i-CORUÑASetting the meta-framework for an intelligent city project

Pedro A. González PérezA Coruña (Spain), March-April 2015

Introduction

The city

The city model

The meta-framework

1. Definition

2. Previous actions

3. i-Coruña Lifecycle

4. Legal framework

5. i-Coruña Components

6. Data layer

7. Indicators

8. Services and applications

9. User interfaces

CONTENTS:

Introduction:

Smart City: fuzzy concept (and, very often, also confusing)

Most popular definition: a City is "Smart" when last hour technological solutions are used to manage it and its urban services => Simplistic and reductionist

Intelligent Community Forum: an Intelligent Community is the one “which have – whether through crisis or foresight – come to understand the enormous challenges of the Broadband Economy, and have taken conscious steps to create an economy capable of prospering in it”. => Still biased

Spanish National Plan for Intelligent Cities: “Intelligent City (Smart City) is the holistic vision of a city that applies ICT to improve the quality of live and accessibility of their inhabitants and assures a permanently improving economical, social and environmental sustainable development. An Intelligent City allows the interaction of citizens in a multidisciplinar way and gets adapted, in real time, to their needs, in an efficient way regarding both costs and quality, offering open data, citizen (conceived as individuals) oriented solutions and services, to solve the negative effects of city growing, within both public and private sectors, through the innovative integration of infrastructures and intelligent managing systems. ” => Complete and comprehensive

Introduction:

Falconer and Mitchell: Need to setting up a “general smart framework” previously to implementing any “Smart” managing system, becomes a rule of thumb to start any intelligent city project.

Framework basements:● The knowledge about how does the city "work"● The definition of what are the goals to achieve and what is the role that each of the

city stakeholders (administration, citizenship, companies, academic institutions) must play

● The knowledge about what is the role of ICT regarding municipal managing and urban services providing.

Source:Falconer & Mitchell: “Smart City Framework. A Systematic Process for Enabling Smart+Connected Communities”. CISCO Internet Bussiness Solutions Group (IBSG), September 2012

Introduction:

Consequence:

An "intelligent city project" (ICP) will not be coherent, sustainable and efficient enough if it is not based upon a previously defined "target city", or, in other words, a city model.

Target of this research:

Defining and setting the foundations, the set of rules and concepts that would inspire the defintion of the general framework of an ICP for the city of A Coruña (its “meta-framework”), making it rely upon (and tightly relate to) a given city model. This project will be identified from now on as "i-Coruña".

This metaframework should become the document from which all of the stakeholders will begin to discuss the actual contents of i-Coruña framework.

The city:

Pop: 245,000 Hab

Area: 3761.54 Km2

Pop. Density: 65 Hab/Km2:

Officially founded in 1208 AD

Pre-Roman and Roman settlements before

The city model:

BASIC PRINCIPLES

ACTION AREAS

PUBLIC ACTIVITY

The city model:

The meta-framework:

DEFINITION:

i-Coruña meta-framework consists of the general description and definition of the principles, components, rules, stakeholders' roles, goals, etc to be taken into consideration when working in the set up of the intelligent city framework for i-Coruña project.

The meta-framework:

Action line 0:

A general inventory must be built up in order to have a thorough knowledge on what is the current situation regarding the use of ICT by A Coruña municipality, as well as to prevent that none of the previously developed tools or existing capacities results deprecated without a good reason

Action line 1:

Setting up the rules for the interaction between all of the stakeholders

The meta-framework:

THE STAKEHOLDERS:

● City managers and planners: Politicians and technicians● Companies & professionals (both technological and traditional)● Educational, academical and research institutions● Citizens

The meta-framework:

i-Coruña Lifecycle:

The meta-framework:

Legal framework: ● European level:● Public Sector Information Directive (PSI)● INSPIRE Directive on the setting up of an European Spatial

Data Infrastructure, and its set of implementation rules and technical reccommendations

● Transparency● Spanish level: Moreover the transposition to the Spanish

legislation of the above mentioned European legal documents,

● Law on transparency, public information and good governance

● Spanish National Schemae on Security and Interoperability● Galician level: Basically, transposition of Spanish level

legislation● Standards and other technical reccommendations:

● ISO: 37120:2014 + 37101 (Smart Community: services) and TR 37150:2014 (Smart Community: infrastructures) and their transposition to Spanish normative by Spanish Normalization Agency (AENOR)

● Dublin Core for metadata

The meta-framework:

i-Coruña Components:

Rick Robinson's New architecture of Smart Citiesi-Coruña architecture

The meta-framework:

Data layer:

Questions:

- What are the data that are needed for each of the applications, services and indicators that are to be implemented?

- In the opposite, what applications, services and indicators may be benefited from currently available data?

- What are the data that may help fulfilling city model goals?- Are all of the needed data currently available?- Otherwise, what are the possible sources for the needed, missing, data?- Will it be necessary to sign data sharing agreements with third parties?- How should each dataset be captured and stored?- How and under what conditions should each dataset be used, shared and distributed?- How do the different datasets (pre-existent or newly built) relate one to each other? Is it possible to map different datasets to stablish logical links between them?

The meta-framework:

Data layer:

Kinds of data sources:

● Owned or produced by the municipality:● Data used in accordance with each of the currently available municipal

management applications or services● Data provided by municipal companies (water supply, transportation, housing, ...)● Data captured by municipal sensors● Data provided by other Public Administration bodies

● Outsourced data:● Borrowed from or shared with third parties (i.e. those served through Spatial Data

Infrastructures)● Data bought from third parties● Crowdsourced data: those provided by the public in a volunteer and conscious

way● Crowdfed data: those provided by the public in an non-concious way

The meta-framework:

Indicators:

● Monitor the evolution of the city in relation with the adopted model, detecting posible deviations or missfunctions, in which case failing actions should be re-defined

● Monitor the effectiveness of i-Coruña project itself, again detecting posible deviations or missfunctions, in which case the missfunctioning components or policies should be re-defined

● By using a system of indicators whose core is based upon international standards like ISO 37120:2014 + ISO 37101 (Smart Community: services) and ISO /TR 37150:2014 (Smart Community: infrastructures), A Coruña planners and managers will be able to compare how does our city score in relation to other intelligent cities in the World.

The meta-framework:

Services and applications:

Types:● server applications● desktop applications● web services● mobile apps

Functionalities:● Managing the city and its urban services, networks and infrastructures● Providing the citizens with the adequate tools to: interact with administration,

get engaged in city life, its managing and its governance● Take as much advantage as possible of data gathered from the sensors,

crowdsourcing and crowdfeeding from citizens in order to improve the knowledge about how does the city work and, as a consequence, to also improve the performance of the city, its governance and its livability.

● Monitoring the city, its evolution and i-Coruña project itself

The meta-framework:

User interfaces:

Final user interfaces to the previously mentioned applications and services.

Common and easily identifiable visual design, so that all of them are clearly and quickly perceived as individual parts of a common set.

Need for a corporative visual identity document and a coherent set of design rules for menus, prior to develop any application, service or app. Pre-existent ones should be re-designed to fulfill those new identity rules.

Corporative identity should be applied also to all of the documentation related to i-Coruña

The author:

PEDRO A. GONZÁLEZ PÉREZ

Tech. Architect

Geographer

MSc in Geographic Information

MSc in Libre Software

Pre-PhD DAS in Computation

A Coruña (Spain), March - April 2015