February 05, 2020

It's official, the SELECT for Cities project to stimulate the research and development of city-wide Internet-of-Everything platforms has officially ended, marked by successfully passing the final project review at the European Commission in Brussels. Project partners from Digipolis Antwerpen, Forum Virium Helsiniki, iMec and 21c met with the Project Officer and three independent reviewers to showcase the final innovation results, share challenges encountered and overcome, and discuss a longer lasting legacy.

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Despite coming to a close the benefits delivered by the project will continue in the month and years ahead. The SELECT for City Contractors have advanced smart city solutions to sell across Europe and beyond. Cities have three new open source city innovation platforms with advanced predictive data analytics to potentially procure from.  The Pre-Commercial-Procurement (PCP) tool itself is bolstered through lessons learned from the SELECT experience, which are already being adopted by new PCP projects such as FABULOS and OpenAI.  New research and innovation have been stimulated, and spin-off companies created bolstering European competitiveness.

It wasn’t an easy project with a range of technical, legal and procedural challenges, however, through collaboration, hard work and open communication between the project partners and platform contractors the project met its ambitious aims.  If you are thinking of starting a PCP, or indeed entering one as a supplier, the SELECT for Cities team would be happy to discuss their experiences with you.  The SELECT knowledge portal is still live so don’t hesitate to contact the team through the web form on this site.

November 29, 2019

Today the SELECT for Cities journey comes to an end but we are all confident that new opportunities will come and we want to ensure all our audience that SELECT for Cities Hub will be continued for a minimum period of 2 years.

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"Four years later, the SELECT for Cities consortium is much wiser in the art of using pre-commercial procurement (PCP) to stimulate city innovation. SELECT for Cities may be coming to an end, but its impact on the Smart Cities market is just beginning" said Susie McAleer of 21c Consultancy (dissemination leader).

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SELECT for Cities would like to thank all the Contractors that participated in the SELECT for Cities project!

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Keep following us on Twitter!

SELECT for Cities Team: 

Forum Virium Helsinki | Digipolis Antwerpen | City of Antwerpen | City of Copenhagen | imec | 21c Consultancy

November 25, 2019

Select for Cities is nearing the end of it's four-year innovation journey to create the Internet of Everything (IoE) Platforms for the collaborative design and development of smarter city services. The use of Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) to stimulate innovation and R&D proved to be a success and we proudly presented the final results across the three days of the Smart City Expo World Congress ( #SCEWC19) in Barcelona. 

From a consistent presence on the Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) booth, including the hosting of a innovation procurement Q&A surgery, to a series of demos and presentations on Contractor stands, SELECT for Cities was omnipresent throughout the prestigious event.

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A dedicated networking reception on the first evening of the conference marked a big occasion for the SELECT for Cities Contractors as they were awarded the results of the PCP competition.  Over 50 smart city influencer's and practitioner's attended, and heard from DG CNECT's Svetoslav Mihaylov who outlined the importance of PCP and co-creation before the PCP Contractors received their winners certificate. 

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1. University of Florence - Snap4City Platform

2. Indra Soluciones Tecnologias de la Informacion S.L.U. - Onesait Platform

3. Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.P.A. - DigitalEnabler Platform

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The networking event also provided an opportunity for the launch of the SELECT for Cities Guide to Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) booklet, designed to share the lessons learned from the project with other cities interested in using PCP to procure Smart City innovation.  Purposefully provided in an easily digestible form, the booklet provides a simple overview of what is involved in using PCP and offers tips and advice for new adopters. 200 copies of the booklet were shared at conference and can also be downloaded from the SELECT website.

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Finally, SELECT ended a successful conference on the last day of the event with a presentation by chief DigiPolis procurer, Ann Fournier, on the main Congress stage.  As Ann shared with the SCEWC19 audience, SELECT for Cities may be coming to a close, but the impact of its results are only just beginning!

October 10, 2019

It is with great pleasure to update you all that SELECT for Cities project won an Honorable mention at the Procura+ Awards in the ‘Outstanding Innovation Procurement in ICT’ category for the potential scale and impact of its smart city platform.

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The Procura+ Awards are running each year and reward successful, already running, sustainable and innovative public procurements. These procurements lead to significant improvements of public goods, services, processes and infrastructure.

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This achievement was possible thanks to Digipolis, City of Antwerpen, Forum Virium, Imec, Copenhagen Solutions Lab and 21c Consultancy and of course to all the Contractors who participated in the SELECT for Cities Pre-Commercial Procurement competition.

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This year’s entries for the 2019 Procura+ Awards were assessed by a jury of procurement experts and policy makers:

• Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, Mayor of Malmö, Procura+ Network Chair

• Paulo Magina, Head of Public Procurement Unit, OECD

• Marzena Rogalska, Director, DG Grow

• Mark Hidson, Global Director ICLEI's Sustainable Procurement Centre

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July 02, 2019

On June 11th, the first end-user workshop for the city of Helsinki has been held in the online presence of all three Contractors: Team Engineering, Indra and University of Florence. During a mixed demo, presentation and discussion workshop, the ICT Experts, City Planners, City developers and other relevant stakeholders from city organizations from the City Helsinki and Espoo received a first glance at the 3 Platforms and the applications and dashboards developed during the developers Iteration of Phase 3.

After each Contractor’s demo and presentation, the City of Helsinki Experts and Officials were able to provide feedback and discuss the presented Platforms and applications. A template with predefined questions was filled out during this discussion.

Participants were from Forum Virium Helsinki (local partner), City of Helsinki and City of Espoo.

Also, a representative from Digipolis Antwerpen was present. A total of around 20 people participated. The key sectors from relevant city operations were represented, like Region Environmental Services, Department of Finance and Planning/Information management, Constructions and maintenance services, Business development services and City ICT operations.

City representatives did find the event useful and active conversation raised further topics like data security and relevance, the usability of the suggested solutions and the selected use cases. Also, the future possibilities, even so far unknown, were seen as very positive findings.

