Digitalisering (EU R&I)

MICADO is an interdisciplinary international project that involves research institutions, public authority agencies and SMEs from Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Austria, whose purpose is to co-develop a MICADO-“one-fits-all”-solution (generic solution) that can be adapted by the local actors to their respective local challenges and manage migration issues with a local solution:

The generic solution will first be piloted in the MICADO-partner cities Hamburg, Bologna, Madrid, and Antwerp, and will then eventually be modified by the local communities. The outcome of the project will empower public authorities and local communities that attend migrants and refugees from their moment of arrival in the EU with more efficient and more effective digital services. It will also support migrants and refugees by enabling essential communication, orientation, and navigation within their new life environments. 

It evaluates the outcomes of the new interaction model between PA and citizens under a set of metrics in three dimensions:

1. social and cultural: citizen engagement, change in relationship with public servants.
2. economic: value of services produced, effects on workplaces, consumptions and economic sustainability
3. legal: legal implications for PA including privacy and data protection.

CO3 will devise a business plan ensuring long-term sustainability for the PAs on the basis of the metrics applied to the pilots’ data.

Impacts

• Enable Public authorities to develop pathways for the introduction of disruptive technologies while addressing societal challenges raised by such technologies.
• Enhance knowledge on digital democracy based on a thorough understanding of users’ needs and develop new ways of providing public services, of ensuring public governance and of boosting public engagement with the help of disruptive technologies.
• Contribute to developing new practices, to optimize work processes and to integrating evidence-based decision-making processes in public services and in services such as health, education, social welfare and mobility.

Source: CO3 project

The technological embodiment of MEMEX is an app installed on a smartphone allowing non-expert users to create and visualise stories related to their personal memories and experiences digitally linked to the geographical locations of either intangible (e.g. an event) or a tangible cultural places/object. The interface, designed on the needs of the community, will allow users to annotate using Augmented Reality (AR) any physical object or location with their memories in the form of digital images, videos, audio recordings or textual input using a smartphone. Then, the targeted communities will be able to connect their experiences and memories with a new Knowledge Graph (KG), linking CH items and places with stories that are bound and entangled within the European history. Effectively, the users of MEMEX will be active actors shaping contemporary and historical content, including new material from their experiences and memories, and personalising cultural heritage and creative media content in a meaningful and social inclusive manor.

The target communities of MEMEX are socially fragile people that are systematically blocked from various cultural opportunities and resources that are normally available to members of a different group, and which are fundamental to social integration. As an heterogeneous sample of these communities, MEMEX will deploy three distinct pilots to analyse different expectations from communities dislocated in different regions of the European territory. 

Clicks here for their scientific publications.

Source: MEMEX 

Source: Citizens' Observatories & Crowdsourcing: Novel ways to engage citizens in science and environmental policy-making. 

The Smart Cities Marketplace has thousands of followers from all over Europe and beyond, many of which have signed up as a member. Their common aims are to improve citizens’ quality of life, increase the competitiveness of European cities and industry as well as to reach European energy and climate targets.

Source: Smart Cities Marketplace

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Information available to urban planners – such as applicable legal frameworks and relevant policies – can be presented to citizens, providing them with a better insight into the planning process and local government decision making.

The smarticipate platform was trialled in three major European cities: London, Rome, and Hamburg. Click here to find out more about each city’s vision. Through smarticipate, the choices made by local governments can become more transparent, democratic and inclusive.

Click here to see their reports and scientific publications.

Source: smarticipate - about

The goals of the project were to discover new approaches to perform research on this digital content, improving overall accessibility of European cultural heritage, and stimulating collaborations between archives and researchers.

i-media-cities strived to be a cross-border, cross-language platform for the study of the history and urban development of large EU cities through large media collections, which were previously not accessible. It also stimulated the study of the history of media through the way they depicted urban spaces

The project started in april 2016 and lasted for three years, at the end of which this platform was born. i-media-cities is currently operated by a Consortium of 11 film archives and research partners.

Source: i media cities 

Cities across Europe are using DUET to create their own digital twins for systemic policy impact exploration and experimentation based on Policy Ready Data as a Service (PRDaaS) in a virtual environment. Initially, DUET will be developed and tested in Flanders, Pilsen and Athens. These pilots start from different positions on the digital twin journey. Antwerp has a working prototype. Pilsen has the tools but not an integrated solution. Athens is in the early stages of its Digital Transformation Roadmap and is starting from scratch. However, what unites the three is a conviction that digital twin technology is key to effective, future-proof policy making. By the end of the project, each pilot receives a solution commensurate with their city’s digital maturity, smart city strategy, political buy-in and budget.

