Internet of Everything is recognised to be one of the dominant ways transforming the way we manage and live in our urban environments in the future. The extension of the Internet to the physical spaces and objects is a massive opportunity for new services and business for example in the areas of logistics, transport, environment, security and wellbeing. Internet of everything is directly linked to the smart city development, but it has proceeded slower than expected. The key showstoppers are the lack of common standards, fragmented marketplace, and lack of ways to systematically test and introduce new solutions in the cities. The common challenge of the SELECT for Cities PCP is the design, research and development of “cities as linked and large-scale Internet of Everything labs”. The challenge lies in developing an open, standardized, data-driven, service-oriented and user-centric platform that enables large-scale co-creation, testing and validation of urban IoE applications and services. This approach fosters the longer-term goal of evidence-based innovation in cities. The envisaged platform has several requirements, components & features that are currently not available in existing solutions. The platform must allow collaboration between departments and cities, and (automated) testing of IoE services. The design should be based on an open and modular approach, and support cloud-based, data-driven, service-oriented, user-centric, and co-created large-scale testing. The joint effort of the partners procuring this pre-commercial track lies in guarding the integration capabilities of the platform with solutions that exist in the respective cities today. Particular attention will thus need to be paid to technologies and tools that allow smooth communication and integration between these existing solutions. The end goal of SELECT for Cities is taking the idea of the city as a large Internet of Everything Lab and putting it into practice.

The IDEAL project seeks to foster a European public space for citizen deliberation that transcends linguistic and cultural barriers, utilising automated language tools and social innovation approaches. IDEAL will develop a unique methodology to support effective deliberation in multicultural and multilingual contexts underpinned by an in-depth analysis of the European participatory landscape, the dThe IDEAL project seeks to foster a European public space for citizen deliberation that transcends linguistic and cultural barriers, utilising automated language tools and social innovation approaches. The project will develop a unique methodology to support effective deliberation in multicultural and multilingual contexts underpinned by an in-depth analysis of the European participatory landscape, the development of advanced AI-based tools and technologies, and rigorous testing in experimental field settings. IDEAL will leverage mechanisms of social innovation through design thinking, co-design, co-creation to deepen the scope and impact of its proposed methodology. Building on results from the Conference on the Future of Europe, deliberations initiated during the project will focus on issues related to European democracy, migration, health and wellbeing, jobs and social justice, and the rule of law. IDEAL will further develop Decidim deliberation platform functionality including multilingual evidence and open data for online multicultural training and support, backed up with real-time multilingual support services such as machine-effective translation simplification and subtitling and reading aloud applications. For offline environments, a user-friendly mobile application to support access to available multi-cultural resources (social indices, laws and regulations) will be developed. Finally, IDEAL will support the participation of users and their access to multilingual information in both modes through the development of a chatbot functionality embedded in the platform.

Adapting urban environments to current challenges requires a multidisciplinary understanding of interrelated and complex phenomena. In the context of digital-era massive data production and enhanced analytical capacities, there is still enormous untapped potential in the use of disruptive technologies to support evidence-based decision-making processes in the field of urban planning. Moreover, the impact that such technologies may have in the current urban planning practice is yet to be assessed. Urban planning decision-making involves multiple stakeholders in complex governance settings. Such decisions should be evidence-based, and their results continuously evaluated to correct unwanted impacts, but this is not yet the prevalent paradigm. Using disruptive technologies in the urban planning decision-making process bears the risk of excluding some parts of the population; in particular, older adults, who are less digitally literate and might show distrust of decisions and engagement based on technology. At the same time, European cities are facing the challenge of adapting to an increasing aging population, so it is crucial to engage this part of the population in decision making processes. In this context, URBANAGE aims at assessing the potential benefits, risks and impact of implementing a long-term sustainable framework for data-driven decision-making in the field of urban planning for aging well in cities. This model will be developed through an inclusive co-creation strategy with relevant stakeholders (public servants) and users (older adults) and based on a decision-support Ecosystem that integrates multidimensional Big Data analysis; modelling and simulation with Artificial Intelligence algorithms, visualization through Urban Digital twins and gamification for enhanced engagement purposes. Based on a thorough understanding of users’ needs, it will be validated by piloting use-cases in three local planning systems in Europe (Helsinki, Santander and Flander).

The overarching objective of EASYRIGHTS is to develop a co-creation eco-system in which different actors belonging to the local governance system can cooperate in increasing the quantity and quality of public (welfare) services available to immigrants. The specific aims are to improve the current personalisation and contextualisation levels, empower the prospective beneficiaries of existing services in getting better access and fruition opportunities, and to engage Quadruple Helix stakeholders in joint, purposeful co-creation efforts, facilitated by the use of hackathons. An easyRights platform - with the twin meaning of “aggregation of local stakeholders” and “collection of online and offline services” - will be developed and deployed in four pilot locations (Birmingham, Larissa, Palermo and Malaga). In so doing, easyRights can support immigrants in their search for responses to different needs, making them more autonomous - at least to some extent - from discretionary street level bureaucracies, saving time for both migrants and for social service staff and cutting costs for the public administration.

DUET is an Innovation project designed to leverage the advanced capabilities of cloud and high-performance computing (HPC) to evolve the traditional public policy making cycle using large open data sources. The aim is to help public sector decision-making become more democratic and effective, both in the short and long term, through the development and use of Digital Twins for policy impact exploration and experimentation in entire cities and regions. These digital replicas of a cities system will (a) enhance day-to-day city management by helping city managers react quickly to real-time events through rapid experimentation of different decision impacts, and (b) ensure longer term policy decisions are more effective and trusted by enabling city managers from different units, to explore and discuss with citizens and businesses city issues in a visual, easy-to-digest way via a common view. Thanks to the 3D interface public administrations will, for the first time, more easily harness the collective intelligence of ALL policy stakeholders to tackle complex, systemic policy problems that require innovative thinking from multi-sectors to develop transformative solutions. Developed and tested in cities and Regions at different points in their digital transformation journeys – Flanders Region, Belgium, the City of Athens, Greece and City of Pilsen, Czech Republic – DUET will create the concept of Policy-Ready-Data-as-a-Service and ensure all cities across Europe will be able to create their own their own Digital Twins that address ethical considerations around data use whilst also complying with Europe’s stringent privacy and security regulations.