June 24, 2019

It is already a tradition in the SELECT for Cities consortium to be present at Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) which takes place yearly in Barcelona. SCEWC is a world leading event for cities which provides a unique environment and meeting point for the whole smart city ecosystem. There will be city representatives from all over the world. Topics such as smart cities, climate change, mobility, digital transformation will be discussed during the 3 days course. There will be formal speaker presentations at the Congress but also informal presentation taking place at the boots from the exhibition floor. All in all it will be an interesting event that you shouldn’t miss with an estimation of 25,000+ visitors from 700+ cities.

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This year, SELECT for Cities alongside with the usual presence at the OASC booth, will have a more active role: a Congress presentation: What do Pre-Commercial Procurement and Smart Cities have in common? We are very proud to have been selected for this presentation. The competition was high, 500+ proposals were submitted, and SELECT for Cities Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) case was of high interest for the judges. Just a sneak peek: we will explain what is PCP, how smart cities can benefit from it, what are the main challenges and other interesting fact and findings about PCP. We promise an educative, interactive and fun presentation.

This year’s SCEWC is even more special to SELECT for Cities because together with the Congress presentation and the presence at the OASC booth, SELECT for Cities will organise and host the final closure event where the 3 contractors will have the chance of presenting their fantastic work. The final closure event SELECT for Cities consortium will organize will mark the end of our project.

For more details on the SELECT for Cities final closure event and where to find us at SCEWC 2019 stay tuned and follow us on Twitter (@Select4Cities).

March 04, 2019

Our Contractors have just entered the most exciting part of the PCP project: the Living lab developers stage! In this part of the PCP, Engineering, Indra and the University of Florence are giving developer's the opportunity to work with their state-of-the-art worldwide, Internet-of-everything (IoE) platforms! 

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• Team Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A., Italy with CityEnabler 

• Team Minsait by Indra, Spain with Onesite

• Team University of Florence – Dept. of Information Engineering, Italy with Snap4Cities

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Thanks to developer's contribution to the open calls,  hackathons and numerous events, Select's Contractors will be able to demonstrate their platforms’ ability to involve a range of city users in using innovative apps and platform features. 

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Click here to find out how to participate!

November 26, 2018

At Select we have a vision of connected cities, where people, processes, data and things are all linked, actionable intelligence is easily extracted, and personalised services are available on demand. In our future cities are the frontier of open innovation. Thanks to the Internet-of-Everything people can share ideas, rapidly create and test new urban services and in effect, anyone can be an innovator.

It’s a vision shared by many in the Smart Cities world, and recently, Select joined Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) at their stand at the Smart Cities Expo and World Congress (SCEWC) in Barcelona to see how much closer we are to achieving this future.  Here are the three things we learned.
 

1. 5G is almost here!

It was impossible to take a turn anywhere in the expo without hearing the buzz of ‘5G’ on someone’s fast moving lips.  For those not in the know, 5G is the innovative next (fifth) generation of mobile connectivity which will offer ten times faster speeds than today’s networks and will carry vast amounts of data to make IoT and the Internet-of-Everything a reality.  Whilst today’s network architectures are insufficient to cope with Select for Cities Internet-of-Everything goal, 5G with its new spectrum and lower latency will make it much easier to handle hundreds of thousands of devices simultaneously.  To date 5G has almost been grouped in a category of mythical powers, widely talked about but rarely seen in practice.  SCEWC however has changed that with companies including Cisco, Ericsson and Samsung all announcing trials in 2019.

2. Cities are embracing the Platform economy

Digital platforms in recent years have been proven to drive innovation and change the way services are created, delivered and consumed, putting people at the centre of their own worlds. Private companies such as Airbnb and Uber have led the way with new platform-based business models, and now Cities are keen to embrace the opportunities platform thinking provides to deliver better city experiences for their residents and visitors. However, unlike the private sector, the public sector has no room for failure, so a range of potential issues must be thought through first including data ownership, privacy, labour laws and trust. In the spirit of ‘practicing what you preach’ 42 cities leading the sharing economy including Barcelona, Amsterdam, New York, Paris and Singapore converged at SCEWC and agreed 10 principles to help the public sector leverage the power of the platform economy. 

3. R&D procurement is becoming more agile

The days of 150-page bids and loooong delivery times are gradually falling behind us.  Bureaucratic   processes benefit no one, not the city needing help, or the supplier with a potential solution.  Today thanks to new procurement practices such as PCP, PPI and other open accelerator calls there is a wealth of small to medium funding opportunities that Contractors can apply for to help fund and quickly advance their innovations.  On the OASC booth alone these included SELECT for Cities itself,  SCIFI which uses an accelerator programme to test the framework conditions for innovation in mobility, energy, and clean environment and SynchroniCity who recently closed its call for next-generation Internet-of-Things solutions.

So, what does this all mean for SELECT for Cities and all the Contractors who have taken part in our pre-commercial procurement competition to build large-scale Internet-of-Everything platforms?  Well in a nutshell the convergence between the city platform vision and reality is almost upon us, and the Contractors are well placed to lead and take this new market forward in a manner that works for them.  By the end of SELECT in 2019 they will not only have viable working solutions but also credentials and case studies from real-life deployments in the SELECT procuring cities of Helsinki and Antwerp.  By investing in the future through R&D they are positioned both as the go-to experts for open innovation platforms, but also as pioneers of the procurement revolution.

For more information on Select for Cities ambitions and to find out more about the three Contractors (Team Engineering, Team Indra and Team University of Florence) who will be testing their prototype platforms in the Living Labs of Helsinki and Antwerp, sign up to our newsletter for regular updates.

November 15, 2018

SELECT for Cities is pleased to announce that three contractors have been awarded contracts to start the third and final phase of its Pre-commercial Procurement (PCP).

SELECT for Cities started its pre-commercial procurement (PCP) to obtain R&D services to develop and build large-scale, city-wide, Internet-of-everything platforms to facilitate collaboration and open innovation. The process is highly competitive, and during the previous Phase II five companies produced platform prototypes which used open standards to visualise and analyse city data to generate actionable intelligence. All of the five were invited to bid for Phase III during which the innovative platforms will be tested in real-life settings in Helsinki, Finland and Antwerp, Belgium.

