CEF Building Blocks presented at the COP25
©Council of the European Union
The European Commission presented the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Building Blocks during the UN Climate Change Conference in 2019.
The presentation took place in a session “Supporting urban decision making to address SDG goals and compliance with climate change mitigation regulations”.
This session was opportunity to learn about concrete real use cases where smart software solutions are helping to mitigate climate change effects in urban areas. It paved the way for an open debate around the role that open source, standard-based, Data Models and APIs can play in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by means of fostering Open Innovation and the support of a "Develop Once, Replicate Everywhere" principle that accelerates deployment, therefore multiplies positive impact of smart solutions.
Connecting remotely, Thomas FILLIS – a consultant for the Commission’s Directorate General for Informatics (DIGIT – presented several CEF Success Stories, looking how the use of CEF Building Blocks is building smarter services for a greener future, namely:
- How the province of Utrecht fosters cycling by equipping bikes with air quality sensors to map healthier routes and to create a healthy urban space for all;
- Air pollution is a major problem for public health in urban environments. Many European cities are confronted with increasing air pollution and associated health problem. Barcelona, the second most populous city of Spain, is one of them.
- How Saint-Quentin uses CEF to address stakeholders’ concerns about the use of water in the city’s green spaces
- How Finland is using eInvoicing to reach its climate targets;
Download the presentation and see the success stories
To build a Digital Single Market in Europe, the CEF programme funds a set of generic and reusable Digital Service Infrastructures (DSI), also known as Building Blocks. The CEF Building Blocks offer basic capabilities that can be reused in any European project to facilitate the delivery of digital public services across borders and sectors. Currently, there are eight Building Blocks: Big Data Test Infrastructure, Context Broker, Archiving, eDelivery, eID, eInvoicing, eSignature and eTranslation.
A Blockchain DSI (the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI)) will soon become a fully operational Building Block, and the Once Only Principle (OOP) is a preparatory action under CEF.