FIWARE: THE OPEN SOURCE PLATFORM OF CHOICE FOR SMART CITIES

TRANSFORMING

CITIES TO DELIVER MORE

EFFICIENT SERVICES AND

BOOST GROWTH

Cities have to cope with similar problems everyday (e.g., traffic congestion, air pollution, lack of parking slots), trying to find suitable solutions they can deliver to their citizens. In addition, cities aim at boosting the growth of their local economies. Making a city “smart” means performing a more efficient management of services and turning the city into an ICT enabler for innovation, economic growth and well-being. By adopting common standard APIs and information models, cities can achieve this transformation with minimum effort but great impact, and join forces with other cities to build an ecosystem in which they can connect and collaborate. This enables the creation of interoperable and portable solutions that can be adapted and replicated according to the needs of each city. This way, cities can deliver better services, reduce costs and trigger new business models supporting a Data Economy where data can be used in an open, transparent, profitable and fair manner. Ultimately leading to a significant improvement in quality of life and the daily operation of businesses.

Data is at the center of the new digital life: people and systems are connected to the internet at all times and respond to data that surrounds them, even when they don’t notice it. Coming from end users through their smartphones, tablets or computers, as well as from sensors deployed in different places or different systems providing services, pervasive and plentiful data is being generated every second, creating a digital continuum.

Only by capturing, managing, processing, analysing and visualizing all the context data describing what is going on in the city (where, when and why and involving whom), it will be feasible to support smart decisions and perform a smart automation of processes that will ultimately improve the services offered to people and businesses.

Context Information Management is at the core of a Smart City vision, helping to break the current information silos associated with vertical solutions (e.g., smart parking, smart waste management, smart traffic management) and supporting the development of overall city-level governance systems. Additionally, it brings support to the development of innovative solutions by third parties and enables the integration with third data providers to materialize the Data Economy.

CONTEXT DATA IN THE

DIGITAL REALM

SMART CITIES: A TRANSFORMATION

JOURNEY

Currently, many cities have deployed several vertical smart solutions dealing with specific challenges such as waste management, traffic management, air quality monitoring or smart lighting. Some of these smart solutions are very sophisticated, already relying on the deployment of modern sensor networks and the application of advanced big data processing techniques or AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms. However, very often these systems operate as information silos: each system lacks valuable information from the other and there is no shared data space where relevant data from each system is gathered, bringing support to overall city-level governance systems. On the other hand, the adoption of open data policies is limited to the publication of static historic data, typically through direct files downloaded in well-known formats. Although this data is sometimes relevant and valuable for big data analysis or visualization and even for the development of certain applications, smart solutions require near real-time access (also called right-time access) to figure out what is happening in the city at any given moment.

The transformation of Cities into Smart Cities is a journey that goes through successive maturity levels in which the city improves the way it manages the services it delivers and transforms itself into an engine of growth. Breaking the information silos to become truly smart.

Exploiting common information models.

Unleashing the potential of right-time open data.

Enabling the data economy.

SMART CITIES: A TRANSFORMATION

JOURNEY

BENEFITS FOR THE CITIES

PHASE 1: TRULY SMART

• Each vertical system can be enhanced by exploiting data published by other systems, leading to better and more innovative services to citizens (e.g, Smart Traffic Management systems can benefit from Air Quality Monitoring systems, Smart Waste management from Citizen Relationship Management systems).

• Overall City-level Governance systems can be developed to extract better insights (about what is going on in the city and why) by merging data from multiple verticals. City-level operational dashboards can be developed easing the overall governance of city services.

PHASE 2: COMMON INFORMATION MODELS

• Vertical solutions, as well as overall City-level Governance systems adhering to “de-facto” standard information models, can be connected plug&play (i.e., with minor adaptation costs) to the cross-vertical shared context data space.