The awarded bidders are:

• Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A., Italy with CityEnabler

• Indra Soluciones Tecnologías de la Informacion S.L.U., Spain with Minsait

• University of Florence – Department of Information Engineering, Italy with Snap4Cities

The third phase of the execution stage is expected to end in December 2019.

“The three Contractors entering phase III all have very strong solutions” said Hugo Goncalves, of Forum Virium Helsinki, the project lead for SELECT for Cities. “SELECT for Cities is very proud to play a significant role in accelerating their development and is looking forward to seeing their impact in the city test beds over the next year”.

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This Pre-Commercial Procurement, the first one in the world to focus on the Internet-of-Everything is a multi-country and multi-partner joint effort, implemented by a consortium composed of several partners of Forum Virium Helsinki  (Finland) as project lead, Digipolis (Belgium) as partner and lead procurer, Antwerp (Belgium) as procuring entity with Copenhagen (Denmark), imec (Belgium) and 21c (UK). The project is supported by the European Commission through its H2020 programme.​

November 03, 2018

This month Susie Ruston McAleer from 21c presented SELECT for Cities to delegates at the annual Global Forum taking place this year in the city of Copenhagen.  As part of the Smart and Intelligent Cities panel, Susie joined speakers including Sylvie Albert, Professor of Economics from the University of Winnipeg, Hanne Melin, Policy Strategy Counsel and Head, eBay and Alan Shark, Executive Director & CEO, Public Technology Institute, amongst others.

Speaking about the challenges Cities faced in harnessing their data and transforming it into actionable intelligence, Susie showcased how SELECT for Cities is turning cities into smart service innovation labs through advance data platforms and city dashboards. She shared how the ground-breaking dashboards have been designed to be created and personalised by city workers, decision makers the public and the private sector and are fully open source, using open standards to facilitate open innovation and reduce vendor lock-in. Dynamic visualisations (including 3D) help users to combine and drill down into data, even to sensor level, to find correlations and generate actionable insights, and use of predictive analytics enable situations to be mitigated before they arise. Susie explained how the project is being run as an R&D competition to help accelerate innovation and that to date five platform prototypes have been built by different contractors and three platforms are about to enter Living Lab testing in Helsinki and Antwerp early next year.

The Global Forum/Shaping the Future is an internationally recognized think-tank for exchange and networking among governments at national, regional & local levels, private & public organizations, research & development experts.  The independent, high profile, international, non-for-profit event is dedicated to business and policy issues affecting the successful evolution of the Digital Society. The Global Forum brings each year in a different city around the world more than 300 key policy-makers and public/private stakeholders from more than 30 countries from all continents, it is often considered as the Davos for ICT.

July 11, 2018

As Phase II (prototyping) for SELECT for Cities draws closer to a conclusion, its time to revisit the original vision for the competition:

The SELECT for Cities challenge is the design, research and development of “cities as linked and large-scale Internet-of-Everything labs”. The challenge lies in developing an open, standardized, data-driven, service-oriented and user-centric platform for European cities that enables large-scale co-creation, testing and validation of urban IoE applications and services. This approach fosters the longer-term goal of evidence-based innovation in cities.

The aim is to help Europe overcome the barrier presented by the lack of ecosystem thinking across Europe. One-domain and one-city stand-alone and proprietary platforms and solutions are too small-scale, and therefore too expensive to develop and maintain. Therefore, to help themselves, cities must support the creation of a properly functioning smart city marketplace by supporting maximum interoperability of service interfaces and portability of services, solutions and apps internally (across city departments, across the boundaries of private and public urban services), regionally, nationally (in national city networks) and internationally (roaming of services across borders to create the critical mass).

By connecting top-down decision-making power with the innovative talent in active user and developer communities SELECT for Cities hopes to not only harness the might of sensors and the web, but also unlock co-creation and open innovation for fast prototyping and piloting, and service creation.

Our Contractors share here, in the last of Phase II’s 20 second video series, how their platforms will revolutionize cities.

June 28, 2018

The Internet-of-Everything (IoE) platform prototype phase for Select for Cities is coming to a close after all participants gathered in Helsinki this week.

This year the five Contractors have been developing large-scale Internet-of-Everything platforms that bring together city data sources and provide services to extract actionable intelligence from the data and facilitate collaboration and open innovation.

Based upon an understanding of the market, and the needs of the R&D procuring cities of Antwerp and Helsinki, each Contractor developed their own approach to meeting the complex requirements for a city platform.  From the need to be open-source to delivering high levels of usability, scalability and security, the platforms needed to go beyond the state-of-the-art of existing solutions on the market.

Five testing iterations during this period enabled the procuring cities to provide regular feedback directly to the Contractors who used the information to further improve their platforms.  The Helsinki meeting was a final opportunity for the Contractors to showcase their solutions to the procuring Cities and explain their innovative differentiators and commercialisation activities to date. 

The procuring cities are now evaluating how well the different solutions have met the Select for Cities requirements.  The Contractors who successfully pass the prototyping phase will be notified by the 1st August and will be invited to bid for the final R&D Phase, - Living Lab testing.

June 11, 2018

Innovation is vital for cities.  Embracing it keeps them at the forefront of new developments, trends and technologies enabling them to engage citizens more successfully and deliver services more efficiently and effectively.

SELECT4cities is using a new procurement methodology called ‘Pre-Commercial Procurement’ (PCP) to source large-scale Internet-of-Everything platforms. This approach is run through a series of competitive phases – 1) feasibility, 2) prototyping and 3) real-world testing – where the number of competitors reduces at each stage, and available funding rises.  The nature of PCP is to help cities to stimulate market choice by driving and sourcing research and development in an area of their need, and participating businesses/organisations benefit from the steerage of the city and the availability of R&D funds.  The competitive nature of the methodology pushes each organisation on the innovation front to find clever ways to stand out from the other suppliers.

