Digitally Driven Smart Cities

Moving Forward to
Smarter Communities

Report of the Meeting of the Advisory group ICT Infrastructure for

energy-ecient buildings and neighbourhoods for carbon-neutral cities
16th September 2011
Digital Agenda
for Europe

Interested in Information and Communication Technologies for Smart Cities?

Please visit the dedicated area of our website at http://ec.europa.eu/ictforsg

European Commission
Directorate-General Communications Networks, Content & Technology
Smart Cities and Sustainability
B-1049 Brussels
Patricia.Arsene@ec.europa.eu
CNECT-ICTFORSG@ec.europa.eu

Digitally Driven Smart Cities

Moving Forward to
Smarter Communities

Report of the Meeting of the Advisory group ICT Infrastructure for

energy-ecient buildings and neighbourhoods for carbon-neutral cities
16th September 2011

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Table of

content

Foreword by the European Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Smart Cities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
A strategic commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
NCA: a lighthouse experimental eld
for the ICT-empowered sustainable city of tomorrow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Nuremberg is ready to go for a smarter future! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The validity of the scope and denition of Smart Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
How to dene the area of intervention
in order to maximise the European dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
What to include in a Smart Cities programme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1. Technical requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2. Political requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3. Business requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4. Reections on project requirements, focus and characteristics . . . . . . . . . 24

Conclusions and recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Annex 1: List of workshop participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Annex 2: Research topics suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Annex 3: Relevant initiatives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Annex 4: Denitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Foreword

by the European Commission

Cities are home to three quarters of the EU
population, gathering also the majority of
businesses, and most public infrastructures;
this turns them into innovation hubs for Europes
economy, but also makes them responsible for
most of our energy consumption and carbon
emissions. It is these two features combined
that demonstrate the signicance that cities can
play in achieving the EUs 20/20/20 energy and
climate change targets.

As systems are using a huge quantity of data

we need to consider putting in place reliable
schemes for data collection and we do need
to agree on metrics for making possible the
comparison of systems performance. The
ICT industry has already made significant
progress by developing together with the
standards developing organizations a common
measurement framework for capturing its
carbon emissions and energy intensity1.

Digital technologies have a signicant role to

play in making cities truly smart and sustainable.
ICT should enable the exploitation of potential
synergies among the various building blocks
that will contribute to achieving a carbon neutral
urban environment, such as energy management
in buildings, electric mobility (electric vehicles, as
well as the related infrastructure and services),
etc.

The next step is now to establish a framework

for assessing the energy efficiency related
improvements and reductions in CO2 emissions
that could be enabled by implementing smart ICT
solutions. There is certainly scope to apply the
resulting information and data in a city context.

Much has been achieved at buildings and

neighbourhoods levels in terms of system
development, but still important challenges
are in front of us for progressively scaling up
such systems at the level of cities. As systems
need to be integrated to ensure their coherent
operation in response to users requirements,
interoperability is a first and fundamental
requirement to be considered.
A sustainable implementation of such systems
needs sustainable infrastructures as well as
a sustainable and coordinated infrastructure
management strategy. When renovating existing
urban networks, synergies are to be found for
making them increasingly interoperable and
accessible. Once again, interoperability appears
as a fundamental requirement.

http://www.ict-footprint.com

Both policy makers and businesses could benet

from being given reliable data and information
and citizens could base their decisions on such
data, becoming thus more engaged in saving
energy and lowering their activities carbon
footprint. Engaging citizens is a significant
challenge in the process of smartening our
cities, as deploying technology without having
convinced our citizens to make use of it would
not bring the so much expected benets.
The many and varied pilot projects deployed
throughout Europe with the aim to measure the
e ectiveness of smart meters in reducing energy
bills proved that technology is an important
enabler, but not an exclusive one. The results of
such pilots clearly demonstrated that the role of
the consumer is crucial. Therefore, e orts must
be made to raise their awareness and to involve
them through education and interaction.

There are also many initiatives on cities taking

o . Through the Green Digital Charter, European
cities have set out a way for reducing the carbon
footprint of their ICT and roll-out ICT solutions
which could lead to increase energy eciency in
areas such as buildings, transport and energy.
The Charter commits its so far 28 signatory
cities to deploy ve large-scale ICT pilots per
city within 5 years from the signature and reduce
their direct ICT carbon footprint by 30 per cent
per city by 2020.

