The current economic crisis, combined with growing citizen expectations, is placing increasing pressure on European cities to provide better and more efficient infrastructures and services, often for less cost. Innovative, ICT-based solutions - particularly those created in the user driven, open innovation environments of Living Labs (LLs) - hold an important key to helping European cities resolve this dilemma and work ‘smarter.’
Following significant support from the European Commission, Living Labs have proved to be an effective means to close the gap between innovative R&D and market take up, and make the innovation process more efficient. Networks such as ENoLL, the European Network of Living Labs have, in turn, helped to mainstream this new and important means of generating innovation.
Despite these strides, however, the outputs from LLs still remain relatively fragmented – making it hard for European cities to learn from one another and for SME’s to market innovative new, user-driven applications in a scalable and cost effective manner. The European Platform for Intelligent Cities – EPIC – addresses this short-coming head on by creating an open, pan-European platform for web-based ‘infrastructure and software as a service’ that enables ‘smart cities’ to learn from one another and exchange practical working models in a real-life context. EPIC represents a logical ‘next step’ in EU policy, intentionally designed by SME’s and larger industry players to operationalise the bench marking work of pioneering projects like Apollon.
The EPIC platform combines the industrial strength of IBM’s ‘Smart City’ vision and cloud computing infrastructure with the knowledge and expertise of leading European LL’s and municipalities such as iMinds iLab.o, ISSY-Media and Manchester to ensure the development of a European ‘innovation ecosystem’ that provides an extensive range of opportunities for sustainable, user-driven web-based services for citizens and businesses. EPIC accelerates the uptake of these new services across Europe by combining the world-leading business expertise of Deloitte Consulting with the practical, first-hand knowledge of ENoLL to deliver a robust roadmap that will help cities across Europe upscale from the LL environment to real-life urban deployment.
The EPIC team understands that to be truly ‘smart’ a city must be able to easily access and leverage the benefits of SME and citizen-driven and tested services as well as to anticipate and plan for powerful new innovations such as the Internet of Things (IOT) and Future of the Internet which will, among other things, enable them to digitise and connect their infrastructures in a manner that infuses them with intelligence. Toward this end, IOT specialists Birmingham City University will work closely with technology partners such as IBM to ensure that the EPIC platform is fully capable of providing IOT-enabled services. Business consultant partners like Deloitte and 21c additionally ensure that the EPIC roadmap is fully future-proofed for new instrumentations such as ‘smart water, electricity and transport grids.’
EPIC combines i) user-driven open innovation, ii) connected smart cities and iii) web-based services in the following manner:
- Partner Living Labs engage citizens and SME’s in the innovation process, driving creation of new services that citizens, businesses and city visitors want
- Partner cities plug existing and new co-designed web-based services into the open EPIC platform so that other cities, such as relative newcomers like Tirgu-Mures in Romania, can easily connect to the platform and use them
Partner consultants and subject matter experts leverage pilot findings to help create a business-oriented, public-private partnership roadmap that incorporates a variety of differing business models from open source, to pay per use and licensing.
Policy Context
Since early 1995, the European Commission has attempted to improve government services, transactions and interactions with European citizens and businesses through the funding and deployment of a wide variety of strategic ICT initiatives. However, historically, the technical and procedural limitations have combined to prevent European cities from exploiting ICT systems in any sophisticated way beyond back office integration exercises. Specifically, cities have failed to develop collaborative creation and delivery of citizen and business-centred services. To date (2010), even leading-edge cities struggled to generate co-created services because development was isolated and separated from the expertise and use cases of other European contexts. Infrastructure and interoperability challenges forced cities into the purchase of proprietary, closed hardware solutions, while cost, alongside traditional market barriers, have prevented administrators and decision-makers from accessing and deploying many innovative and state-of-the-art products and ideas generated in other contexts.
The deepening economic crisis, combined with growing citizen expectations, places increasing pressure on European cities to overcome these barriers and deliver more efficient, more effective infrastructures and services, often for less cost. Within this context, user-driven ICT innovation, particularly facilitated by the growing Living Lab (LL) movement has proved increasingly crucial to the provision of a 'more for less' approach to smart city services.
In times of severe public sector austerity, creating and maintaining a Living Lab testbed can be a prohibitively costly solution for some cities. Following significant support from the European Commission from the late 2000's, Living Labs (LLs) – and accompanying networks and projects like ENoLL, the European Network of Living Labs, and Apollon, a Commission-funded initiative to bench mark and share best practice across European Living Labs, - proved to be an effective means of helping to facilitate testbeds of intensive user-driven R&D while increasing take-up and use of generated services by cities. However, the outputs from LLs persisted as fragmented, suffering principally from a lack of cost-effective coordination to enable the joined-up development and validation of such services. As a result, European cities struggled to learn from one another, access state-of-the-art tools and technologies and deploy effective, efficient user-driven services.
Description of target users and groups
EPIC has two target user groups: (1) Cities and their Living Lab partners and (2) Citizens and Businesses either located in or visiting a City.
City/Living Lab Needs: To rapidly migrate to a ‘smart,’ industrial strength web-based service delivery infrastructure in a scalable and cost-efficient manner, and to easily access innovative new applications from across Europe.