• Systems are easier to replace, avoiding vendor lock-in. Competition among plug&play solutions forces vendors to compete by providing differential functions or lowering their costs. System providers, despite lowering the costs, can get a higher ROI (Return on Investment) because the market they target is larger.

PHASE 3: UNLEASHING THE POTENTIAL OF RIGHT-TIME OPEN DATA

• Because third-party solutions developed on published right-time open data can rely on context data available through standard APIs and complying with common information models, citizens can benefit from the fact that the solutions they use can work seamlessly across many other cities.

• Third parties can sell their solutions to cities across the world, therefore targeting a larger market, which creates incentives for their investment. As a result, cities benefit from competition.

PHASE 4: ENABLING THE DATA ECONOMY

• The city can collaborate in creating a shared context data space where data providers (the city, the citizens, companies) may monetize the publication of data for certain use (the same data can be offered for free or for a given price depending on usage) and innovative multi-sided business models are enabled.

• The ability to combine data from the city and third parties will enable the development of higher-value services for citizens as well as improving service delivery by the city to citizens and businesses.

The FIWARE Context Broker enables the management of context information at a large scale through the FIWARE NGSI API, a public and royalty-free API adopted as an open industry standard by relevant organizations.

SIMPLE FIWARE NGSI provides an intuitive RESTful API using

JSON readily accessible to any web developer. Any web programmer learns how to use in a single day

POWERFUL FIWARE NGSI supports subscription/notification,

geoqueries, federation, pagination, … and soon will support Linked Data (JSON-LD)

OPEN STANDARD Current FIWARE NGSI specifications are public and

royalty-free and they will align with the future ETSI NGSI-LD specifications

The open standard nature of FIWARE NGSI offers programmers the ability to port their applications across different “Powered by FIWARE” platforms and a stable framework for future development.

FIWARE: A STANDARD WAY TO DEVELOP AND

INTEGRATE SMART CITIES SOLUTIONS

FIWARE is a curated framework of open source platform components which can be assembled together and with other third-party platform components to accelerate the development of Smart Solutions. The FIWARE Orion Context Broker is the core component of FIWARE: it gathers, manages and provides access to information coming from different sources that describe what is going on in the city, breaking the information silos.

Building around the FIWARE Context Broker, a rich suite of complementary FIWARE components are available in order to facilitate:

• interfacing with IoT sensors and other devices as well as vertical smart solutions and other information systems.

• processing of current and historic data using event rules or advanced Big Data and AI algorithms to extract valuable insights supporting smart decisions or automated smart actions.

• creation of dashboards for monitoring progress of processes within the city.

• generation of valuable reports as well as the analysis and monitoring of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

The FIWARE Context Broker technology can easily integrate with blockchain technologies to provide a trustworthy and immutable tracing of certain updates on context linked to different activities managed by Public Administrations and private companies.

• The Orion Context Broker integrates information from sensors and other devices as well as vertical smart solutions and other information systems, breaking information silos.

• IDAS IoT Agents connect to sensors, handling multiple IoT protocols (MQTT, CoAP/OMA-LWM2M, OneM2M,...). Alternative IoT platforms can be used for this purpose.

• Kurento transforms media streams from cameras into valuable context information.

• Historical data is processed using different processing engines (e.g., Hadoop, Spark or Flink) to extract valuable insights or derive smart actions. Complex Event Processing, Advanced AI or machine learning functions can be implemented on top of integrated processing engines.

• Operational dashboards are based on the Wirecloud web mashup framework.

• Knowage enables KPIs monitoring, Reporting and Business Intelligence functions.

• Part of the current and historical context data can be offered to third parties through an extended Data Publication Portal (e.g. CKAN) enabling publication of real-time data and the assignment of terms and conditions (including pricing) to data resources.

• Data/API access control functions warrant that context data is only accessible to parties owning the right privileges.

• API management and business support functions enable auditing of the system and monetization on data access.