The Commission is planning to consolidate these

various initiatives in a forthcoming European
Innovation Partnership.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the
members of the Advisory Group as well as the
rapporteur and contributors to this publication
whose active work and involvement have make
this publication a reality and I wish you an
interesting and enjoyable read.
Join us in this amazing journey to making our
cities smarter!
Zoran Stani
Deputy Director-General Communications
Networks, Content & Technology,
European Commission

Keynote messages
Smart Cities
Councillor Paul Tilsley
Deputy Leader Birmingham City Council
I am pleased to o er my support to this report
by the European Commissions Advisory Group.
Europe has set itself immensely challenging
targets on climate change, renewable energy
and energy eciency.
We have to embrace the future. And it is
a future which is increasingly one of scarcity
in materials, of food, and of energy. And it is in
cities where the impact will be most felt. Cities
are already where over 50% of the worlds
population lives and this is expected to increase
to over 60% in the next 10 to 15 years.
It is therefore a huge challenge for city leaders to
manage their cities and make them resilient. We
need Smart Cities to be beacons of progress,
innovation and development.
Birmingham has set a bold and ambitious carbon
reduction target of a 60% cut in the citys total
carbon emissions by 2026 that is now only
15 years away! And our target of cutting the
citys carbon emissions by 60% by 2026 is
ahead of the target set by the UK government
in the Climate Change Act.

Birmingham Declaration which I piloted through

the full City Council. This has committed us to
key actions to be achieved by 2015 on building
retrots, on creating new sustainable transition
communities and for the Council to only buy
electric vehicles for most of its purposes.
We currently spend over 1.8 billion annually
on gas and electricity in our city almost all of
which leaves our economy, as we only have one
electricity generating plant in the city at our
Energy from waste facility.
But cutting this energy bill for example by 60%
would add 1,000 million to our economic output
and take many households out of fuel poverty.
Smart Cities embrace a more integrated approach
to city sustainability. Creating green jobs, supporting
local supply chains through innovative programmes
are all essential and necessary elements of this
smart approach.
I therefore welcome the ndings in this report.
Councillor Paul Tilsley,
Deputy Leader
Birmingham City Council

Through our commitment to the Covenant

of Mayors we have put in place the 2015

City of Birmingham,
Source: EUROCITIES

10

A strategic commitment
Francisco de la Torre Prados
Mayor of Malaga
Malaga is committed to the application of
information and communication technologies
(ICT) to promote energy savings and eciency
as part of its strategic plan, which is underpinned
by culture and tourism, whose indicators already
excel. In a rapidly changing society, cities have to
respond to new challenges quickly. The current
challenge is to transform our cities into Smart
Cities.
Recently, IDC Consultants completed the study
Smart Cities, towards a smart economy, which
names Malaga as the smartest city in Spain.
Malaga appears in the rst place ranking for
scoring high in energy eciency, environmental
protection and intelligent services, as well as
for being a pioneer in the development of an
eco-ecient city through the SmartCity Malaga
project. Our city is rmly dedicated to belong to
the already existing group of European Smart
Cities such as Luxembourg, Aarhus, Turku,
Eindhoven, Linz, Montpellier, Ghent and others
throughout the European Union.
A citys smartness, despite being a very broad
concept, is being evaluated primarily by the
degree of eciency to which they address the
challenge of drastically reducing CO2 emissions,
a challenge that all cities will have to undertake
before the middle of this century. Without ICT
and intelligence, it would not be possible at all.
In urban areas, new systems and methodologies
will need to be developed and implemented for
mobility, building, urban planning, rehabilitation
of existing buildings and urban spaces, and for
energy grid management.

