To increase the impact of smart city solutions, their ability to be replicated across different environments must increase. This was the prime message emerging from the SynchroniCity Bootcamp taking place in early February in London, where 16 pilot projects tackling urban challenges through IoT-enabled solutions were launched. Amongst the many intricate challenges addressed by the pilots, four aspire to increase cycling through innovative solutions addressing bike theft and road safety.

Buzzing with energy from over 80 representatives from the pilots, test cities, and project partners, the Future Cities Catapult, a London-based innovation center and partner in SynchroniCity, set the tone for an engaging and fruitful discussion on how to implement and scale up IoT solutions across cities. The SynchroniCity project aims to create a global market of IoT-enabled services where cities and companies together with stakeholders can co-create digital solutions intended to promote livable cities and stimulate local economies.

Martin Brynskov, Coordinator of SynchroniCity, reminded the participants that smart cities are not just about cutting-edge technology. It is as much about cities and its citizens. He therefore stressed that the cooperation, co-creation, transparency, and trust between city authorities must be nurtured alongside the technological developments.

To ensure the co-creation and collaboration between the cities, the pilot projects will integrate, share, and trade their collected data on an online marketplace. As the 6-months implementation phase runs its course, the marketplace will feature data on numerous parameters generated from the 18 test cities.

Digitalizing the future of cycling

The majority of urban spaces were never designed to accommodate the growing number of cyclists. By using data to identify problem areas, four of the SynchroniCity pilots aim to make cities safer and more inclusive for cyclists.

Bike theft is a serious concern for cyclists and anyone who’s thinking of taking up cycling. To beat the bike thieves, the pilot project Autonomous Hub for Cyclist is developing a network of safe parking spaces in the test cities of Santander, La Nucía as well as the two cities Donegal and Faro alongside the EuroVelo 1 Atlantic route. Powered by renewable energy, their parking hubs can accommodate 10 bikes and will also have space for one or two cargo bikes along with electric charging points. They moreover feature a repair station, will be video-surveilled, and will collect data on available parking spaces and environmental indicators to be shared on the SynchroniCity platform and in the accompanying app.

Similarly occupied with preventing bike theft, the pilot project Kissmybike will arm citizens in Milan, Santander, and Antwerp with an IoT tracking solution. Encompassing satellite and mobile technologies, bike-owners will be alerted as soon as the bicycle is moved unexpectedly and allows him or her to track its real-time position. The pilot will also provide cities with statistics on major cycling routes, parking spaces, and intermodality to be shared on the SynchroniCity marketplace.

Hoping to increase non-motorised transport by addressing road safety, the Active Travel Insights project gathers real-time data on cyclists’ movements in the test cities of Antwerp, Eindhoven, Helsinki, and Manchester. Combining this with data on environmental parameters, the pilot aims to increase cities’ ability to make informed decision on infrastructural investments for an enhanced cycling network. Their data will aid cities in identifying problem areas and make cities safer for bicycles.

The collection of data is likewise the prime focus of the pilot project Encouraging cycling through use of crowdsourced data-driven insights. By engaging citizens in the collection of cycling data on real-time location of journeys, speed, dwell time, road surface quality, collisions, and qualitative survey data, the team strives to build citizen trust through transparent data collection. This data will be gathered through intelligent and connected See.Sense bike lights and subsequently analysed alongside data held by the test cities of Manchester, Antwerp, and Dublin. In collaboration with the newly founded Cycling Industries Europe (CIE), they furthermore aim to develop a new International Standard for cycling data.

The many city authorities attending the bootcamp showed considerable enthusiasm for the opportunities afforded by adopting the IoT solutions applied to cycling. This promises an interesting journey of the roll-out of the smart mobility technologies as well as the creation of a truly interoperable and transparent smart city network.