Interoperability in the Smart City context Sample Clauses

Interoperability in the Smart City context. The concept of Urban Platforms for the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Smart Cities and Communities and, more precisely, for the Urban Platforms group of the Integrated Infrastructure Action Cluster, is defined as solutions that help cities digitalize and manage their services. Moreover, these platforms are the core building block in which the cities manage all their data. Thus, services and data, together with interoperability, security and privacy are the essential concepts to be tackled by the urban platforms. For the EIP, when it comes to interoperability, the priority is on ensuring the vertical interoperability (development of reusable and interoperable services) instead of prioritizing the horizontal interoperability (between platforms). Thus, to maximize the potential replicability and scalability of the developments on top of the urban platforms vendor lock-in solutions must be avoided, as interoperability and scalability are hampered with these locked approaches. In this sense, in MAtchUP Project there are also two kinds of interoperability: vertical and horizontal. Following the EIP suggestions, the project will focus on vertical interoperability especially. Vertical interoperability mainly occurs when the Smart City solutions share data. In other words, the services the city usually offers are fragmented for each sector of energy, mobility, ICT, among others. For instance, the public transport service that is part of the mobility sector and the associated data is not shared with other verticals. All those services from different sectors generate data and information that have different providers and, therefore, an automatic liaison of the different services within the same city becomes necessary. In contrast, horizontal interoperability occurs when data is exchanged between different smart cities, i.e. a city offers similar services, such as the domestic waste management service. This service is also offered in another city and there is an exchange of information between solutions in the cities. Figure 1 and Figure 2 graphically represent both types of interoperability, which are present in the project: