Fireball4smartcities
From AMI@Work Communities Wiki
[edit] Introduction
FIREBALL establishes a coordination mechanism through which a network of Smart Cities across Europe engages in long term collaboration for adopting User Driven Open Innovation to explore the opportunities of the Future Internet. The coordination process will be grounded in exchange, dialogue and learning between Smart Cities, who are considered as key demand-side drivers of Future Internet innovation. It also will be grounded in bringing together the Future Internet, Living Labs and Smart Cities constituencies. Now that Future Internet driven network infrastructures and applications are in the pipeline, and which potentially might bring economic and social benefits not only to research communities but also to Cities, it becomes all the more urgent to strengthen the role of Cities to elicit their future needs and requirements from the perspective of user driven open innovation. Identifying these needs and requirements elicitation also informs ongoing research, experimentation and deployment activities related to Future Internet and testbeds, and helps to establish a dialogue between the different communities to help form partnerships, and to assess social and economic benefits and discovery of migration paths at early stages.
The FIREBALL project is conceived as a response to a situation where different constituencies in the domain of Future Internet research of innovation are operating in a state of relative isolation and fragmentation, using their own practices, methodologies and assets (such as knowledge and facilities). These constituencies include (1) Future Internet research and experimentation (including test-beds and experimental facilities), (2) User driven open innovation (such as in Living Labs), and (3) City innovation environments (representing the demand side).
Additionally, FIREBALL recognises that open innovation and user engagement demonstrates a key potential to bridge the gap between research and development of Internet technologies and actually using Internet-based applications in cities for societal and economic benefits in areas such as healthcare, business enterprising, participative government, energy efficiency and quality of life.
In closing the gap we expect to create ecosystems of Internet innovation that are more effective, open and user driven, where methodologies, approaches and technical assets of the constituencies can be aligned and shared more easily and effectively, benefiting rapid adoption of Internet services and economic and social development in cities and stimulating more effective networking and experience sharing among cities to accelerate adoption.
The role of cities in this respect is of profound importance as they are to be considered a key driver of innovation in Future Internet services and applications. Forming Internet innovation-ecosystems across existing constituencies will increase the prospects to resolve barriers in the take-up and adoption of services, for example addressing the lack of interoperability and absence of open platforms.
Key objectives FIREBALL
- Achieve European-wide coordination of methodologies and approaches in the domains of FIRE and Living lab
- Leverage European-wide available assets for exploring Future Internet opportunities
- Ensure coordinated development and sharing of best practices of Future Internet innovation in pilot cities and sectors
[edit] Smart Cities Smart for adopting User Driven Open Innovation to explore the opportunities of the Future Internet Background
Exploring, experimenting and evaluating Future Internet concepts, technological artefacts and scenarios is not a trivial challenge, especially when several research communities are involved in this process through different research streams such as ‘Future Internet Research & Experimentation’, ‘Living Labs’, ‘Internet of Things’ and ‘smart cities’, just to cite a few. Furthermore, researchers should engage all stakeholders for co-creating Future Internet value and especially communities of users/citizens for solving important societal issues. Today, involving users in research, design and innovation processes constitutes a fast growing topic of interest as an evidence of the 212 existing Living Labs. However, Living Labs need technology platforms such as the ones proposed by FIRE and Internet of Things testbeds where stakeholders can explore, experiment and evaluate new scenarios such as green services for Smart Cities. The challenge is therefore to be able to identify how to properly articulate Living Labs with FIRE and Internet of Things testbeds in order to make sure that Future Internet innovative services will meet the expectations and desires of user communities.
A city can be termed smart when “investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance” (Caragliu a.o. 2009). The Future Internet constitutes a key infrastructural requirement to fulfill the promise of the smart city concept. Future Internet-enabled services provide the foundation of applications targeting smart systems in health and care, energy efficiency, mobility and transport, business support and e-government. However in realizing the smart city concept there is a need to establish effective and inclusive innovation ecosystems for stimulating open and user driven innovation. Such innovation ecosystems will enable the effective, early and user driven exploration, experimentation and evaluation of Future Internet technologies and applications, as well as the co-creation of services enabled by them, in environments that offer open innovation opportunities and early end-user involvement. In this sense, smart Cities can be considered as very attractive playgrounds for all stakeholders engaged in Future Internet research and experimentation that would bring value in solving important societal issues.
A challenge therefore is to bring together the worlds of Future Internet and of Living Labs. Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) projects are working on setting up federated and interconnected experimental facilities and to engage in experimentally driven research. Experimentally driven research on the Future Internet primarily aims at investigating and validating innovative networking architectures and service paradigms.
The FIRE community estimates of high importance to assess the impact of technological changes to the Internet in socioeconomic terms, and for that purpose it is necessary to involve user communities on a large scale at an early stage of development. Whereas FIRE stakeholders have been mainly targeting experimentation services to the R&D community, they have observed a need to enhance end-user support and end-user involvement, which is considered as a relatively new and untested concept. They are investigating in how far they can benefit from the methodologies of mature living labs, for example as developed and applied within the European Network of Living Labs (www.openlivinglabs.eu). In a Living Lab, relevant actors are integrated in a flexible service and technology innovation ecosystem. Bringing the user at an early stage into the innovation process allows all actors, including businesses and industry, to better discover new scenarios and emerging behaviours and user patterns and to assess the socioeconomic implications of next technological solutions. In turn, Living labs may benefit from the available technical facilities provided by FIRE experimentally driven research projects.
[edit] Collaboration Scenario among Future Internet, Living Labs and Smart Connected Cities Communities for accessing, sharing and reusing Common Assets
Living Labs are connected through ENoLL: the European Network of Living Labs as international federation of benchmarked Living Labs in Europe and worldwide. The network of Living Lab can be classified per thematic domains or Domain Networks: Living Labs that dialog on specific sectors such as Wellbeing, Health, Inclusion, Energy & Environment, Media & Creativity etc.
Future Internet is based on the collaboration between projects that have recognized the need to strengthen European activities on the Future Internet to maintain European competitiveness in the global marketplace, and is concretized through the organization of dedicated assemblies and symposiums initiatives.
Finally on November 2010 the launch of “Connected Smart Cities Network” (namely Amsterdam, Manchester, Lisbon, Barcelona and Helsinki) has registered one of the first connections among Smart Cities to closely work with the EUROCITIES network and the European Network of Living Labs.
The Collaboration among these Communities stems from the opportunity to put together specific and dedicated Assets, each community (and each member of the communities) detains and then promotes this mix-up to give a result much wider than the single sum of its components. Methods and procedures for these Assets advertisement and share are explained in the following two chapters of this document.
From the point of view of the three communities of Living Lab, Smart Cities and Future Internet the scope of the collaboration is then to make available these assets and let them identifiable and searchable (in a broad way) mainly for project experimentation purposes. This objective will allow these assets to increase their potential utilization rate and also to create synergies and share practices.
[edit] Characterization of the Common Assets from a Business Legal Perspective
Each one of the three communities (ENoLL, Future Internet and Smart Cities) includes a large number of organizations or cities or testbeds, more or less independent, that have these assets available on their own and utilize these assets for projects or experimentations or other objectives in a way not necessarily interrelated.
Each Living Lab or City or testbed can contribute with its different assets to be included in a single virtual recipient. These assets, suitably organized and described in its technical and procedural characteristics can be listed in a catalogue or a public list available for anyone interested in operating them.
See also Common Assets for Smart Cities' Living Lab Innovation available on Slideshare
[edit] Template for organizatin Asset description
| Asset types | Ownership | IPR | Access Conditions | Access Mechanisms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
