This report presents the results of the European Commission application programming interfaces (APIs) for digital government (APIs4DGov) study, which aims to analyse the role of APIs in the public sector and, specifically, the motivations for their use and the way governments should implement them. This document provides a concrete tool for governments to determine the status of their API strategies and, eventually, how these strategies should be designed or adopted.
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Innovation
SolarShare is Singapore’ s first peer to peer (P2P) energy trading platform. It is a pilot project that allows consumers to purchase renewable electricity produced by private solar panel owners, via an online marketplace from across the city. Prosumers with solar panels installed on their rooftops can sell their excess green energy. Consumers can use SolarShare to convert to green energy at competitive prices, supporting their local community. Continue reading
According to the author, the 2020 collapse of the global economy due to Covid-19 pandemic has enabled us to think about long term trends and what the future could hold for our cities and regions, especially due to the climate agenda. Having as a starting point the current pandemic, this paper sets out the historical precedents for economic transitions after collapses that unleash new technologically based innovation waves. These are shown to be associated with different energy and infrastructure priorities and their transport and resulting urban forms. Continue reading
REFLOW is an EU H2020 project, from 2019 to 2022, that seeks to understand and transform urban material flows and to co-create and test circular and regenerative solutions in urban and peri-urban areas across Europe. The vision of REFLOW is to develop circular and regenerative cities through the re-localisation of production and the reconfiguration of material flows at different scales, leveraging Fab Labs and makerspaces as catalysts for wide-scale collaboration and co-creation conducive to systemic, sustainable change. The project operates at the international level, mobilising existing networks and movements that are working towards a new productive model for cities such as Circular Cities, C40 Cities and Fab City Global Initiative. Continue reading
Sharing has become a global phenomenon; business models, social innovations and technological developments enable an escalated number of uses for a given asset, resulting in reshaped urban dynamics, practices and morphologies.
This paper is exploring diverse aspects of sharing economy as part of the urban fabric, through participatory activities with citizens and stakeholders. It investigates the co-construction of society and technology with respect to the implementation of sharing-based strategies in urban practices. Continue reading
The transformation of research and policy approaches to innovation for decarbonisation towards a type of social innovation, is promising to open discussions and interrelate with the present reality. This paper starts by challenging the demand-supply dichotomy. Complex systems and social practice theories represent the compelling frameworks whereby to deal with this transformation.
This report is providing an overview of the activities, organisation and implications of energy communities as participants across the energy system. It identifies them as contiguous processes of both the energy transition and social innovation. Paths for future policy implications and research initiatives are analysed and informed. The European Commission’ s Clean Energy for All Europeans Package is stated as the indicator of the role prosumers and their collective forms will play in the future energy system. Continue reading