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The Local and Regional Digital Indicators framework (LORDI) aims to support digital transformation efforts across Europe by providing the necessary evidence about what is happening at the local and regional level. It helps cities and communities benchmark themselves against others and benefit from peer learning in order to develop better policies and actions. The European Commission, European Committee of the Regions and European Observation Network for Territorial Development (ESPON) need to know what is important for your city. How should digital transformation and its impact be measured?

Broadband Competence Offices will play a catalytic role in ensuring that the digital budget of the Recovery and Resilience Fund will reach the market and end in long-term and robust investments. At a webinar on ‘Telecom’s Role in the Recovery: Infrastructure, Innovation and Sustainability’, organised by the Financial Times, Jan Dröge, Team Lead of the BCO Network Support Facility, together with Anthony Whelan, Digital Policy Adviser to the European Commission President, outlined the most important factors that Member States should take into account in order for the Fund to be most effective.

The EU is launching a new €30 million initiative, with rural digital service platforms, innovation ecosystems, the smart village approach, and standards at the forefront. Entering Europe’s Digital Decade, the European way of digital transformation Living-in.EU provides minimal – but sufficient – interoperability of data, systems and services between smart cities and their suppliers. The two new large-scale pilot projects offer the opportunity to extend these Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms to rural smart communities.

How can European cities take full advantage of the large amount of data generated at local level? Striving towards a data ecosystem for climate-neutral and smart communities, the workshop participants discussed how to facilitate data sharing in an interoperable and trusted smart city dataspace.

In this pre-commercial procurement, the university of Murcia aims to equip their infrastructure with a collective intelligence that improves campus resource management and enables the university to offer new services. Innovative solutions should improve current smart cities/campus solutions based on opportunities offered by advanced Internet of Things technologies for data capture, fast broadband 5G communications, distributed computing and integration of Artificial Intelligence in decision making. Deadline to submit offers: 28/12/2020

Dublin City Council invites potentially interested bidders to make offers for its new pre-commercial procurement that is seeking to trial innovative solutions that enable smarter management of the on street storage and presentation of household and commercial waste. The procurement will involve fast prototyping and testing (maximum 6 months) of up to three different solutions. Deadline for submission of offers: 14/12/2020.

The Portuguese SME, Ubiwhere, has successfully grown its business in smart city solutions following its participation in the SELECT4CITIES pre-commercial procurement (PCP). This procurement implemented by the cities of Antwerp, Helsinki and Copenhagen helped Ubiwhere win new contracts with cities around Europe to deliver solutions that improve environmental sustainability, citizen engagement in public service delivery and 5G-enabled use cases. Since the PCP, the company doubled its financial turnover as well as its staff headcount.

This detailed event report from the session 'Digital twins for cities' aims to support and encourage further discussions related to Urban Digital Twins. The session presented the benefits of urban digital twins and heard the experience of EU cities where implementation is currently underway. Event held as part of the European Week of Regions and Cities, 13-15 October 2020.