As results from the original pilot network begin to spread, new cities with similar needs, challenges and data literacy will start to eye DUET as a potential solution. This is because DUET is not just about making trendy 3D maps. It is not about digital objects that cities can use as window dressing to impress the public, foreign investors or smart city researchers. DUET is not meant as a mere box-ticking exercise so that cities can raise their score in some international ranking. DUET is, above all, a purpose oriented initiative. Whether the goal is to empower citizens, improve foresight and scenarios simulation capability, strengthen coordination during emergency, optimise business performance, reduce traffic or carbon footprint, DUET provides a cost effective solution that cities can adapt to their context with minimal development effort.

DUET enables decision makers from multiple sectors to co-create innovative solutions to complex urban challenges by drilling down into data through a shared, easy-to-use interface. Although DUET’s solution is designed primarily for cities and public administrations, there is no reason why the application can’t be used by other industries. The underlying architecture is built with interoperability in mind. As such, DUET technology can support decision making at a sports event, on a factory floor, in a port’s control room. Users can upload any model so long as it complies with the framework requirements, after which they will be able to run simulations, analyse data, visualise insights, and much more.

Built to handle large datasets, both historic and real-time, the solution enables interrogation of anomalies and deviations before a disaster strikes. Thanks to the IoT connection, investigations can be done remotely from any place within a city and beyond; all that is needed is access to the DUET dashboard. Other benefits come from embedded ML and AI functions, which allow the system to make predictions concerning e.g. depreciation of road infrastructure or environmental footprint. We start by testing DUET in the smart city environment, with local administrations as main users. However, a fully developed solution has no restrictions when it comes to potential adopters. City halls, companies (big and small), universities, emergency services all are using DUET because it is cheaper, more advanced and user-friendly than competitor solutions. Thanks to DUET, organizations are more responsive, reacting rapidly to real-time events; policy decisions are faster and more effective, and relationships with citizens are improved.

Click here to see their publications and other results.

Source: DUET - About Us

To commemorate the day, we are looking at the ways data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Union, are being used to make and improve products that contribute to a better life for city-dwellers in Europe and the rest of the world.

Air Quality Data for Urbanites

Poor air quality leads to 7 million premature deaths globally every year, including hundreds of thousands in Europe alone. The nature of cities is that they combine high population densities with low-quality air, but tools are available to help residents plan to avoid the worst effects.

CAMS generates forecasts for various atmospheric components that can affect human health, including particulate matter, pollen, nitrogen dioxide, and sulphur dioxide. Anyone can view the global and European forecasts on the CAMS website, but they are also used as inputs for a variety of external services and applications offering air quality data to the public.

These applications include the weather visualisation service Windy, which is used by about 800,000 people every day and offers forecasts for a selection of conditions, including  cloud cover, wave swell, temperature, wind speed, and, since June of this year, air quality, the latter based upon CAMS forecasts. The partnership with Windy allows CAMS data to reach a wide audience in an easy-to-use and engaging format.

Other projects incorporating CAMS air quality data include Plume Labs’ Air Report App, which can help users plan their day to avoid poor air quality in​ over ​380,000​ ​urban​ ​areas​ ​of​ ​the​ ​world, including the homes of up to 3.8 billion people. Some projects are more specifically targeted, such as airTEXT, which supplies forecasts for London, UK and Riga, Latvia, including text and email alerts for poor air quality.

Supporting Future Planning for Cities

From its start, C3S has aimed to assist those planning for city life in the more distant future. The Urban SIS, one of the prototype demonstrator projects for the Service, aimed to show the potential of C3S to provide responsible for urban infrastructure with projections of some of the impacts that climate change might have in the future: intense rainfall, heatwaves, and extreme air pollution.

As C3S has matured applications and tools have come online furnishing data on a wide range of phenomena.  “We are providing high resolution information on how the climate change will impact cities,” says Carlo Buontempo, Director of C3S. For example, the European Health Service provides information on the suitability of various cities for the survival of Aedes albopictus (tiger mosquito or forest mosquito) based upon their current climate. As these insects can spread diseases such as dengue fever and chikungunya virus to humans, this is crucial information for those tracking their spread through Europe.

Other C3S contracts support planning for future-proof cities by looking at the effects of climate change on water resources, the energy sector, and coastal flooding from storm surges. As more of these services come online in the Climate Data Store it will become an even more invaluable resource for all those who design and plan urban environments.