Citizen/Business Needs: To access, localise and deliver user-driven government services that are on a par with other private sector offerings i.e. quicker, faster, and more personalised. EPIC helps to fulfil both these needs by (1) using the IBM Cloud and ‘Smart City’ vision as the basis for a robust, pan-European service delivery platform that will enable Cities/Living Labs and SME’s to use and share rapidly prototyped, tested and user co-designed applications and (2) creating a practical, business-tested road map to help Cities to use the platform, bring services to market across Europe and achieve sustainable business models via mechanisms such as ‘Public-Private Partnerships.’
Description of the way to implement the initiative
The EPIC project operatives four pilots as part of the cloud service catalogue and platform. Each of the pilots has been intentionally designed to build upon and link existing and emerging initiatives in the Smart City arena in a manner that stimulates further development and validation in real-life settings.
The pilots use the open IBM cloud platform as the basis for sharing and exchanging knowledge and innovation between three European Living Labs in more ICT-advanced Member States– Issy Media in France, Brussels IBBT iLab.o in Belgium and Manchester DDA part of the City Council in the UK – and a less advanced city – Tirgu-Mures, Romania.
Specifically, partner Living Labs in France, Belgium and the UK are using the EPIC platform to jump start the rapid prototyping and testing of innovative new user-designed services. Issy-les-Moulineaux is engaging citizens and SMEs in the design and testing of a new urban planning application. Brussels is working with the real estate and tourism sectors in the development and deployment of an urban relocation service application. Finally Manchester is joining citizens and SMES in the creation and consumption of real-time open and public data sets about environmental conditions in their homes.
All of these partners integrate their applications onto the EPIC platform for use, not just by their own citizens, but potentially a wider mass of citizens across Europe. The ability to share these new applications in a cost-effective and efficient manner that exploits synergies and stimulates further innovation will be demonstrated by Tirgu-Mures which will adapt selected applications to meet local citizen and SME needs. The following figure provides an overview of the pilot implementation:
EPIC combines i) user-driven open innovation, ii) connected smart cities and iii) web-based services in the following manner:
- Partner Living Labs engage citizens and SME’s in the innovation process, driving creation of new services that citizens, businesses and city visitors want;
- Partner cities plug existing and new co-designed web-based services into the open EPIC platform so that other cities, such as relative newcomers like Tirgu-Mures in Romania, can easily connect to the platform and use them;
- Partner academic institutions and consultants leverage findings from pilot trials to help create a business-oriented, public-private partnership roadmap that incorporates a variety of differing business models from open source, to pay per use and licensing.
EPIC will also provide added-value to cities and Living Labs by meeting their need to migrate to a ‘smart,’ industrial strength web-based service delivery infrastructure in a scalable and cost-efficient manner, and to easily access innovative new applications from across Europe.
EPIC will provide added-value to citizens and business by meeting their increasing desire to access localised, user-centred government services that are on a par with other private sector offerings i.e. quicker, faster, and more personalised.
EPIC will help to fulfil both these needs by (1) using the IBM Cloud as the basis for a robust, pan-European service delivery platform that will enable Cities/Living Labs to use and share rapidly prototyped, tested and user co-designed applications and (2) creating a practical, business-tested road map to help Cities to use the platform, bring services to market and achieve sustainable business models via mechanisms such as ‘Public-Private Partnerships.’ The ‘road map’ will address key building blocks issues such as identity, security, multiple-modal access & authentication and will help enable SME’s to grow by offering them the opportunity to reach new markets across the whole of Europe.
Technology solution
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The innovative EPIC service platform involves combining and integrating a number of trusted elements:
- EPIC Test and Development Cloud – provides a managed virtualized innovation infrastructure
- Semantic and Linguistic Layer – takes the solution to a mass audience and overcomes language barriers
- Future Internet Middleware – embeds the future internet technologies interface into the fabric of the EPIC platform
- EPIC Smart Cities Services Catalogue – provides information about all the available services
- EPIC City Portal – front end interface to access the city applications and services
- City Applications – leverages Living labs and Smart cities service delivery innovations
6a) IBBT Relocation Service
6b) ISSY Urban Planning Service
6c) MCC Smart environment Service
By bringing these solution components together to implement the unique EPIC platform, the project conducts en masse engagement to cities, Living Labs, businesses and other stakeholders to involve them in accelerating innovation and smart service delivery on a grand, never before attempted scale.
Main results, benefits and impacts
Impact
The table below summarises the expected outcomes and impacts from EPIC:
Outcomes | Impact |
Robustly tested, flexible and scalable European Platform for intelligent service delivery |
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Practical roadmap for cities to follow to enable smarter working |
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Connected cities/living labs forming a wide European innovation ecosystem |
o Open source / cloud computing o Internet of Things and Future of Internet o Interoperability
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In addition to the above impacts resulting from the key outputs of the project, EPIC delivers impact to all key stakeholders. The following table outlines the specific impact to these stakeholders.
Key Stakeholders | Areas of Interest | Anticipated Impact |
European Commission CIP ICT Programme |
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City Administrations |
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Living Labs |
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General public |
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SME’s / Businesses |
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General and Specialised Media |
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Return on investment
Return on investment: Not applicable / Not availableLessons learnt
EPIC has developed a pioneering methodology for cross-border validation and testing of Living Lab developed, citizen co-created services.
In the course of this experience there have been three key lessons which the project has developed:
- Cross-border services must be subject to local adaptation;
- Co-created services depend centrally on the role of government in opening data;
- Cloud service catalogues require a change of mindset from city administrators about the standard approaches for accessing and using services.