Uptake of IoT and AI driven ICT systems in Europe is crucial for our common future, but it is dependent on our strategic ability to protect these systems from cyber threats and attacks on their privacy. IRIS addresses this challenge with a collaborative-first approach centered around CERTs/CSIRTs. From a technological perspective, it deploys (i) autonomous detection of IoT and AI threats, enriched with (ii) privacy-aware intelligence sharing and collaboration, and (iii) advanced data protection and accountability. Crucially, IRIS introduces (iv) the first dedicated online training and cyber exercises to prepare CERTs/CSIRTs to collaboratively protect critical infrastructures and systems against cross-border AI and IoT threats. IRIS will be validated in three pilot demonstrators, focussing in the IoT, AI and cross-border dimensions, across three existing smart city environments (in Helsinki, Tallinn and Barcelona), involving the associated national/governmental CERTs/CSIRTs, cybersecurity authorities and municipalities. The scenarios will contain real-life inspired cyber incidents that will build up into pilots at all levels (from local to national and to cross-border) to showcase the versatility of the IRIS solution. With 19 key partners from around Europe and 5 CERTs/CSIRTs as Associated Partners, IRIS’s solid consortium composition and work plan prioritises the effectiveness needed for quick real-world adoption and impact. Moreover, integration will be carried out on the EU’s existing MeliCERTes platform, with the support of NETCOMPANY-INTRASOFT, while training will build upon THALES’s existing cyber range, and ECSO will ensure the contribution to standards and policymaking. With the formal support of the four H2020 Cybersecurity Competence Network Pilot Projects, IRIS will also actively engage with the full scope of the cybersecurity ecosystem in Europe.

In PoDIUM, using and enhancing the facilities of 3 well-equipped Living Labs in Germany, Italy and Spain we define a rich set of demanding CCAM UCs to identify and assess all the connectivity and cooperation enablers and needs that will allow the proposed higher levels of automation. Building on the proposed UCs (urban and highway - incl. cross-border setups), which will be demonstrated and validated in real-life conditions, PoDIUM will tackle all the different requirements for availability and performance of connectivity as well as the different cooperation enablers per UC. The proposed UCs aim to advance a set of key technologies both in the physical and digital part of the infrastructure. A multi-connectivity approach is followed to ensure reliability, availability and redundancy of the PDI system (i.e., ITS-G5, 5G, LTE, 5G mmWave, 60GHz-WiFi, etc.). As part of the proposed PDI system, a distributed, interoperable and hybrid (MEC and cloud-based) data management environment will be implemented, which will include suitable advanced environment perception models and digital twins to facilitate seamless and efficient exchange of data (in low latency), thus enabling real-time analytics and opening up new business opportunities. Software integrity and data truthfulness of external data are important aspects that will be considered throughout the PDI to address existing gaps. New and standardised C-ITS messages will be integrated to support advanced functionalities, whereas new designs of RSUs and OBUs will allow advanced environmental modelling and digital twins based on locally generated data. Last but not least, a major focus will be laid on the integration of VRUs in the overall PDI. All those elements will be integrated under the umbrella of the three layered PoDIUM reference architecture, which is flexible and applicable in different road environments based on the available infrastructure equipment enabling different kinds of services.