THE FIWARE SMART CITIES REFERENCE

ARCHITECTURE (MOVING FROM VISION TO EXECUTION)

Businesses around the globe are transforming into platform models enabling the exchange of information, the exchange of goods or services, and the exchange of currency between consumers and producers. To grow through each of the stages of maturity, a smart city must consider moving to a platform model. A platform model leveraging an infrastructure to enable producers and consumers to come together, find what they need, and transact with each other. It is a new mindset that cities will need to grapple with. For many city departments in the past, they have usually seen their role as providing services for their citizens, visitors, and for the local industry. A platform model is changing that worldview. Cities still have a role to play in providing services, but are doing so in partnership with a wider range of stakeholders. Cities are also needing to enable citizens, visitors and the local industry to create their own value by being able to combine the city services and assets they need themselves. For example, citizens are increasingly demanding information about the local transport services as well as real-time parking data, safe walking route information, and ride-hire services.

Whereas before a city might see its responsibility as running the local bus service, now its responsibility is to make sure citizens are able to plan and map a multimodal transport journey in the way that they want: to get somewhere by a specific time, to reduce their reliance on cars, or to help them increase their physical activity. Citizens are demanding that cities make the context data available so that they can compose their own solutions or benefit from agile developers who can build innovative applications relying on available context data.

Context data is made up of the combination of pieces of information coming from multiple sources. Only owners of each piece of information should drive the decisions of who shall have access to their data, when, where, what for. Freedom of choice is a right digital citizens and businesses won’t be forced to renounce. This means that they can exercise full sovereignty over their data. They also decide whether they want to monetize their data and who will have to pay for it.

The role of the city platform then is to connect consumers and producers, enabling a federated publication of context data, allowing app builders to find and use data from city and third party sources while preserving data sovereignty. User rights acquisition processes and revenue-sharing APIs enable these “consumers and producers” to buy and sell context data, building the basis for the new local Data Economy. The infrastructure problem is now being solved. FIWARE, in partnership with organizations like TM Forum has built the components to make an economy of data possible. Now, cities must create the platform models that will encourage interaction, match application builders with data providers, and facilitate new economic opportunities.

THE SMART CITY AT THE DAWN OF

THE DATA ECONOMY

As a city grows through the different levels of maturity, the support of a platform model brings the infrastructure that is needed to create innovative and sustainable business models, based on the development of multi-sided markets where different actors (operating locally or aiming to scale across a wide range of cities) can benefit and play an active role, preserving data sovereignty.

KEY PARTNERSHIPS FIWARE CONTEXT BROKER IN CONNECTING EUROPE FACILITY (CEF)

The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) is a key EU program aimed at promoting growth, jobs and competitiveness through targeted infrastructure investment at European level. The digital arm of this program, CEF Digital, funds investments in digital CEF Building Blocks and cross-border Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs) on top of which Digital Services can be developed that improve the daily lives of European citizens and businesses and work the same in all EU member states. This way, CEF Digital effectively supports the creation of a Digital Single Market. Within CEF, a budget of 870 million is earmarked for trans-European digital services for 2014-2020.

In 2018, FIWARE Context Broker became one of the CEF Building Blocks providing a standard mean for public administrations of EU member states (including smart cities) as well as businesses to share data in right time.

Being part of the CEF ecosystem means:

• Interoperability with the other CEF Building Blocks.

• Compliance with the regulations.

• Endorsement at public level.

• Recommended for cross-border solutions.

FIWARE & TM FORUM JOINT COLLABORATION PROGRAMME

The FIWARE Foundation and TM Forum - the global not-for-profit association focused on digital transformation - announced in November 2018 a joint collaboration programme to the support adoption of a reference architecture and compatible common data models that underpin a digital market of interoperable and replicable solutions for smart cities.

The scope of this relationship is:

1. The definition of a Smart City Platform Reference Architecture which both organizations will recommend. This reference architecture uses the FIWARE NGSI (Next Generation Service Interface) API for context information management and other FIWARE components to support data monetization, based on TM Forum Business Open APIs.

