Gaia-X and European Smart Cities and Communities white paper

A joint European Gaia-X whitepaper, coordinated by Andreja Lampe abd Gaber Terseglav from GXH-SI.

The paper combines multiple perspectives and aims to establish a common understanding of both the Gaia-X and key local technology concepts and how they can be interrelated. It is not intended as an academic contribution, but it rather addresses city administrations, IT industry actors, EU policy makers and Gaia-X members in general.

Gaia-X has recently emerged as a key player in the European data policy and infrastructure domain. With this paper, we aim to reflect on what the application of Gaia-X can be in the European Smart Cities domain. Throughout the text, we will use the terms ‘Urban technology’, ‘Smart City or ‘Smart Cities and Communities’ and ‘Local technology’. Through these terms, we refer to the application of technologies in cities, but also in smaller geographical areas, like villages and larger ones like provinces and regions. This refers to an evolution in Europe to go beyond smart cities by referring to ‘Local’ systems or ‘Smart cities and communities’, which are understood by the EU as applications beyond cities.

The paper combines multiple perspectives and aims to establish a common understanding of both the Gaia-X and key local technology concepts and how they can be interrelated. It is not intended as an academic contribution, but it rather addresses city administrations, IT industry actors, EU policy makers and Gaia-X members in general. At the time of writing, the Gaia-X specifications are still in flux, which means that describing detailed case applications in a Local context is somewhat premature. However, this paper makes a first attempt at framing the application domain of Gaia-X in the Local European Smart Cities and Communities context. In subsequent versions of this document, we will set out to specify the cases in more detail.