MUV (Mobility Urban Values) levers behaviour change in local communities in an entirely novel approach to reducing urban traffic. Rather than focus on infrastructure, it raises citizen awareness on the quality of the urban environment to promote a shift towards more sustainable and healthy mobility choices. MUV solutions are co-created and validated with learning communities in six diverse urban neighbourhoods – Buitenveldert in Amsterdam (NL), Sant Andreu in Barcelona (ES), Muide/Meulested in the harbour of Ghent (BE), the historic district of Fundao (PT), Jätkäsaari in Helsinki (FI) and the "Centro Storico" of Palermo (IT) – and extended to additional communities through open calls to join the network and adopt the MUV approach. MUV's technological ecosystem integrates three components: a mobile and wearable app, a distributed network of environmental monitoring stations (co-designed with local maker communities) and a scalable cloud platform to collect, aggregate and analyse data. The massive amount of data collected throughout MUV communities feeds local planning and policy-making processes to develop frugal and effective urban mobility solutions. Creativity and artistic design maximize local impact and the diffusion of project results beyond the communities directly involved. MUV’s ground-breaking approach thus achieves sustainable mobility through a blend of methods: co-creation, awareness raising, gamification, reward systems, new forms of communication, artistic design, ICT and data science, additive manufacturing, and open governance. Rather than embark in investments with long and uncertain paybacks, MUV empowers communities to better translate citizen needs into new solutions, engaging end-users throughout the process to prevent the risk of low take-up. Real impact is measured with an evidence-based approach to maximize economic viability and Social Return On Investment (SROI) and drive replicability and the scaling up and out of MUV solutions.

Delivering on the 5G promise of increased data rates, and ubiquitous coverages, poses stringent requirements on traditional vertically integrated operators. In particular, telecom operators are expected to massively roll out Small Cells, which requires finding appropriate urban spaces with both backhaul and energy availability. Network sharing becomes essential to unlock those commercial massive deployments. The open access model, or neutral host, will come to play a key role on the deployment of 5G networks, especially in urban scenarios where very dense Small Cell deploymens are required. In parallel recent trends are paving the way towards the development of new, heterogeneous and distributed cloud paradigms that significantly differ from today’s established cloud model: with edge computing, cloud architectures are pushed all the way to the edge of the network, close to the devices that produce and act on data. We posit that there are two sets of players perfectly poised to take advantage of both trends since they already own the infrastructure needed to build edge deployments: telecommunication providers and municipalities. 5GCity focuses on how common smart city infrastructure (i.e.,small cells and processing power at the very edge of networks) can bring benefit to both players based on resource sharing and end-to-end virtualization, pushing the cloud model to the extreme edge. 5GCity will design, develop, deploy and demonstrate a distributed cloud and radio platform for municipalities and infrastructure owners acting as 5G neutral hosts. 5GCity’s main aim is to build and deploy a common, multi-tenant, open platform that extends the (centralized) cloud model to the extreme edge of the network, with a demonstration in three different cities (Barcelona, Bristol and Lucca). 5GCity will directly impact a large and varied range of actors: (i) telecom providers; (ii) municipalities; and (iii) a number of different vertical sectors utilizing the city infrastructure

Today’s Internet is becoming increasingly centralised, slowing innovation and challenging its potential to revolutionise society and the economy in a pluralistic manner. DECODE will develop practical alternatives through the creation, evaluation and demonstration of a distributed and open architecture for managing online identity, personal and other data, and collective governance in a citizen-friendly and privacy-aware fashion. Strong digital rights that makes it possible for data subjects to determine access rights to their information through flexible entitlements and open standard-based agreements regarding data governance (on the model of Creative Commons licenses) will be woven into the technological architecture. DECODE will increase digital sovereignty of European citizens by enabling them to produce, access and control their data and exchange contextualised information in real-time, and in a confidential, and scalable manner. DECODE will develop a modular privacy-aware IoT hub with a free and open source operating system backed by a state of the art blockchain infrastructure supporting smart-contracts and privacy protections. The architecture will be demonstrated through four pilots in Barcelona and Amsterdam, in the field of digital democracy, citizen sensing, and collaborative economy. The pilots will be run with the active involvement of social entrepreneurs, hackers, and makers. Innovators will be able to build solutions on top of the platform through hackathons and open challenges, while ensuring their security, resilience and privacy preserving qualities. This aims to create a decentralised innovation ecosystem that will attract a critical mass able to shift the current centralised data-driven economy towards a decentralised, sustainable and commons-based economy. DECODE puts agency and data control in the hands of citizens, to improve citizens’ well-being and society for the collective benefit of all.