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.