CitySDK project which is a pan-European project that will create an open source service developer toolkit for Smart Cities, started with a kick-off meeting in Brussels on the 16th and 17th February, 2012. TAGES is one of the project partners, representing Istanbul, with Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
CitySDK (Smart City Service Development Kit and its application Pilots) project was funded by ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) by the European Community. CitySDK consortium comprises of 23 partners in 9 European States and the project is led by Forum Virium Helsinki. The other partners are City of Helsinki (Finland), Gemeente Amsterdam (Netherlands), Provincia di Roma (Italy), Municipality of Lamia (Greece), Stichting Waag Society (Netherlands), Tilburgh University (Netherlands), Hoge School van Amsterdam (Netherlands), Sanoma News Oy (Finland), Gnosis Ltd (Greece), Fundacion Esade (Spain), Manchester City Council (UK), FutureEverything CIC (UK), CASPUR (Italy), LYNX SRL (Italy), Alfamicro-Sistemas de Computadores, LDA (Portugal), Camara Municipal de Lisboa (Portugal), Camara Municipal de Lisboa (Portugal), Instituto Superior Tecnico (Portugal), ISA – Intelligent Sensing Anywhere S.A. (Portugal), Institut Municipal d’Informatica de Barcelona (Spain), European Network of Living Labs (Belgium), Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (Turkey) and TAGES (Turkey). The project started on January 1st, 2012 and it will last for 30 months.
Open Data for Smart City Applications
CitySDK is a pan-European project that will create a service development kit enabling the creation of applications across partner cities in the domains of Smart Mobility, Smart Tourism and Smart Participation. There will be produced three large-scale pan-European smart city service pilots in the eight partner cities; Helsinki, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lamia, Manchester, Rome, Lisbon and Istanbul.
The project idea arose from the challenges faced in transferring of Smart City applications from one city to another city. While transferring the applications, there is a lack of unified backend technologies, lack of innovative end-user services, and no unified markets beyond single cities. In this respect, the main objective of CitySDK is to create a Smart City Application Ecosystem through large-scale demand-driven City Pilots that package and align key smart city application areas to an open source service developer toolkit. The project has two important steps to achieve this objective; first one is to create an open source CitySDK – a service developer toolkit for European Smart City Applications and the second one is to engage a vast number of developers by various means to the use of this CitySDK. The CitySDK will be used by private developers, SMEs, Cities’ ICT departments and hacktivists a like.
The most important expected success of the project is that besides City CIO/CTOs/Departments and the end-users (citizens), it will also be beneficial for the service developers. To provide the engagement with the developer community across the participant cities, the Devcamps, SME training workshops, ‘AppsChallenges’ developer competitions and business seminars will be organized in each pilot city within the project.
Partners Met in Brussels for Kick-off meeting
The kick-off meeting of the project was realized in Brussels on the 16th and 17th February, 2012 and the representatives of all of the partners attended to the meeting. Aslıhan Kağnıcı, Assistant of Consultant from TAGES, Hamdi Cinal, GIS Director from Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Murat Guneri, Map Engineer from Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality participated as Turkish partners. Jarmo Eskelinen, CEO of Forum Virium Helsinki and the Project Coordinator, Marja Mattila opened the meeting and all Partners and the Commission were represented.
During the meeting, the general objectives of the project and the scope of the Work Packages were discussed by the partners. All city partners presented their problems and specific needs on their city applications in the area of tourism, participation and mobility. The WP leaders presented the overview of the lead pilots in three domains and all partners discussed about the scope of the replication pilots which will be realized in the pilot cities according to their specific needs. The technological framework of the project and the dissemination activities of the project were also discussed during the meeting.
Istanbul: The Pilot City
Istanbul is one of the pilot cities in the project and it will take place in the smart mobility domain. In Istanbul, existing web-based Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Travel Plan System will be added with the new components from the PTA (Personal Travel Assistant) and CitySDK, including most importantly Mobile PTA Application as well as open interfaces for 3rd party developers. Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality will work on backend, localizations and user assessment. TAGES is involved in the project in the dissemination activities, especially to contribute with Istanbul MetropolitanMunicipality to the engage of new 3rd party developers to the open interface by organizing the Devcamps, SME training workshops, ‘AppsChallenges’ developer competitions and business seminars.