Coming towards the end of the prototyping phase, SELECT4Cities has stimulated the development of five platform prototypes, that use city data to deliver a variety of services.  Here contractors from the organisations building the platforms explain what is unique/innovative about their solution.

May 10, 2018

Open source in its simplest premise is software with source code that is accessible to anyone who wants to inspect, audit or modify it to create new benefits.  An approach that often catalyses collaborative participation and community-based development to help solve common challenges.  The principle of open source is important to SELECT for Cities as it aligns with its vision of creating city-wide, data-driven, Internet of Everything platforms that will facilitate open innovation to create new tools and services that improve the urban way of life. This goes beyond software alone, its not just technology, it’s a whole new mindset.

Paraphrasing from the opensource.com website… “Approaching all aspects of life "the open source way" means expressing a willingness to share, collaborating with others in ways that are transparent (so that others can watch and join too), embracing failure as a means of improving, and expecting—even encouraging—everyone else to do the same. It also means committing to playing an active role in improving the world, which is possible only when everyone has access to the way that world is designed.”

Click here to see how the Contractors are making the open source values a reality within their city platforms.

May 09, 2018

During the 8-9th of May 2018 the Portuguese city of Porto hosted the FIWARE Global Summit at the stunning Palacio da Bolsa. The conference focused on how smart IoT and open data solutions can be implemented in the areas of smart cities, industry 4.0 and agriculture. SELECT for Cities coordinator, Hanna Niemi-Hugaerts, from Forum, Virium Helsinki, was asked to speak and share her thoughts on new funding mechanisms for procurement innovations

Presenting to an audience of developers, entrepreneurs, political decision makers, thought leaders, business executives and investors Hanna introduced the concept of Pre-Commercial Procurement and outlined how the methodology has been leveraged by the cities of Helsinki and Antwerp under the SELECT for Cities project to stimulate research and development of state-of-the-art Internet-of-Everything platforms for urban innovation.

Niemi-Hugaerts explained how SELECT for Cities is run through competitive phases – concept, prototyping and Living Lab testing - with the number of participating organisations reducing, but their budget increasing, as each phase is evaluated. This approach challenges industry to develop innovative solutions driven by public sector needs, whilst enabling procurers to drive the best possible solutions that the market can deliver.

By using Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) to challenge the market, SELECT for Cities is helping co-create a range of advanced Internet-of-Everything platforms that will transform the way cities undertake open innovation to deliver world class services. “We are currently in the platform prototyping phase with five contractors, four of which are using FIWARE components to address our aims." said Niemi-Hugaerts. "The challenge for contractors to meet both advanced technical standards, and a variety of end-user needs is complex, and we are looking forward to seeing how well FIWARE performs compared to other approaches." 

More info about the FIWARE Global Summit can be found on their website .

April 11, 2018

Scalability refers to the number of users, sessions, transactions, and operations which can be accommodated by a whole system. Simply put, scalability is growth to create either an application, service or platform that can serve thousands to millions of users with zero downtime and issues.

Developing a robust, resilient and scalable architecture whilst remaining flexible was core to SELECT for Cities challenge to create and develop large-scale City-wide, Internet-of-Everything platforms.  The SELECT platforms will be solving a range of business challenges across various domains such as mobility, health and environment which requires the processing and linking of large data sets. Therefore, a strong and stable architecture is essential.

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Our contractors briefly share with you here how they are tackling the scalability requirement.

March 15, 2018

Every day people across the world put their lives in the hands of public services, therefore with the increasing move to digital delivery its important that the new delivery platforms are robust, secure and fault tolerant. This simply means that new smart city platforms need to be resilient enough to cope with issues whilst keeping services up and running.

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As part of our SELECT for Cities short video series, Contractors share here their approach to fault tolerance and how they will eliminate unplanned downtime and prevent data loss with their Internet-of-Everything innovation platforms.

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Watch Fault Tolerance videos here.

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February 14, 2018

If you work with software and data chances are, unless you have been cave bound for the past two years, you will be familiar with the news that the deadline for compliance with the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is almost upon us.  It’s the 25 May 2018 for those not in the know.

All organisation need to be ready as the effect of the new legislation will impact everyone.  The overarching goal is to ensure all businesses work to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for all transactions that take place within the EU. It specifically replaces the outdated Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and in this age of cloud and personal data tsunami’s, it gives citizens their, to coin a popular media term, “right to be forgotten”.  This means people will have the right to demand that businesses and organisations identify and erase any personal data about them.

As SELECT for Cities is creating a city-wide Internet-of-Everything platform that uses city data to provide dashboards and services for smart city innovation it’s important that all contractors abide by GDPR.  As part of our short video series we asked contractors to share short 20 second videos on the steps they have taken to ensure their platform will be GDPR compliant?

Access info-films here.

Happy watching.  See you in March for the next theme of fault tolerance.

January 16, 2018

Find out the key elements that make up a good city dashboard  directly from our Contractors who are building a SELECT for Cities prototype platform.  They have provided their opinions via video, which you can watch here.

These short films form part of a monthly series of video updates, designed to share relevant knowledge and ideas with other cities looking to start their own journeys to creating city-wide innovation platforms.

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Next month's topic: What steps have you taken to ensure that your application/platform will be General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant?

December 19, 2017

The five contractors who will enter Phase II of the SELECT for Cities Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process have been announced today. The European project aims to deliver a city-wide open innovation platform for the public sector and beyond by supporting the effective use of Internet-of-Everything (IoE) data and technology.  It is achieving its aims using a new type of procurement called Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP).

Launched by the cities of Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki, the PCP process is different to traditional methods as it is run through a series of three competitive phases, with the number of participating organisations reducing, but funding levels increasing, as each phase is evaluated. The competitive nature challenges industry from the demand side to develop innovative solutions for public sector needs, whilst enabling procurers to compare alternative potential solution approaches to filter out the best possible solutions that the market can deliver.

During the first Phase ten companies/consortia produced solution scoping reports for their potential platform solutions. These were evaluated by the cities Buying Group and the contractors who successfully passed the Phase were invited to bid for Phase II during which they will build and test prototypes of their platform.

