ICING, an European Project coordinated by the Dublin Institute of Technology, will research a multi-modal, multi-access concept of e-Government. The model 'thinskinned City' will be sensitive to both the citizen and the environment through the use of mobile devices, universal access gateways, social software and environmental sensors. Intelligent infrastructure will enable a Public Administration Services layer and a Communities layer. Communities will interact with the infrastructure to avail of services created by the administration, and will also create their own information-based services. ICING will conduct research into eCommunity and Usability and also into two-way interaction with the physical environment. The research will focus on the areas of embedded intelligence, tighter integration of operator platforms and city infrastructure to enable novel services, empowerment of citizens to evolve systems of interaction with the city via social software, input from citizens and sensors for management systems and decision modelling, and a combination of city systems and multi-modal, multi-device communications to provide enhanced services. The technology platform will gather indicators from the City, process the information, propose actions to be taken with human intervention and supervision and connect the City with its constituency. Services and information will be delivered on a range of commodity devices, providing greater reach and accessibility to local government and communities. Solutions will be tested in 'City Laboratories' in strategic city regeneration districts, 22@ in Barcelona, Grangegorman in Dublin and Arabianranta in Helsinki, where users will trial and evaluate technologies and services.
Policy Context
Personal Data protection and privacy
Description of target users and groups
ICING addresses three users groups: - Individuals (residents, incomers, city workers, visitors) - Communities in the City (formal and informal, defined by neighbourhood, occupation or interest) - City administrations and providers of public services (planners, decision-makers, managers, public service employees, third-party providers)
Description of the way to implement the initiative
The management of the project is hold by the Dublin Institute of Technology which is, at the same time, the coordinator of the project. The management methodology is based on Processes and Techniques developed for managing public/private partnership projects. Processes include Management by exception, Planning, Initiating, Controlling/ Managing and Closing a project. Techniques include: Delivery based planning, Change control and Control review.
Technology solution
ICING is based on Open Source development principles, combined with Open Systems and Standards. It has the potential to contribute to standards in three areas: Communication Architecture: OSA-Parlay (3GPP and Parlay Group); Parlay X; EB-XML (OASIS); W3C Multimodal Interaction Framework. Information handling and interfacing: SOAP, Simple Object Access Protocol; XML, Extensible Mark-up Language; WSDL, Web Services Description Language; JSR-94, API framework Java based for rule engines. Geospatial information (OGC stands for Open Geospatial Consortium): OGC "Simple Features" & "Simple Features SQL Access"; OGC WMS, Web Mapping Services; OGC GML, Geography Markup Language; OGC OLS, Open Location Services; OGC SensorWeb; ISO 19115, and ISO 19139.
Technology choice: Standards-based technology, Open source softwareMain results, benefits and impacts
ICING has the following objectives: - To research the impact of social and human factors on ways of creating eCommunities and the usability of eGovernment services based on intelligent environments. - To design and test intelligent urban environments with embedded microchip, sensor, positional, communications and display technologies as the basis for providing better services to all citizens. - To define citizen-led services that increase social involvement and inclusion through the use of intelligent environments and the tighter integration between city and communications infrastructures. - To create a citizen-driven, evolving social software interface to the city through the development of an Urban Mediator. - To develop universal access gateways and interfaces for citizens to the City services, systems and environment through the use of commodity technologies such as mobile telephones, television and IP, hand-held devices, residential gateways or public access points to provide availability on the move, in the city environment or at home. - To develop interactive, location-based, and web-accessible tools for process modelling, decision support and environmental modification based on feedback from citizens and the environment, with geospatial technologies. - To install and validate test beds incorporating social software, multimodal access gateways, sensor and communication networks, location-based support systems and City technology platforms - To evaluate the usability and usefulness of the technologies and services, with particular reference to social and human factors, in trials with significant sample groups of users. - To publicise and disseminate results to city administrations, professional communities mad citizen's group, to raise awareness and develop appropriate training to further the development and implementation of intelligent city services. - To create a roadmap for the exploitation of results through real services, development of public policy and future research directions, and the conduct of further RTD, contributing to the standardisation process and developing exploitation plans by the technology providers, system integrators and public administrations.
Return on investment
Return on investment: Not applicable / Not availableTrack record of sharing
Some of the performed dissemination activities are: - Within the Eurocities network - Among Telecom companies in Spain - Among ICT researchers in the context of an eChallenge conference - With cities and ICT companies in a European conference in Dublin
Lessons learnt
Lesson 1 - Legal framework about privacy and personal data protection plays an important role to the development and provision of new services Lesson 2 - Telecom operators business models are a barrier to overcome to succeed on innovative services deployment Lesson 3 - Usability is the most important aspect to make mobile services attractive to users
Scope: Local (city or municipality)