European Data Space for Smart Communities

ongoing

European Data Space for Smart Communities (DS4SSCC-DEP) contributes to the Digital Europe Programme objectives to accelerate the digital transformation of Europe’s society and economy, by supporting the creation of genuine data spaces for smart and sustainable cities and communities. The project aims to evolve the blueprint for the smart communities data space in 10-12 pilots, which will validate it in real use to deliver a sustainable European data space that works for all citizens. Our vision is a well-governed data space that is available for developers and infrastructure providers to deliver on prospect of Europe’s Digital Decade. Data permeates our societies already, like water or food supplies, but whereas we’ve had millennia to adapt and finetune those flows, it’s only now that we can begin to address data in a similar sensible and sensitive way. Bad data kills good services, and bad services may kill people, the planet and the prosperity of communities on all levels. That’s why we need Dataspaces-in.EU, the name indicating a close kinship to the Living-in.EU movement and vision. The data space for smart communities is different from the classical sectorial data spaces in that it is not focused on a single domain, sector or profession. It is territorial, place-based. In that sense, it resembles the two other horizontal data spaces: Destination Earth (DestinE) and the Green Deal Data Space (GREAT). With its complexity and layeredness, the data space for smart communities touches us all, and reaches all levels of governance, being its foundation. Many of the ills of the first waves of harsh, insensitive digitalisation stem from the fact that they come from nowhere and live with no-one. It has been a “race to virtualisation”. Now that simplistic movement has come to a grinding halt, with regionalisation and acute awareness of dependencies and independent capacity. Our vision is simple and complex at the same time.