The awarded contractors are:

1.      Team FIWOO

• BOSONIT S.L., Spain (Lead Contractor);

• EMERGYA INGENIERIA S.L., Spain;

• J.I.G. INTERNET CONSULTING S.L., Spain;

• SECMOTIC INNOVATION S.L., Spain.

2.      Team ENGINEERING INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA 

• ENGINEERING INGEGNERIA INFORMATICA S.P.A., Italy (Lead Contractor);

• ATC INTERNATIONAL SPRL, Belgium;

• EIT DIGITAL IVZW, Belgium.

3.      Team INDRA SISTEMAS S.A., Spain

4.      Team City of Data

• MARTEL GMBH, Switzerland (Lead Contractor);

• UBIWHERE LDA, Portugal;

• THERAPENIS P.C., Greece.

5.      Team Snap4City

• UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE – DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION ENGINEERING, Italy (Lead Contractor);

• EFFECTIVE KNOWLEDGE SRL, Italy;

• UNIVERSITY OF MILAN, Italy.

Hugo Goncalves, Project Manager, Forum Virium Helsinki, said: "We have seen outstanding solution development in this PCP. Entrance to Phase II was tough and the successful contractors all impressed the Buyers Group by going above and beyond expectations, showing that their solutions not only meet complex technical standards and requirements but also a variety of end-user needs. In this first year of the competition, the innovation levels are very strong, and all of our contractors should be immensely proud of what they have achieved so far."

Phase II which officially began on the 15 December 2017 is expected to end in June 2018, after which selected contractors will be asked to bid for Phase III Living Labs testing on the ground.

Follow the developments of SELECT for Cities Online , on Twitter and LinkedIn.

November 21, 2017

During November SELECT for Cities joined forces with the Open & Agile Smart Cities (Team) to host a stand at Europe’s largest smart cities event.  The annual Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona brought together more than 700 cities form over five continents for the three-day event. 

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With more than 675 exhibitors, 400 speakers and 18,000+ delegates the Expo was a mecca for all those interested in urban transformation.  The large trade hall was a fantastic leveller with big corporates such as Microsoft, Cisco, Mastercard and Sap rubbing shoulders with niche players and start-ups including a host of smart parking players.  The atmosphere and excitement from networking on the first day alone was amazing.

During the three days SELECT was privileged to meet other cities from across the globe and discuss different approaches to smart procurement and Internet-of-Everything platform solutions.  The Pre-Commercial Procurement process was new to many delegates and certainly provided inspiration for others on how to better access research and development. 

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If you were there and gave us your business card to receive further information about SELECT for Cities please know we will be in touch soon.

November 06, 2017

The imposing red towers of the Fisku Kalasatama Living Lab in Helsinki provides a home from home for the SELECT for Cities Evaluation Team this week.

Meeting to discuss the results of the projects Phase 2 call for proposals, the evaluation team have come together to run through the bids received on a case-by-case basis.  Comprising of representatives from the procuring cities of Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki, plus Living Lab and business expertise from imec and 21c, the evaluation team have the difficult job of reviewing each submission in detail.  Having undertaken a remote scoring exercise, this meeting is an important part of the assessment process enabling the SELECT for Cities team to debate the reasons for their scoring to ensure an open and fair process of evaluation.

Six organisations/consortia were invited to submit proposals for the second Phase of the project which focuses on the design of a prototype IoT platform to create city-wide smart innovation labs.  Each of the proposers had successfully undertaken concept design for their platform during the previous phase.

Results on who will enter Phase 2 of the project will be announced later this year.

June 13, 2017

SELECT for Cities has announced the first phase winners from its call for tenders to design and develop a city-wide Internet-of-Everything (IoE) platform for smart city innovation.

SELECT for Cities has unveiled ten winners from the 28 responses received by its global call for tenders. The European project aims to deliver a city-wide open innovation platform for the public sector and beyond by supporting the effective use of Internet-of-Everything data and technology.  It is achieving its aims using a new type of procurement called Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP).

Directed by the cities of Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki, the PCP procurement is different to traditional methods as it is run through a series of three competitive phases, with the number of participating organisations reducing, but funding levels increasing, as each phase is evaluated.  The phases range from design through to prototyping and testing of the solutions.  This competitive approach challenges industry from the demand side to develop innovative solutions for public sector needs, whilst enabling procurers to compare alternative potential solution approaches to filter out the best possible solutions that the market can deliver.

Starting the first phase of the SELECT for Cities challenge the following companies/consortia from across Europe will deliver the concept design for their proposed Internet-of-Everything (IoE) platform solution.

• Team Bosonit S.L (lead contractor) – Spain

• Team etventure Corporate Innovation GmbH (lead contractor) – Germany

• Hop Ubiquitous S.L. (single contractor) - Spain

• Indra Sistemas S.A. (single contractor) – Spain

• Team Engineering, Ingegneria Informatica S.P.A.   (lead contractor) – Italy

• Team Magenta srl (lead contractor) – Italy

• Team Martel GmbH (lead contractor) – Switzerland

• Team University of Florence – Department of Information Engineering (lead contractor) - Italy

• Team Urban Software Institute GmbH (lead contractor) – Germany

• WINGS ICT Solution (single contractor) – Greece

“We would like to thank all the companies and consortia who entered a proposal. The quality of responses is phenomenal and showcases tremendous innovative thinking from all the organisations” stated SELECT for Cities Project Manager, Hugo Goncalves. “We are delighted to be starting Phase 1 of the research and development immediately moving us closer to our vision of smart, connected and innovative cities.”

SELECT for Cities is expected to announce the winners of Phase 1 who will move forward into the demo building activities of Phase 2 in late August, after evaluating the feasibility reports from the starting line-up.

Follow SELECT for Cities Online , on Twitter and LinkedIn.

April 10, 2017

Have you submitted your SELECT for Cities tender? You still have 3 days left until 10am on the 14th April.