2. The collaborative cross-industry generation, crowdsourcing and publication of data models for smart cities following a driven-by-implementation approach. Data model specifications will evolve from draft preliminary up to stable and final TM Forum recommendations as cities endorse the specifications based on experience with actual deployments.

CEF Digital

Connecting Europe

GSMA has produced a Reference Architecture for IoT-enabled Big Data Ecosystem solutions where the FIWARE NGSI API is recommended. GSMA has collaborated with the FIWARE Foundation in producing Common Information Models compatible with the API.

ETSI launched an ISG (Industry Specifications Group) on cross-cutting Context Information Management (CIM) API standards which identified OMA NGSI and FIWARE NGSI as starting points for the API specs. The ETSI NGSI-LD API specification comes as a result of that work.

OASC (Open and Agile Smart Cities) is a non-profit, international smart city network that has the goal of creating and shaping the nascent global smart city data and services market. The initiative comprises more than 117 cities in 24 countries, is driven by implementation and focused on open platforms and citizen engagement. Within the OASC initiative, the FIWARE NGSI API is adopted as a first open license standard API targeted to provide the basic artifact for portability and interoperability of smart city solutions.

NIST launched a global coalition aiming at defining a Things-Enabled Smart City Framework that identifies pivotal points of interoperability, where emerging alignment on standards can enable the landscape of diverse but interoperable smart city solutions. Within the framework, FIWARE NGSI was identified as one strong standard candidate enabling interoperability within a city and portability across cities.

OTHER GLOBAL ORGANIZATIONS

ENDORSING FIWARE

THE OPEN & AGILE SMART CITIES INITIATIVE

There are currently 140 cities from 30 countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific which have officially joined the Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative

ARGENTINAAmeghino, Berisso, Carlo Casares, Coronel Suarez, La Plata, Lobos, Ramallo and Puan

AUSTRALIABrisbane, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Logan and Moreton Bay Region

AUSTRIAGraz, Linz, Salzburg and Vienna

BELGIUMAntwerp, Brussels, Ghent and Leuven

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINAMostar, Sarajevo and Tuzla

BRAZILAnapólis (Goiás), Colinas do Tocantins (Tocantins), Cuiába, Garanhuns, Nova Friburgo, Olinda (Recife), Rio das Ostras (Rio de Janeiro), Taquaritinga (São Paulo), Uberlândia and Vitória (Espírito Santo)

CROATIADubrovnik, Rijeka, Sibenik and Split

DENMARKAarhus, Aalborg, Copenhagen and Vejle

ENGLANDBristol, Cambridgeshire, Leeds, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Stoke-On-Trent and Staffordshire

FINLANDEspoo, Helsinki, Oulu, Tampere, Turku and Vantaa

FRANCEAmiens, Arras, Bordeaux-Métropole, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Lille-Métropole (MEL), Saint-Quentin, Soissons and Valenciennes

GERMANYDelbrück, Heidelberg, Kiel, Paderborn and Wolfsburg

GREECEKaterini and Trikala

HUNGARYKaposvár, Nagykanizsa, Miskolc and Szolnok

IRELANDCork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick

ITALYAncona, Cagliari, Genoa, Lecce, Messina, Milan, Palermo and Terni

MEXICOCuautla and León

NETHERLANDSAlmere, Amersfoort, Amsterdam, Drechtsteden, Eindhoven, Enschede, Rotterdam and Utrecht

NORWAYBodø, Gjesdal, Fredrikstad, Larvik, Sandefjord, Stavanger and Trondheim

POLANDGdansk, Grudziadz and Poznan

PORTUGALÁgueda, Fundão, Lisbon, Oliveira de Azeméis, Palmela, Penela and Porto

SCOTLANDAberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Perth and Stirling

The Scottish OASC cities also form the Scottish Cities Alliance

SLOVENIAIdrija, Novo Mesto and Koper

SPAINAlicante, Guadalajara, Las Palmas de Gran Canarias, Málaga, Murcia, Sabadell, Santander, Sevilla and Valencia

SWEDEN Örebro and Skellefteå

SWITZERLANDCarouge and Geneva

THE FIWARE MARKETPLACE

Check out: marketplace.fiware.org/join

The FIWARE Marketplace is a global one-stop shop that gives access to a wide range of Powered by FIWARE solutions and platforms, FIWARE-ready technologies, as well as related FIWARE services such as training, coaching, consultancy, integration and technical support.

