AI4Cities brings together the leading European cities in the intersection of ‘Smart Cities’ and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions reduction, in order to speed up and steer the creation of new breakthrough solutions in how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support cities’ strategic plans to become Carbon Neutral. Right now is the time to direct AI research/innovation towards the societal needs -- to assign detailed, pragmatic, solvable ‘missions’ from the cities’ climate action plans to AI developers. Through these missions, this project will create breakthrough, scalable, European solutions for these specific needs, and thus lead to immediate, concrete and measurable emissions savings, but more importantly, give examples on how to create impact and better future, for the whole of the AI community as well as all the European cities and citizens. On one hand, the opportunity window for European AI leadership is closing fast in the competition between solutions coming from the US and China - what kind of AI solutions govern us in the future is of great policy interest for Europe. On the other hand, urban emission reduction ambitions in most of the cities are set up so high that many of them are not realistically achievable without exploiting best-in-class ICT technologies. While cities are different, the largest opportunities for emission reduction in European cities are very similar. The highest common reduction targets in most cities’ climate action plans are in transport and in buildings’ energy use. As an example, in Helsinki, the production of Electricity and Heating accounts for 71% of GHG emissions; urban transportation and traffic account for 24%. Combined, these two sectors total 95% of Helsinki’s total carbon footprint. The purpose of this PCP is to support Cities’ transition to carbon neutrality, by applying the use of AI and related enabling digital technologies to tackle the challenge of reducing the Cities GHG emissions.

Cities are at the forefront of delivering digital government in Europe, but they are not sufficiently involved in the policy debate and do not encounter sufficient support. UserCentriCities is a project driven by six cities and regions to deliver the goals of the Tallinn declaration at local level, supported by Eurocities, the largest association of European cities, VTT, a world-class research centre, and led by the Lisbon Council, a Brussels based think tank which has advised the Estonian presidency on the Tallinn declaration. UserCentriCities aims at delivering a better buy-in of the Tallinn declaration by local authorities, a set of common indicators to benchmark progress, a toolkit and mutual learning activities to share insight, and the involvement of a large number of new cities. The goal is to help cities move towards user centric services by providing data and support. In addition, UserCentriCities aims to stimulate healthy competitions among cities and to involve them on a permanent basis in EU-level technical debates.

The Art of Darkness as Cultural Heritage of Urban Landscape (Art of Darkness) project aims to preserve and develop cultural heritage sites throughout Europe with a better understanding of the cultural, aesthetic, and sustainability values of darkness, which are important to the well-being of humans and nature. The project raises awareness of and explores well-considered darkness with high-quality architectural lighting design and light art as an asset in relation to cultural heritage, which can be cherished and harnessed to boost cultural-led innovation and attract strategic investments to cultural heritage and Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI). This is achieved through creating a Europe-wide collaborative network of 3 cities, 5 research institutions and 2 societies, which conduct 5 artistic pilot trials in cultural heritage sites in 5 countries. The pilot trials develop design strategies and solutions for more sustainable, aesthetic and socially feasible dark-time experiences through co-design with local stakeholders. The piloting process, which consists of context mapping, co-design, pilot production and evaluation processes, brings together researchers, CCIs professionals (e.g. artists, lighting designers, architects), citizens, local societies, and municipality actors. Thus, methodology of the project is transdisciplinary, participatory and integrative: The disciplines included in the project consortium are architecture, light-art, cultural heritage, urban design and planning, lighting design, photometrics, engineering, media- and neurotechnology, environmental psychology, cultural anthropology, scenography, and performing arts. Importantly, the evaluated results are integrated into the Art of Darkness Piloting Model to be replicated in other cities and regions and translated into roadmaps and policy briefs for further impact. All values and working principles of the NEB Compass are implemented in the project work with the highest ambition level.

The proposed project aims for the development to market (TRL8-9) of EGNSS-based integrated low-cost sensor technologies and artificial-intelligence-driven open-architecture software solution (machine learning (ML) and machine vision (MV)), for the detection, classification, and georeferencing of roadway pavement surface anomalies and for the low-cost assessment of roadway pavements using participatory sensing. The proposed system is of practical importance since it provides continuous information about roadway pavement surface anomalies which are valuable for efficiently monitoring the transport infrastructure and for public safety. The vision for roadway condition assessment by utilization of smartphone-like technology is set in parallel with the hypothesis that such technology can be used for crowd-sourced data collection and analysis in GIS-based pavement management systems (PMS), and that the developed technology and related transport informatics are disruptive technologies that have the potential to reshape the transport and infrastructure O&M industries through the project objectives discussed in the proposal.