Source: Copernicus - Supporting cities with data

Source: People-focused Smart Cities - UN-Habitat

European cities face a variety of challenges: ranging from ageing populations, through migration and urban sprawl, to counteracting climate change. In contrast, Europe's dynamic cities attract investment, people and services, thereby stimulating creativity and innovation. Cities are seen as both the source and solution of economic, environmental and social challenges.  Cities are one of the major players as they directly or indirectly implement EU policies and therefore contribute to the EU's major policy objectives, such as the Urban Agenda for the EU or the Sustainable Development Goal on cities and settlements. Assessing the current situation is a prerequisite for any improvement, development and future monitoring. City statistics aims to assist both citizens and policy makers and to support more evidence based decision making.

Source: Eurostat - City Statistics

In its Strategic Innovation Agenda 2022-2024 (SIA), EIT Digital outlines its plans to strengthen Europe in the digital world and help companies to lead digital innovation.

Source: EIT Digital - purpose

LUISA can be configured to project a baseline (or rerefence) scenario , assuming official socio-economic trends (from ECFIN and EUROSTAT), business as usual processes, and the effect of established European policies with direct and/or indirect territorial impacts. Variations to that reference scenario may be used to estimate impacts of specific policies, or of alternative macro-assumptions. This highly flexible and customisable structure of LUISA makes it a suitable tool for providing insights to policy-makers in Europe regarding landscape, urban areas, investment policies, environment and, more broadly, aspects pertaining to sustainability and territorial cohesion.

LUISA is based upon the notion of land function – a new concept for cross-sector integration and for representing complex system dynamics. LUISA aims to contribute to the understanding, modelling and assessment of the impacts of land functions dynamics as they interact from local to global scales in the context of multiple and changing drivers. A land function can, for example, be  societal (e.g. provision of housing, leisure and recreation), economic (e.g. provision of production factors - employment, investments, energy – or provision of manufacturing products and services – food, fuels, consumer goods, etc) or environmental (e.g. provision of ecosystem services). Land functions are temporally and spatially dynamic, and are constrained and driven by natural, socio-economic, and techno-economic processes. The ultimate product of LUISA is a set of spatially explicit indicators that can be combined according to the ‘function’ of interest and/or to the sector under assessment.

LUISA is a de-facto integrative tool because of its coherent linkages with macroeconomic and biophysical models and with thematic databases. The ultimate product of LUISA is a set of territorial indicators that can be grouped and combined according to the ‘function’ of interest and/or to the sector under assessment.

LUISA produces urban indicators at various levels of aggregation , as input to the Urban Data Platform.

Source: LUISA - EU Science Hub

Source: Urban Data Platform Plus

Background

Since 2014, the Commission has taken a number of steps to facilitate the development of a data-agile economy, such as

• the Regulation on the free flow of non-personal data
• the Cybersecurity Act
• the Open Data Directive
• the General Data Protection Regulation

In 2018, the Commission presented an AI strategy for the first time, and agreed a coordinated plan with Member States. The High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence presented their Ethics Guidelines on trustworthy AI in April 2019. This was built upon the framework for AI presented on 19 February 2020.

In her Political Guidelines, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed the need to lead the transition to a healthy planet and a new digital world. In that context, she kick-started the debate on ethical Artificial Intelligence and the use of big data to create wealth for societies and businesses during her first 100 days in office.

Source: A Europe fit for the digital age - European Commission

The European Commission is working on a digital transformation that will benefit everyone. Digital solutions that put people first will

• open up new opportunities for businesses
• encourage the development of trustworthy technology
• foster an open and democratic society
• enable a vibrant and sustainable economy
• help fight climate change and achieve the green transition

Source: Shaping Europe's digital future - European Commission

Source: European data strategy - European Commission

Source: The EU's 2021-2027 long-term Budget and NextGenerationEU: Facts and Figures. European Commission. 

Source: The European Commission's priorities - European Commission

Mayors about the European way

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The solution explained

An urban digital should ideally provide the following minimum five capabilities:

1. Connected
2. Integrated
3. Visualise
4. Analysis
5. Secure

Although there are a number of helpful enablers that can be used for urban digital twins in other cities, such as the Minimum Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs), interoperable urban digital platforms, the forthcoming data ecosystem for climate-neutral and smart communities and other initiatives such as the work to establish an Interoperability Framework for smart cities and communities.

