CEF Big Data Building Block features at Moscow Urban Forum

On 10 December 2020, Roberto Barcellan, from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Informatics (DIGIT), spoke at the Moscow Urban Forum about how the European Commission is helping cities leverage big datasets to come up with concrete action plans for adapting to crises like the coronavirus pandemic.

The digitalisation of services, whether from public administrations or private companies, is a trend that was on the rise even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which is now pushing organisations to adapt even faster so they can offer online services to citizens. Since 2014, the European Commission has been actively helping public administrations and businesses throughout the European Union in their digital transformation through open, reusable digital solutions called the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Building Blocks. 

Two Building Blocks in particular, the Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI) and the Context Broker, are helping cities all over Europe become "Smart Cities" by leveraging the data they collect to inform policy and day-to-day decision-making to run cities more efficiently. 

The CEF Big Data Test Infrastructure (BDTI) is a ready-to-use, scalable virtual environment for public administrations to perform analysis on large datasets. At the Moscow Urban Forum, Roberto Barcellan spoke about how the city of Florence is analysing city data with the BDTI Building Block and using the insights to ensure the safe re-opening of tourism activities.

You can find a recording of the event here.

Florence uses big data in the fight against COVID-19

The municipality of Florence collects data from numerous sources, such as public wifi sensors (location, number of users connected), traffic sensors, pollution sensors and tickets sold to museums and events. BDTI provides them with an out-of-the-box solution for analysing this data so they can predict high-risk spots in the city where overcrowding might occur. Understanding these big datasets helps them support the tourism industry so vital to the city by easing lockdown restrictions while mitigating the health risks associated.

Once relevant insights are collected through BDTI, Florence ultimately intends to scale up the REPLICATE project to include other municipalities in Tuscany. This is thanks to ongoing collaboration with Tuscany Region, and the University of Florence. The data, tools and results from this project could be shared with future pilots, as cities go smart with data tools like BDTI in an effort to curb the effects of coronavirus through innovation and collaboration.

Public administrations interested in becoming Smart Cities and knowledge-sharing with municipalities like Florence can become part of the BDTI Community by contacting the CEF BDTI team.