{"id":273,"date":"2019-02-17T11:39:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T11:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.codemotion.com\/magazine\/select-for-cities-contest-solve-challenges-and-create-value-for-citizens\/"},"modified":"2020-01-31T11:30:09","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T10:30:09","slug":"select-for-cities-contest-solve-challenges-and-create-value-for-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.codemotion.com\/magazine\/ai-ml\/big-data\/select-for-cities-contest-solve-challenges-and-create-value-for-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"SELECT for Cities contest: solve challenges and create value for citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he SELECT for Cities<\/strong> project was conceived as a competition between companies<\/span> operating in the Smart Cities<\/span> sector and the Internet of Things<\/span> (IoT),<\/strong> with the aim of identifying innovative solutions to specific problems in European cities. This is a project<\/span> that follows the Pre-Commercial Public Purchase (CPP)<\/strong> processes, funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union, whose main objective is the design, development and implementation of digital platforms based on the so-called “Internet<\/span> of Everything” (IoE)<\/strong> in order to improve the quality of life and services for European citizens.<\/p>\n

Pre-Commercial Public Purchase is a particular type of approach to research and development (R&D) services that allows us to compare different technological proposals by reducing the risk associated with the development of an innovation project and which is applied starting from the design and prototyping phase up to the validation of a first version of the products and services. CPPs are therefore an important tool for stimulating innovation as they allow the public sector to direct the realisation of new solutions directly to their needs.<\/p>\n

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Img 1: SELECT for Cities<\/em><\/p>\n

The consortium<\/strong> of the SELECT for Cities project<\/span> (Buyers Group) is formed by Digipolis<\/strong>, a Belgian<\/strong> company that works in the Smart City<\/span> field operating in the city of Antwerp<\/strong> with the “Antwerp Smart City<\/span><\/strong>” project and representing the main supplier; from the Forum Virium<\/strong> of the City of Helsinki, a unit that develops new digital services and urban innovations in cooperation with companies<\/span>, universities, other public sector organisations and Helsinki residents and holds the role of project manager; and from the city of Copenhagen<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The consortium’s vision is to help in creating connected cities where people, processes, things and data<\/span> are connected to each other so as to make personal services available on demand, transforming the way people manage and live in urban environments<\/strong>. Unfortunately, the IoE progress has proceeded slowly due to the lack of common standards, a fragmented marketplace, and the lack of ways to systematically test and introduce new solutions in the cities.<\/p>\n

The SELECT for Cities competition was born with the aim of seeking new methods, technology and tools to foster open innovation, but the biggest challenge is to find a way to ‘make smart’ the services currently offered by the cities<\/strong> (retrofit) with a modernisation that should proceed from two opposite directions: on the one hand, the cities should work together to agree smart city standards and standards de facto and, on the other hand, it is necessary to imagine approaches that are open to data<\/span>, licenses, interfaces and participation so as to create robust interoperability<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The competition is open to all European companies who are asked to propose their vision of “cities as linked and large-scale IoE labs<\/strong>“, developing an open, standardised, data-driven, service-oriented and user-centric platform capable of provide IoE applications and services.<\/p>\n

The companies<\/span> that participated in the competition had to pass three phases<\/strong>, in accordance with the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) processes, before reaching the final Pilot:<\/p>\n