City of Malaga,
Source: EUROCITIES

Smart cities will have to be planned considering

parameters that have not been taken into
account up to date, and the various planning
instruments will have to be well coordinated
and consistent with the objective of reducing
emissions.
Smart cities will be those which their current
actions, now described as mere pilot projects,
become in short the standard for urban planning
and design.
In Malaga we are proud of these projects,
especially Smartcity Malaga, which is working
on a new urban energy management model that
incorporates the end user as an active part of
the electric system, by providing systems for
renewable energy generation, for energy storage,
for monitoring from generation to the end user
and for control of electro mobility incidents in
the distribution grids.
Finally, financial support from the national
governments and the European Union will be
essential to make Smart Cities a global reality.
The transformation of conventional cities will
not be possible given their current financial
resources. Even in a crisis scenario, actions
conducted this way, will not only be a benet
for citizens but also a new and important source
of economic growth.
Francisco de la Torre Prados,
Mayor of Malaga

11

NCA: a lighthouse experimental eld for

the ICT-empowered sustainable city of tomorrow
Christian Estrosi
Mayor of Nice
As an international and sustainable metropolitan
area, the inter-communal structure Nice
Cte dAzur (NCA) is comprised of the city of
Nice and 26 other towns and cities covering
a 350 km2 both urban and rural territory with
its 520 000 inhabitants. A key ambition and
goal of NCA is to explore di erent aspects of
sustainable development that are at the heart
of this community issues and projects, including
public transport, water production, waste and
sewage management, economic development,
innovation, energy, green areas, urban planning,
environment and public lighting.
As a typical example, NCA has developed an
urban monitoring project for the comprehensive
measure and optimization of a complete range
of services for real-time assessment of the sustainable citys performance using technical or
environmental sensors to measure air and water
quality, noise levels, lighting and waste management, trac optimization and many others
factors. NCA is also actively involved on another
prototyping and testing projects, using a joint
design methodology, of an innovative technological solution to encourage environmentally
friendly behaviors in families. Both projects are
fundamentally based on the use of information
technology which is in full coherence with
NCA being one of the very initial signatories of
the Green Digital Charter, an initiative launched
by EUROCITIES networks in 2009.
Besides, a ground breaking project driving the
eco-metropolitan area on the French Riviera for
decades to come is hosted by NCA: the Ecovalley
located in the Var Rivers plain, an operation of
national importance covering almost 10 000 ha.
This project aims at creating thousands of jobs
in innovative business sectors, and at setting
the standard for incorporating environmental
considerations in economic social and urban

development project. Designed as a laboratory of

sustainable development, devising and applying
the most advanced technologies in landscaping,
urban planning, construction, energy management
and integration of ICT, it will be a capital driver for
large-scale qualitative and quantitative change.
The EcoValley project has earned NCA its place
among thirteen French communities declared as
EcoCities. The NCA EcoCity project is based on
four strategic principles:
Choose a sustainable form of development;
Encourage future mobility;
Move towards energy self-suciency (solar
heating and air conditioning, ocean thermal
energy, development of wood fuel, smart
grids, best buildings, ...);
Represent the smart cities of the future.
NCA intends to develop, in partnership with the
French Riviera Chamber of Commerce and Industry
and the main actors of the industrial sector, a chart
of functional architecture for smart grids, based
on eight experiment projects currently undertaken
within the EcoCity of the French Riviera, making
todays buildings smart-grid compatible while
standards are still being identied.
All those e orts are relying on a deep integration
of ICT, so as to gather and analyse huger and
huger amount of data and information, and
to support and enhance decision-making at
a complex district / city scales and especially
contributing to decarbonate the balance energy
/ greenhouse gases in our cities. In such a context,
NCA fully acknowledge and support the need for
future research and development of ICT tools,
systems and infrastructures for energy-ecient
buildings and neighbourhoods that will form our
carbon-neutral cities of tomorrow.
Christian Estrosi,
Mayor of Nice

City of Nice,
Source: EUROCITIES

12

Nuremberg is ready to go for a smarter future!

Dr. Ulrich Maly
Mayor of Nuremberg
The City of Nrnberg has been active since more
than decade in developing and implementing
a roadmap for a carbon-neutral city. The vision
is the smart, sustainable city which is well
performing by using energy-efficient smart
technologies in all areas of city-life and building
on the smart combination of endowments and
activities of self-decisive, independent and
aware citizens. At the moment we are focussing
on the following aspects:

City of Nuremberg,
Municipal Energy
Management.,
Source: Nuremberg City

Improvements of energy eciency in the

building sector: renovation and energetic
improvements in the existing building
stock; implementation of strict standards
in new buildings; new design features for
commercial and industrial buildings
Implementation of smart technologies:
smart-metering, development of smart grids
in a step-wise process, virtual power plant,
new tari models for private consumers as
well as for industry and commerce, applied
research on integrated systems, regulation of
household appliances, user friendly concepts
Green IT: reducing energy consumption in
data centers of the public and parastatal
sector; promotion of a Green IT campaign
in order to reduce energy consumption in
commercial data centers in the city and
in the region on a voluntary basis and the
development of concepts improve eciencies
through application of modern control
technologies