The Programme Manager for Digital Helsinki encourages you to submit your tender. Check the video here.

March 02, 2017

The SELECT team held a webinar on the 20th February 2017 to highlight important aspects of the current request for tenders phase.  From exploring the different procurement stages and technical aspects, to understanding the tendering procedure and knowing what support is available, the team aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of what is expected from potential participants.

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A copy of the key webinar sessions, including answers to audience questions were sent out via newsletter, provided on the Tender page and are linked to online here.

February 21, 2017

Hear directly from the Mayor of Antwerp on the importance of SELECT's R&D procurement of an open, Internet-of-Everything, data-driven innovation platform, in creating a smart, sustainable city.

http://youtu.be/i1L2CxLM9zQ

The procurement competition is open to all organisations across Europe until 10am on the 14th April. 

February 09, 2017

The SELECT for Cities Initiative has launched its call to support the development of an Internet-of-Everything (IoE) platform for open innovation in Europe. Selected organisations will get contracts from EUR 36,000 up to EUR 800,000 each. The procurement is funded by three cities – Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki - with support from the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme.

To learn more about the innovation competition and access the tender documents please visit www.select4cities.eu/tender

December 01, 2016

Equipped with the results of the Open Market Consultation and all the outcomes from the first year of the project, SELECT for Cities traveled to Barcelona, Spain to join more than 591 exhibitors and 16,688 visitors at the Smart City Expo and participate in its first project review from 14th to 18th November 2016.

Having a shared booth together with Open & Agile Smart Cities at one of most prestigious conference and exposition attracted a lot of attention not only from businesses, developers but also from other cities interested in the IoE solution. The stages of the PCP competition planned to be launched in January 2017, have been widely discussed and potential tenderers were invited to closely monitor the project website for updates and documentation.

A more detailed discussion on tender documents was held during the review meeting which resulted in a constructive and well-appreciated feedback from the reviewers. Busy months are to come for the project so if you don’t want to miss any news just sign up to our newsletter and we will make sure all is in your mailbox at once!

October 24, 2016

Will you be in Barcelona for the Smart Cities Expo during the 15-17 November?  If the answer is yes, then come and join the SELECT for Cities team to find out more about our competition to create city-wide Internet-of-Everything (IoE) labs and how you can apply for Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) funding.

You’ll be able to find us at the SELECT for Cities booth that we will share with the Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) project.  Here you will learn about the challenge SELECT for Cities is addressing and will be able to chat with partners from the cities procuring the IoE lab research.

We look forward to meeting you soon!

October 18, 2016

On the 26th and 27th of September, SELECT for Cities was present, through its coordinator – Mr. Hugo Goncalves – at the European Commission’s ICT Proposers’ Day 2016 held in the beautiful city of Bratislava.

The annual ICT Proposers’ Day is an event organised by the Commission to promote European ICT research and Innovation, and outline the aims of the Horizon 2020 Work Programme for the year ahead.  It brings together ICT professionals to exchange ideas on the forthcoming research calls, share information about the activities they are currently undertaking in the field, and provide a networking opportunity to potentially form new partnerships and alliances.

During the second day, the Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) project held a forum to bring experts together to specifically discuss next generation internet experimentation in areas such as the Internet-of-Things and 5G connectivity.  SELECT for Cities was invited to present its open innovation call/competition to create city-wide Internet-of-Everything platforms for large-scale innovation and testing of smart city services.

If you couldn’t make the FIRE Forum and are curious about what was discussed you can check out the presentations from the event here or have a look at the Flickr photos.

See you again at the ICT Proposers’ Day in 2017!

September 28, 2016

SELECT for Cities partner, 21c, recently joined over 300 delegates at the 25th annual Global Forum in Eindhoven for 2 days of discussion around digitisation and global transformation covering areas from eHealth to cyber-security and future industry.  Whilst proceedings may be over for another year, the meeting left 21c Managing Director, Susie Ruston McAleer with three key thoughts:

1. Cognitive government is coming

What is cognitive? From the keynote discussions on day 2 of the conference we discovered cognitive is all about taking and ingesting vast amounts of data, having machines understand it and learn from it to deliver actionable insights.  It’s a form of super intelligence which computers, like IBM’s Watson, use to enhance decisions that not only deliver better services but can also save lives. From uncovering hidden connections in the ‘dark’ web to predicting which children will commit suicide, digital intelligence will soon be having an impact on our every day lives.

Relevance to SELECT: We are in the midst of a data tsunami that is going to exponentially increase over the coming years. To keep up with citizen needs and demands cities need new ways to connect and make sense of their data. The R&D to be delivered by SELECT will provide a first step for connecting all the data/systems within a city for innovative purposes.

2. Forget IoT, and scale thinking to IoE

Forum panels showed 37 billion new things will be connected by the year 2020, meaning thinking is now shifting from the Internet-of-Things (IoT) to the Internet of Everything (IoE). IoE brings together not just objects and things but also people, process, and data to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before, feeding Cognitive computers (see above) and helping data scientists create new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals, and countries. 

Relevance to SELECT: Talking to IoT experts like Gerald Santucci from DG Connect, the timeliness of the SELECT for Cities competition - to create large-scale IoE innovation labs for cities – is confirmed. The cities and government that start harnessing the power of IoE now, will be those successfully delivering smarter services, nurturing their economy and making their neighbourhoods more attractive and happier places to live in the very near future.

3.  To leverage full benefits of IoE & Cognitive a radical governance shift is needed

A number of questions were raised during this years Forum that have no easy answer. Such as, ‘in the age of Artificial Intelligence, 21st Century ways of dealing and regulating tech is no longer good enough, what should be the new approach?’ And, ‘our democracy is breaking down, so how do we make autonomous systems that take account of ethics?  Events like Global Forum provide an important sanctuary for ICT and digital transformation experts to discuss these important cultural and governance shifts, but new ways of thinking and powerful young minds must also be bought into the mix to shake up the old processes and traditional ways of looking at tech.