The Marketplace offers everyone in the FIWARE ecosystem the platform to become more visible to their target customers, as well as potential investors and partners.

POWERED BY FIWARE

Smart Solutions rely on FIWARE standards to manage context information at a large scale. They use FIWARE technologies to gather and process context information coming from different and highly distributed sources.

FIWARE platform service providers offer FIWARE-compliant platforms as a Service on private and public clouds. Also, Platform Service Providers can deploy FIWARE platform instances on premises for their customers.

FIWARE-READY TECHNOLOGIES

FIWARE-ready IoT devices come with easy-to-install drivers and instructions, which make them accessible to end applications using the FIWARE NGSI standard.

FIWARE-ready software enablers are base platform technologies, which can easily be integrated with FIWARE to extend the basic capabilities of the platform with advanced added-value features.

FIWARE SERVICES

Online training material is available on the FIWARE Academy but many partners are offering tailored training and coaching services.

Finding the right experts offering consultancy, integration or technical support services is crucial in many projects. The FIWARE marketplace is helping to serve this need.

BECOME A MEMBER OF THE FIWARE FOUNDATION

FIWARE’s mission is to develop an open sustainable ecosystem around public, royalty-free and implementation-driven software platform standards that will ease the creation of Smart Applications in multiple sectors.

The FIWARE Foundation is the legal independent body providing shared resources to help achieve the FIWARE Mission. It does so by Empowering, Promoting, Augmenting, Protecting, and Validating FIWARE Platform technologies and supporting the Community around, including not only developers contributing code to the FIWARE platform but also those who contribute in building the FIWARE ecosystem and making it sustainable over time. As such, individuals and organizations committing relevant resources in FIWARE Lab activities or activities of the FIWARE Accelerator, FIWARE Mundus or FIWARE iHubs programmes are also considered members of the FIWARE community.

Check out our membersfiware.org/foundation/members/

Scan me

The members of the FIWARE Foundation are pioneers in building the Smart Digital Future. Benefits of the membership are:

• Active involvement in the definition and implementation of relevant standards at general and domain-specific levels.

• Contribution to the definition of certification criteria.

• High visibility through events and participation on FIWARE booth at relevant market fairs and congresses.

• Utilizing business opportunities addressed to the FIWARE Foundation or generated through the FIWARE Foundation.

• Providing (paid) services to the FIWARE Foundation for the benefit of all members.

• Promoting solutions and services on the FIWARE Marketplace.

• Prominent positioning of your organization’s brand on the FIWARE website.

• Active promotion of your organization on FIWARE’s social networks and through press releases.

• Networking with other FIWARE Foundation members towards the development of business opportunities and the cross-industry development of new business models.

• Ability to create and collaborate in technical workgroups, helping to drive the definition of the FIWARE roadmap.

• Contributing requirements into the development of FIWARE components.

• Higher credibility in front of potential customers.

• Unique access to a network in which cutting-edge research projects are incubated.

• Support from FIWARE Foundation regarding definition of an open source strategy based on FIWARE.

• Opportunities for leading FIWARE Foundation initiatives.

• Invitations as guest speakers at FIWARE events.

• Potential* seat on the Board of Directors driving strategic direction of FIWARE.

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

*secured for Platinum members, through election for Gold members.

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FIWARE, the Open Source Platform for our Smart Digital Future

02.-2019