SPECIFI

SPECIFI combines NGA and IoT infrastructures and platforms for setting  up an European Creative Ring of Smart Cities and Regions facilitating the setup, customization, delivery and sharing of innovative, user co-designed arts, media and leisure services locally, regionally, and across Europe. SPECIFI guiding principle in fostering Smart Cities is to beyond upgrades related to control tasks and public data (focusing on areas such as pollution reduction, traffic, or crime, open models for public data, etc.), considering that Smart Cities can only become a success if they also become Smart Creative Cities, by employing open, Future Internet infrastructures to become thriving centres of arts, media and leisure.

SPECIFI capitalizes on the cultural and creative richness and diversity of European cities, while overcoming some of their key weaknesses, i.e. fragmentation and isolation. SPECIFI will demonstrate the positive impacts of a European Creative Ring of Smart Cities and Regions, with real-life Future Internet (Fiber-to-theHome and wireless) infrastructures, with real-life users and producers, and in 5 real (certified) Living Labs active in 3 smart cities and their surrounding regions.

Three pilots use Future Internet technologies as the basis for sharing and exchanging knowledge and innovation between three European smart city cores, embedded in their surrounding region: Kortrijk embedded in Flanders in Belgium, Barcelona embedded in Catalonia in Spain, and Trento embedded in Trentino in Italy. It is the aim of SPECIFI to pilot ‘Creative Rings’ of urban media that overcome technological limitations, geographical fragmentation and lacking business models, by opening and linking Future Internet platforms and creative industry ecosystems.