Relevance to SELECT: SELECT for Cities focuses on the creation of a technical platform to facilitate disruptive innovation by turning cities into large-scale innovation labs.  A successful end-platform relies on the skills and talents of a skilled engineers, coders and data scientists.  However, as pointed out by EC adviser Bror Salmelin (DG Connect) to be truly successful, the cities themselves must not forget the work that needs to be done to drive culture shifts in the minds of city managers to not only release data but to be part of a wider collaborative open innovation ecosystem.

September 06, 2016

SELECT for Cities will be presented in the beautiful capital of Slovakia, at FIRE Forum 2016. FIRE Forum 2016 promisses to be an interesting event, opened to everybody that wants to find out more about the R&I priorities within the context of the next H2020 ICT Work Programme. The preliminary agenda can be checked following this link. 

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Registering for the FIRE Forum 2016 is simple. Just enter your details here and start scheduling your trip.

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FIRE Forum 2016 will be co-located with ICT Proposers' Day 2016, 26-27 September. Two interesting events with wide European coverage and great networking opportunities. Therefore if you were not planning a trip to Bratislava this September, you should consider having one.

July 12, 2016

On June 30th SELECT for Cities Open Market Consultation closed. It was an extremely successful consultation that comprised a survey, three face-to-face meetings, one webinar and many questions and answers.

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The survey has been created in order to gather feedback from possible participants before the three face-to-face Open Market Consultation events and to see what the major issues of the stakeholders are. The details about the three face-to-face meetings from Antwerp, Helsinki and Copenhagen can be found here. In order to ensure transparency, fairness and access to the same information for all the participants, SELECT for Cities consortium has organized on June 28th a webinar for the ones that didn’t manage to join us at our face-to-face meetings. The recording of the webinar can be watched on our website.

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We were excited to notice that the number of the participants at the webinar together with the ones from the face-to-face meetings was close to 180.

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It is important to mention that the companies that couldn’t attend the Open Market Consultation events or webinar are eligible to participate in our tender and can still send their questions via this form or via our email. We have created a good pool of questions here and everybody is free to consult them.

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Moreover in order to further help our participants team up and to have more innovative and interesting proposals we have created a matchmaking tool. The information from the matchmaking tool will be curated on the website and the interested participants will be able to contact each other. One of the biggest advantages of this matchmaking tool is that the participants can team up with local partners as well as European ones.

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Information about what happened at the Open Market Consultation events, webinar as well as the presentations from the events and webinar can be found on our website here.

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Stay tuned and follow our website for the final Open Market Consultation report that will be publish at the beginning of September on our website here.

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Looking forward to your proposals from November 2016 and on, when we have scheduled the tentative date for launching the tender!

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For any questions we are at your disposal!

June 26, 2016

SELECT for Cities project gives the opportunity to possible participants interested in taking part in the PCP tender, that will start in November 2016, to team up with each other in order to create more competitive and attractive proposals. In order to find a possible partner SELECT for Cities offers you a matchmaking tool where you can include your info. This info will be curated on the website and you will be able to contact or be contacted by interested participants. One of the biggest advantages of this matchmaking tool is that you can team up with local partners as well as European ones.

Don't wait till November to team up. Search your partner now, create a strong team and participate in our tender ! 

June 16, 2016

If you missed the exciting and interesting F2F open market consultations events from Antwerp, Helsinki and Copenhagen don't worry, you will still have the chance to ask SELECT for Cities representatives live questions about our PCP tender via the webinar we are organizing on June 28th from 4-6 PM, CET time when we will also present the project overall. 

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This webinar is opened to anyone interested in the PCP procurement competition. In order to participate just click on this link. Looking forward to seeing you all ! 

June 06, 2016

3 F2F Open Market Consultations in 3 European Smart Cities (Antwerp, Helsinki, Copenhagen), 3 excellent audiences and one challenge to unite them all have ended successfully yesterday. 

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The common challenge of the SELECT for Cities PCP is the design, research and development of “cities as linked and large-scale Internet of Everything (IoE) labs”.
The challenge lies in developing an open, standardized, data-driven, service-oriented and user-centric platform for European cities that enables large-scale co-creation, testing and validation of urban IoE applications and services.
This approach fosters the longer-term goal of evidence-based innovation in cities.

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The goal of these consultations was to inform possible PCP participants of the SELECT for Cities opportunity, challenge and way they can receive funding.  

For more details about the 3 F2F Market Consultations and what our project will do over the summer register here to receive our first Newsletter, to be released end of June! 

May 29, 2016

The city of Helsinki was on May 30th the host of the second open market consultation of SELECT for Cities, which followed the one from Antwerp. More than 40 people from all over Europe, were present at the premises of Forum Virium Helsinki for an interesting and full of information Monday morning. 

The consultation was opened by Markku Raitio from the City of Helsinki. The rest of the presentations were done by the coordinator of the project, Hugo Tamagnini Goncalves. The participants had the chance to ask and receive an answer to all their #IoT and #PCP related questions. Moreover the new questions that came up after the end of the market consultation can receive an answer by checking the FAQ section of the website or if the question does not have an answer there send it to the SELECT for Cities consortium and in maximum 48h you will have an answer.

During the networking part there were interesting and promising discussions with the potential buyers about the project ambition and SELECT for Cities competition steps.

May 23, 2016

More than 60 people gathered at Digipolis’ Antwerp offices today to take part in SELECT for Cities inaugural open consultation meeting.  This interactive event provided the first opportunity for potential suppliers to meet the procuring cities (Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki) and learn more about the projects forthcoming competition and to discuss the feasibility of city ambitions. 

Dirk Diels, the Director business and innovation at City of Antwerp launched the event with a

plenary session outlining the SELECT for Cities challenge – design, create and develop cities as linked, large scale Internet of Everything (IoE) Labs. He reminded participants of Antwerps vision of being a beta city and proudly claimed that with the help of innovation experts, Digipolis and iMinds, “if it works in Antwerp, it works anywhere”!

