CITYkeys: working to build Smart Cities in Europe

Funded by the European Union HORIZON 2020 programme the CITYkeys project is an initiative to develop a performance evaluation system to assess the results of Smart City solutions across Europe. Several research institutes from Finland, Austria and the Netherlands cooperate with five cities -Rotterdam, Tampere, Vienna, Zagreb and Zaragoza- to define the needs, analyze existing results and help in the use of performance indicators to evaluate those solutions.

Thanks to this project, cities are expected to benefit from CITYkeys strategic planning and measurement of their progress towards Smart City goals, while responding to citizen’s needs and making clever use of local budgets. The aim of this initiative is to develop guidelines for data collections, create a performance system prototype, testing in case-cities and develop recommendations for decision-making and new business opportunities for both cities and business.

The European Commission has developed two parallel approaches to face and support the implementation of Smart Urban technologies: on one hand, creation of “lighthouse projects” (large scale demonstration of technology in cities and communities) and, in addition, 'horizontal activities' to address specific challenges (e.g. regulatory barriers, in standardisation, public procurement...). In both cases, CITYkey’s mission is to build a methodology for monitoring and comparability of the European cities activities during the implementation of Smart City solutions, based on the following key factors:

1. Extensive collaboration and communication with European cities;
2. Establish a baseline by analysis and integration of existing results from previous initiatives;
3. Develop a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) specific for Smart Cities initiatives evaluation and comparability;
4. Smart solutions for transparent and open data collection and processing.

Through this methodology, it is possible to monitor progress, to objectively verify the impacts of projects, to create trust in solutions and to enable stakeholders to learn from other projects in Europe. The calculation system uses 116 raw datasets, rigorously analysing the data source to verify their availability, reliability, data formats and the level of confidentiality. Through 2016, after the initiative launch last year, CITYKeys analyses the applicability of the data sets and the performance measurement framework in different European settings.

The five city partners will have a central role in CITYkeys not only because they have been the first cities to apply and assess the evaluation system but they have the expertise in Smart City policy making and in identification of business opportunities as in the case of the accelerator lab in Zaragoza, La Terminal which fosters local entrepreneurship or the Finnish city Tampere that organizes an annual event to plan and carry out the Smart City best strategies.

Together with this action plan, CITYkeys has published a report on the Smart City ecosystem in Europe. According to results of the study, two thirds of the surveyed cities claim to have a project underway in this area, mainly related to ICT, mobility and energy efficiency. In this way, the CITYKeys work helps drive the Smart City development in Europe. Its methodology and recommendations help the EU cities to continue progressing in technologies that make cities become more sustainable and smart.