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This project is co-ordinated by the City of Manchester, and involves a total of 18 EU Cities, 20 ICT companies and 36 research groups. These organisations are pooling advanced knowledge and experience of electronic government and city planning/management in an innovative action research project.

The project aims at developing an Integrated Open System City Platform (IOSCP). This is a virtual tool dedicated to administrators, firms and citizens in which the potential of ICTs is exploited to assist in the provision of a broad spectrum of city services and to facilitate research activities on urban environment.

Open Systems architecture enables a wide range of software and hardware products to be managed simultaneously. The related multidimensional databases are configured to provide intelligent analysis for users. Thus, the project goes beyond provision of information, to “serve” citizens and city managers with “intelligent environments” that support new more inclusive and educational planning processes.

This more agile governance aids rapid business development whilst enhancing citizens’ rights in urban decision-making via advanced visualisation, forecasting, simulation and sustainability evaluation of re-development proposals.

This provides a wide range of new business and job opportunities, particularly for new and emerging Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), both in terms of information technology as well as new forms of electronic services yet to be imagined. There are a range of problems to be addressed in the project, concerning electronic identity and signatures, data integration and security, integration and interoperability of fixed and mobile IT systems, GIS and data handling, etc. When all this technology is linked and functions together, i.e., made “interoperable” (the proper technical term) then the foundations for the future intelligent information city will be laid.

This will enable the cities of Europe to support the eEurope 2005 Action Plan – leading the race to establish the networked knowledge society. Core activity of the project is the creation and the evaluation of six different prototypes in a number of cities; