IOTA to Help Building Smart Cities in Europe

+CityxChange, the smart city project, which will be representing the usefulness of IOTA within the smart city context in various cities across Europe, has got a thumbs up from the European Union commission evaluating the EU research and innovation programme Horizon 2020.

The smart city project had submitted a proposal to receive funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme in the call for the topic ‘Smart cities and communities’.

“Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020)”, The project received really good comments and was placed above every other competing project. Being at the Numero Uno position, the consortium project will receive 20 million euros in funding by the European Research and Innovation programme Horizon 2020.

Also, read: IOTA [MIOTA] Releases Roadmap Updates on its Special Qubic Project

What is +CityxChange

As the project’s website explains,

“+CityxChange vision is to enable the co-creation of the future we want to live in. This will include the development of a framework and supporting tools to enable a common energy market supported by a connected community. This will lead to recommendations for new policy intervention, market (de)regulation and business models that will deliver positive energy communities integrating e-Mobility as a Service (eMaaS).”

The outcome expected out of this project is that +CityxChange, with the help of IOTA, will create solutions for Positive Energy Blocks leading to Positive Energy Districts and Cities through:

• decision support tools which, enable informed decisions to be made by all participants in the group or community
• an attempt at creating a Positive Energy Block through energy reduction and efficiency measures, local renewables, local storage, flexibility and peer-to-peer energy trading
• top-down community engagement is driven by the local authority and bottom-up citizen engagement to inform, educate and drive behavioral change

The project is designed to precisely develop value-added solutions that support duplication in other EU cities as well as exploitation to commercial markets well beyond the project duration. For the next five years, the cities of Trondheim, Limerick, Alba Iulia, Pisek, Sestao, Smolyan, and Voru will test how to become smart positive energy cities,

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) will be the leader and host of the consortium of +CityxChange along with the Lighthouse Cities Trondheim kommune and Limerick City and County Council.

+CityxChange and IOTA appreciated by experts

The autonomous experts assessing the proposal were all in praise of +CityxChange and IOTA for representing and validating actions that will contribute to the wide scale roll out of Positive Energy Districts across Europe, with a conclusive method to make local governments an active and integral part of the energy solution, engaging citizens in the city transformation, and involving the entire district energy value chain, extending to high level policy makers and cities, universities, large enterprises, distributed network operators, SMEs, and not for profit organisations

Some voices from IOTA foundation working close to the project shared their excitement.

“Smart cities is one of the fastest growing cross-sectorial arenas of innovation for IOTA. Building on our work and partnerships across mobility, energy or data marketplace, these smart city ecosystems bring it all together. The +CityxChange consortium gathers many public and private partners around an ambitious open innovation and co-creation initiative. This is 100% aligned to IOTA Foundation’s DNA and we can’t wait to get started.”

Wilfried Pimenta, Head of Business Development at the IOTA Foundation.

“The IOTA Foundation is excited about the approval of the first official Horizon 2020 project in which we are actively participating. Being able to explore and demonstrate the utility of IOTA within the smart city context in numerous cities across Europe will be incredibly valuable going forward. The fact that NTNU, Norway’s largest university, is heading this effort is tremendous. We have had a good relationship with NTNU and the municipality of Trondheim for quite some time now, and the Foundation expects this collaboration to strengthen our bond and output. As a Norwegian I am personally ecstatic about this project.”

David Sønstebø, Co-founder, and Co-chairman of the IOTA Foundation.

This is a really a master project for IOTA to test its real-life capabilities. It will not only text capabilities but also enrich IOTA before its mass acceptance in real-life businesses and day to day applications.

Does IOTA really have the capabilities to live up to the demands of +CityxChange? Do let us know your views on the same.