The European Commission formally invited the +CityxChange team to be part of the Smart Cities and Communities Project. The project in question belongs to the EU Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020.

The +CityxChange project uses IOTA to facilitate connectivity between devices as a means of promoting “climate-friendly and sustainable urban environments.” Such a large-scale implementation leads to what the team refer to as “Smart Cities”.

The +CityxChange team explains the concept of Smart cities on its official website. The long-term prospects are quite promising, possibly explaining the European Union’s interest in its research and development:

“In the future, municipalities must handle a completely different complexity in society. In order to have well-functioning cities, cities must improve how they utilise their resources and how they engage with technologies in different ways. A smart city will use digital technologies to enhance performance and wellbeing, to reduce costs and resource consumption and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens.”

The Project has evolved satisfactorily and the experts have positively evaluated it. It not only attracts the attention of technology enthusiasts but has also received significant support from high-level policy makers, universities, enterprises, SMEs, Non-Profit Organizations, etc.

+CityxChange and IOTA: A Great Team For a Better Life

The IOTA team is enthusiastic to see how their network can contribute to the successful development of the +CityxChange project. On the official IOTA blog, the satisfaction of its Head of Business Development, Wilfried Pimienta, is evident:

“Smart cities is one of the fastest growing cross-sectoral arenas of innovation for IOTA. Building on our work and partnerships across mobility, energy or data marketplace, these smart city ecosystems bring it all together. The +CityxChange consortium gathers many public and private partners around an ambitious open innovation and co-creation initiative.”

The consortium project will receive initial funding of 20 million Euros from the European Research and Innovation programme Horizon 2020; however, it is important to stress that this will not be the only source of income for the project.

It is estimated that around 10 million euros could be received immediately from partners interested in the rapid development of such solutions. The project is expected to start on January 1, 2019.

Additionally, The cities chosen for implementation are: Trondheim, Limerick, Alba Iulia, Pisek, Sestao, Smolyan, and Voru.

It is also important to take into consideration that the project interconects 7 countries all around Europe. It is possible to envision global interconection as IOT evolves into a massive phenomenon just as communications did decades ago.