There are a number of challenges related to governance, ecosystem data management (data availability and sharing, data governance and stewardship, shared data models and standards), cybersecurity and privacy, ethics, interoperability and skills. The goal of the community is to discuss these challenges and find common ground to resolve them. It is our  goal to help the concept of European urban digital twins move forward and create the ground for enabling many EU cities to implement their own digital twin, while at the same time increase the twins’ level of maturity and create industry standards that ensure European interoperability.

Source: Urban Digital Twin - Living-in.EU

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The ICC is part of a wider EU support system that recognises the importance of delivering on the promises made by the European Green Deal, the digital strategy, and other EU policies. It looks to move towards a more digital, service-oriented and low-carbon economy, supported by a knowledge-based society, that enables circular economy systems through ‘local value loops’, evidence-based reskilling, and sustainable investments.

Source: 100 Intelligent Cities Challenge

Click here to see their results.

Source: Portugese Presidency of the Council of the EU

Click here to see their datasets.

Source: Datasets - data.europa.eu

To help further define its vision for AI, the European Commission developed an AI strategy to go hand in hand with the European approach to AI. The AI strategy proposed measures to streamline research, as well as policy options for AI regulation, which fed into work on the AI package.

The Commission published its AI package in April 2021, proposing new rules and actions to turn Europe into the global hub for trustworthy AI. This package consisted of:

• a Communication on Fostering a European Approach to Artificial Intelligence;
• the Coordinated Plan with Member States: 2021 update;
• a proposal for an AI Regulation laying down harmonised rules for the EU (Artificial Intelligence Act).

A European approach to excellence in AI

Fostering excellence in AI will strengthen Europe’s potential to compete globally.

The EU will achieve this by:

1. enabling the development and uptake of AI in the EU;
2. making the EU the place where AI thrives from the lab to the market;
3. ensuring that AI works for people and is a force for good in society;
4. building strategic leadership in high-impact sectors.

The Commission and Member States agreed boost excellence in AI by joining forces on AI policy and investment. The revised Coordinated Plan on AI outlines a vision to accelerate, act, and align priorities with the current European and global AI landscape and bring AI strategy into action.

Maximising resources and coordinating investments is a critical component of the Commission’s AI strategy. Through the Digital Europe and Horizon Europe programmes, the Commission plans to invest €1 billion per year in AI. It will mobilise additional investments from the private sector and the Member States in order to reach an annual investment volume of €20 billion over the course of the digital decade.

The newly adopted Recovery and Resilience Facility makes €134 billion available for digital. This will be a game-changer, allowing Europe to amplify its ambitions and become a global leader in developing cutting-edge, trustworthy AI.

Access to high quality data is an essential factor in building high performance, robust AI systems. Initiatives such as the EU Cybersecurity Strategy, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, and the Data Governance Act provide the right infrastructure for building such systems.

A European approach to trust in AI

Building trustworthy AI will create a safe and innovation-friendly environment for users, developers and deployers.

The Commission has proposed 3 inter-related legal initiatives that will contribute to building trustworthy AI:

1. a European legal framework for AI to address fundamental rights and safety risks specific to the AI systems;
2. EU rules to address liability issues related to new technologies, including AI systems (last quarter 2021-first quarter 2022);
3. a revision of sectoral safety legislation (e.g. Machinery Regulation, General Product Safety Directive, second quarter 2021).

European proposal for a legal framework on AI

The Commission aims to address the risks generated by specific uses of AI through a set of complementary, proportionate and flexible rules. These rules will also provide Europe with a leading role in setting the global gold standard.

This framework gives AI developers, deployers and users the clarity they need by intervening only in those cases that existing national and EU legislations do not cover. The legal framework for AI proposes a clear, easy to understand approach, based on four different levels of risk: unacceptable risk, high risk, limited risk, and minimal risk.

A European approach to trust in AI

Building trustworthy AI will create a safe and innovation-friendly environment for users, developers and deployers.

The Commission has proposed 3 inter-related legal initiatives that will contribute to building trustworthy AI:

European proposal for a legal framework on AI

The Commission aims to address the risks generated by specific uses of AI through a set of complementary, proportionate and flexible rules. These rules will also provide Europe with a leading role in setting the global gold standard.

This framework gives AI developers, deployers and users the clarity they need by intervening only in those cases that existing national and EU legislations do not cover. The legal framework for AI proposes a clear, easy to understand approach, based on four different levels of risk: unacceptable risk, high risk, limited risk, and minimal risk.

Source: A European approach to artificial intelligence - European Commission.