Integration of e-mobility in the urban transport

concept: combined systems: individual/public
transport, use of light transport facilities
like pedalecs and e-motorbikes, role of
battery systems in storing surplus energy,
new city cars for individual and commercial
use/car-sharing systems, investment in lowemission technologies
Rural-urban cooperation in promoting
renewable energies: a future sustainable
energy supply must be based on a mix of
energies. In the city area photovoltaic and
solar-thermal units as well as geothermal
resources may contribute to this mix, but
hydropower, wind energy and biomass will
mostly be supplied in the rural environs.
A balanced system must be based on
agreements between the regional partners.

This program is to be materialized on regional

level. The European Metropolitan Region of
Nrnberg formed a committee for climate
protection and sustainable development in our
region. This committee is at present working
on a regional agenda defining targets and
measurements to convert the regional energy
supply system and to set a common target
for mitigation of and adaptation to climate
change resulting in a smart development
scenario.
We are ready to go!
Dr. Ulrich Maly
Mayor of Nuremberg

13

Preface
This report is the result of the second meeting
of the Advisory Group on ICT Infrastructure for
energy-ecient buildings and neighbourhoods
for carbon-neutral cities. It builds on the
foundation established in the rst meeting
held one year ago, on September 10th 2010,
and documented in a report, published on the
European Commission web site2.
That first meeting concluded that energy
ecient neighbourhoods should be developed
as a strategic concept for Europe, with selected

The Advisory Group meeting held on September

16th 2011agreed that the conclusions of the rst
meeting are still valid and that developments
over last 12 months are proving the timely
relevance of this approach. This second meeting

cities acting as pilots, providing information,

motivation, and reassurance to encourage other
European cities to adopt the concept and serving
as test-beds, enabling the concept to develop
and adapt by rapid development stimulated
by international research, exchange of knowhow and technology transfer. The report of
the respective meeting also included strategic
recommendations on topics to address and
suggested activities to be undertaken in the
short term (2011-2013).

discussed the issues in more depth and in this

context of rapid development, aiming to provide
more specic conclusions and recommendations
for future Smart Cities and Communities
initiatives in the period 2014-2020.

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sustainable_growth/docs/elsa/elsa_2010/report_elsa2010.pdf

14

15

Executive

Summary

The remit of the 2011 Advisory Group meeting

has been to provide advice on strategic objectives
and priorities for smart cities initiatives in the
next Framework Programme (Horizon 2020),
to identify the key issues to be dealt with and
anticipate the relevant areas for research and
technological development.

focus on each realm of activity (suggested as

energy, eServices and ICT) whilst promoting
interoperability and compatibility of
communications between them and aiming for
progressive integration.

At the European level, progress manifests itself

in the Smart Cities and Communities topic within
the current Energy Work Programme call for
proposals3, the plans for an ICT joint call in 2012
and the expectation of a large scale initiative in
2014 as part of Horizon 2020.

It is clear that ICT should be the connection to

enable exploitation of potential synergies among
the various smart realms of activity that will all
contribute to achieving carbon-neutrality in cities.
These realms include energy in buildings, electric
mobility, eHealth, eCare, and eGovernance.
European added value will come from achieving
open standards and EU wide compatibility of
systems enabling cross-border competitiveness,
rapid progress and thus a competitive advantage
in the global marketplace.
In the short term, the Advisory Group
recommended that Smart Cities initiatives

FP7-ENERGY-SMARTCITIES-2012

The meeting concluded that:

Smart Cities and Communities initiatives

(hereafter abbreviated to Smart Cities)
should focus on implementation of existing,
advanced state of the art products and
services,
research is needed on communicationsrelated aspects to facilitate integration and
interoperability issues, on utility networks
and cyber security issues, on overcoming
financial barriers, on developing suitable
frameworks for public-private risk sharing
enterprises and on societal aspects regarding
behavioural change,
exibility is required in terms of denition of
city and community,
public private partnerships are a vital success
factor in smart initiatives
existing technology platforms, trade
organisations and networks of towns and
cities should be involved in the programme
and in projects.

