicated to the transfer of knowledge and experiences between cities and solutions providers within the project, and with external stakeholders. This Work Package will facilitate regular meetings, workshops and brainstorming sessions between the cities, industry partners, local stakeholders and other interested parties. These activities will help identify and address the needs of the participating cities and solution providers in an effective manner, align goals and priorities, promote cross-cultural communication, understanding and collaboration between the partners, and speed up the learning process and iteration of results across the value chain.

The activities created within Work Package 9 will draw upon the experiences made by all partners across all tasks. In the +CityxChange project, the Follower Cities (FCs) will watch and learn from the Lighthouse Cities (LHC) how demonstrations have been applied, understand what has or has not been successful, identify which demonstrations would have optimal impact within their local context and create detailed replication plans for their deployment. The FCs will also themselves deploy the bold city vision, community engagement and playground demonstrations, perform feasibility studies and identify investment pipelines for their planned Positive Energy Blocks.“

D7.2 Reporting to the SCIS system

Posted on August 6, 2019 by -

The deliverable 7.2, Reporting to the SCIS system, was submitted by Future Analytics Consulting in June 2019. Following, the executive summary of the deliverable:

“This deliverable constitutes the initial outline report to the Smart Cities Information System (SCIS) for the +CityxChange project (824260). This is the first of 10 reports to be completed which will be carried out at 6-month intervals across the project. At this early stage the primary aim of this first report is to present the work carried out to date to prepare the +CityxChange SCIS instance for data input, to understand the divergence from the SCIS with respect to our project Key Performance Indicators, and, in order to set out the process for further reporting over the coming months and years. It is anticipated that future data points will be added to the SRT and summary reports will be generated via the SCIS system.

The month 6 delivery of the Deliverable 7.1 Standardised Approach to Monitoring and Evaluation is a prerequisite for cities in collecting data that adheres to an agreed single approach for data collection across the project in relation to KPIs. As such the report focuses more on what baselines have been established to date and what data has been collected by month 6.

When data collection or processing is started, the SCIS Reports will be updated accordingly to include updated KPI data points, data summaries, metadata, compliance, an export output from Self-Reporting Tool (SRT) where possible. Processing of personal data will respect data protection principles. 

This document provides an overview of data handling with respect to the SCIS and provides the initial guidelines for the project. The inputs to the SRT will support openness according to the EU principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” together with the project ambition of “Open by Default”.

This is the first +CityxChange monitoring report, which provides a snapshot of the trends and development of the +CityxChange project and its Lighthouse and Follower cities and are based on evidence collected through the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which were developed to reflect the progress on activities carried out under the various work packages on the project.

In accordance with the guidance from the SCIS on timeframes for reporting and key milestones, the +CityxChange project at month 6 has completed most of the year objectives set out by SCIS. Specifically, upskilled on usage of SRT, principal actors identified, and credentials assigned, Field of Actions built for SCIS KPIs. Usage of the SCIS as a monitoring tool can now begin as early as month 7 on the project.

As of the 7th of June 2019, the SCIS SRT does not have a functional reporting tool to export/generate a report on KPI progress. Due to this limitation on reporting ability, and the non-alignment of a number of project KPIs to the SRT’s fields of action, an approach has been followed where project data will primarily be collated in the +CityxChange M&E Reporting Tool (MERT) from where reports, visualisations and insights will be derived.“