3. H2020 : Synchronicity

SynchroniCity represents the first attempt to deliver a Single Digital City Market for Europe by piloting its foundations at scale in reference zones across 8 European cities, involving also other cities globally. It addresses how to incentivise and build trust for companies and citizens to actively participate, in finding common co-created IoT solutions for cities that meet citizen needs and to create an environment of evidence-based solutions that can easily be replicated in other regions.

SynchroniCity starts and ends in cities and their citizens. The innovation ecosystems in cities constitute the pillar upon which all the activities in the project will rely. Through a strategy adapted to the reference zones, they will identify, engage and support the different stakeholders, including citizens and communities. The latter ones will help to identify the problems to be solved in the city and to validate the solutions.

While an agreement on technology assumption is crucial for the emergence of a single digital market, the right environment for impactful citizen centred services to emerge must support it. A key element is to empower (local) ecosystem participants with guidelines for co-creation around the marketplace and provide a flexible regulatory and policy environment for experimentation with potentially disruptive technologies. The reference zones chosen in the project and the pilots will derive best practices that can be shared with other ecosystem participants as blueprints, increasing the acceptability of emerging solutions by citizens and regulatory business environment.