16

17

The validity of the scope

and definition
of SmartCities
There is general agreement that the primary
objective of Smart Cities is the achievement of
the 2020 energy objectives4, towards carbon
neutral cities and neighbourhoods, and towards
European competitiveness. Beyond that, opinions
vary from those advocating a very tight focus
on energy related aspects (smart grids, smart
meters, and intelligent buildings) to those
advocating a much broader focus, including
a wide range of community and citizen based
services, where ICT has a role in replacing
physical resources with digital resources and
thus contributing to a more carbon neutral
society.
There was solid agreement amongst the
members of the Advisory Group present at the
meeting that the energy ecient neighbourhood
concept is denitely valid and should be kept
as the focus at this rst stage of development
of Smart Cities. The implication here is that
the focus should initially be kept tight in order
to facilitate rapid development of coherent
standards for interoperability. These standards
should contemplate future systems and the
widest range of applications that can be
envisaged now.

The challenge is to offer a wide variety of

services focussed directly on citizens and
through business and governance, the goal
is to develop thriving industries founded on
technological innovation.
It was suggested by the Advisory Group
members representing municipal authorities
that the energy efficient neighbourhood
concept can serve to integrate many current
concerns such as energy eciency in buildings,
decentralised generation and other complex
activities being labelled as smart. The potential
to improve the quality of service and eciency
of resource use through smart eHealth5 and
care services (for example for elderly people)
and citizen participation through eGovernance
is also recognised. Electric mobility is seen as
one component in a complex chain of mobility
actions involving management of emissions,
time, space, etc. o ering opportunities to recover
space and time for higher value uses.
It is clear that projects already being implemented
prior to 2011 are already demonstrating the
technological feasibility of smart solutions and
that future projects can therefore be expected to
be more ambitious, aiming to o er increasingly
integrated solutions.

Energy and climate change objectives for 2020 adopted by the European Council in 2007: to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 20%, to increase the share of renewable energy to 20% and to make a 20% improvement in energy eciency.
Subsequently incorporated into the Europe 2020 Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and into the initiative
Resource ecient Europe. http://ec.europa.eu/energy/strategies/2010/2020_en.htm

eHealth etc. where e is a prex indicating processes supported by electronic processes and communication

18

19

How to define
the area of intervention
in order to maximise
the European

dimension

As a preface to discussion on this subject,

it was noted that certain denitions require
clarication. The CSTB (Centre Scientique
et Technique du Btiment) representative
from France proposed the denitions they are
using as a working model: Neighbourhood
to be a group of buildings, District to be
neighbourhoods plus public spaces, roads,
etc.), and City to be a network of districts.
In terms of project development, those actively
involved in on-going demonstration projects
or in preparing Smart Cities project proposals
suggested that it was wise to build project
consortia with similar cities and with a limited
number of dimensions within the project
(focussing on a theme rather than trying to be
innovative and smart in many areas at once).
A specic suggestion in terms of maximising the
European dimension was to consider operating
at 3 levels: (1) core cities demonstrating
technology, (2) surrounding regions involved in
the project and targeted for direct replication or
exploitation of results and (3) satellites in similar
or neighbouring member states (e.g. Czech
Republic cities linked to German projects and
visa versa) in order to maximise the European
dimension.
The private sector perspective was that the
clearest business case for pioneer market
opportunities stays in large or densely populated

cities. Conversely, where population density

is lower, rates of return on infrastructure
investments are lower making it harder to
develop a viable business case for developing
smart function capability. This was a clear
contrast with the more territorial perspective of
national representatives. Those ones highlighted
the fact that countries and regions with dispersed
populations have specic research interests in
developing smart initiatives in order to improve
service provision in less densely populated areas
in order to improve energy grid stability and load
management in the context of more distributed
generation.
In conclusion, in terms of defining the area
of action, Cities and Communities is a good
inclusive title allowing all communities to be
included in the initiative. However, within this,
a clear terminology is needed to enable debate
about levels of action (community, district,
neighbourhood, etc.) to progress. In terms of
the scale of the area of action, there is a good
case for considering various degrees of activity
around a core pilot action so as to maximise the
European dimension. Finally, in terms of building
public and private partnerships, business and
public interests will coincide in large or densely
populated cities. Smaller urban areas and less
densely populated areas may need specific
initiatives to be defined where the business
opportunities are not so clear.

20