In addition to plenary presentations participants also had the opportunity to ask questions about the Pre-commercial procurement process (PCP) underpinning the SELECT for Cities competition and potential use-case scenarios. Questions from the floor ranged from how to understand what SELECT means by ‘open-source’ to more detailed points on the available budget.

After a networking opportunity during coffee participants broke into separate workgroups to discuss the Living Lab approach and platform infrastructure needs in more detail.  In the spirit of transparency, notes were taken on conversations throughout the day to ensure all supplier needs, questions and concerns were captured so they can be addressed. 

“This meeting forms part of a wider series of activities, including an open survey and supplier workshops in each of the procuring cities (Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki)” said SELECT Consortium Lead Hugo Goncalves. “The responses from the survey and meetings will be analysed and published on our website before a final decision on the scope of the competition tender is made by the cities. The tender is expected to be launched this November”.

SELECT for Cities consultation manager Karin Goedheid of Digipolis said: “This is a fantastic level of engagement, and I am grateful to everyone who took the time to take part in the consultation. We set out to reach as many suppliers as possible, to let them know about our plans and to seek their views, and the response has exceeded our expectations. The development of a city-wide, real-time, open innovation platform is a massive challenge for all involved and it is vital that we get it right.  I am extremely encouraged at the significant number of responses that we have received as they really will help us make the best possible decisions on scope our tender should take”

The results of both the survey (now closed) and the meetings will be made available on the project website in June.  To be notified of the results please don’t hesitate to sign-up for updates here.

May 23, 2016

The big day, the day when SELECT for Cities launches its first Open Market Consultation has arrived. More than 60 participants have gathered at Digipolis in Antwerp for an interesting and fruitful discussion. There will be presentation about the SELECT for Cities challenge, the use-cases and the living lab approach.

In the end the participants will have the chance to put questions and participate in a networking/matchmaking session. Looking forward to the results of the Consultation!

If you work in Smart Cities, IoT, Open/Big Data or have an innovative idea that you wish to secure funding for, you now have a unique opportunity to influence the shape of SELECT for Cities innovation competition through the launch of the open market survey.

With 5.5 million Euro to fund innovative R&D between 2016 and 2018 through a series of competitive stages, SELECT for Cities wishes to ensure it really is investing in cutting edge solutions that meet city needs. Therefor this 'consultation' period forms the foundation of the whole competition.

The results of the survey will be taken into account when developing the tender specifications (for developing city-wide Internet-of-Everything platforms) later this Spring, ready for the competition launch in the Summer. There will also be opportunity to meet the procuring cities themselves (Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki) at a series of open meetings this May and June. However, please note the competition is open to anyone across Europe and is not limited to just those based in the procuring city sites!

Grab a coffee, set aside 15 minutes and take part in the survey today.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SELECT4Cities

Thank you in advance for your contributions!

April 18, 2016

Creating a 'wish list' of requirements for a cutting-edge pan-European IoE innovation platform was never going to be an easy task.  Therefore the Netfutures conference (tomorrow) provided an ideal opportunity for all the project partners to gather in Helsinki's Brussel office today to go through the platforms functional requirements, gathered over the last months, together with a fine tooth comb.  To help make the requirements come alive to the organisations and individuals who will be potentially entering the innovation challenge, a set of use-cases have been elaborated which will be shared via our website in the coming days.  Watch this space!

April 13, 2016

The SELECT for Cities team will be present in Brussels in between 20-21 April 2016 for the NetFutures 2016, an annual event organised each year by European Commission. Come to see us at the booth we are sharing with Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) and OrganiCity project. The OASC initiative unites 89 cities from 19 countries globally with a commitment to implement interoperability and share urban data to form the basis for such a market, driven by their needs. The OrganiCity project is providing a distributed Experimentation-as-a-Service facility for systematic and truly participatory citizen experimentation in the complexity urban space.

Registration for NetFutures 2016 is open. Buy your ticket today and join us !

February 17, 2016

SELECT PCP officially launched today with the publication of our Prior Information Notice (PIN) on the official website of EU here.  This is a legal requirement for our project and provides us with the first opportunity to tell you what R&D we are thinking of procuring and the dates of our consultation workshops in April/June.  At the moment descriptions remain high level as we will refine our needs based on consultation with you (suppliers and experts) about what cities need, what is on the market already, and what kind of solutions you would like to develop.  Ensure you don't miss out on the opportuity to provide us with feedback by signing up to our newsletter mailing.

January 21, 2016

On the 21 January, SELECT was excited to undertake our first dissemination opportunity at the prestigious 3rd edition of the Connected Smart Cities Conference held in Brussels.  The conference is designed to support the Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative (OASC) and to stimulate debate and share perspectives on smart city needs, with a focus on economic, social and technical development.  During Session 3: Living Labs and Open Innovation, during which our Project Officer Olavi Luotonen from DG CONNECT spoke, SELECT was able to share a platform with Organicity and CreatiFI to present Pre-Commercial Procurement / Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PCP/PPI), providing a first opportunity to start gathering intelligence and feedback from stakeholders.

December 01, 2015

The SELECT Consortium are delighted to officially announce the launch of their new project this week, marked by a kick off meeting hosted by Forum Virium in Helsinki. The SELECT for Cities initiative is built around the idea that many cities across the world are seeking new ways (methods, technology and tools) to foster open innovation in order to solve challenges, create value for their citizens and business, and to become ‘smart cities’ in the process. Internet of Everything (IoE) is recognised to be one of the dominant ways transforming the way people manage and live in urban environments both now and for the future. This new connected approach involves physical spaces as well as objects and provides a massive opportunity for new services and businesses especially in the areas of logistics, transport, environment, security and wellbeing.  However, IoE progress to date has been slow due to key showstoppers such as the lack of common standards, a fragmented marketplace, and lack of ways to systematically test and introduce new solutions in the cities.

To combat this challenge, and accelerate innovation, the SELECT project lays forth an challenge/competition open to all European companies to develop an open, standardized, data-driven, service-oriented and user-centric platform that enables large-scale co-creation, testing and validation of urban IoE applications and services.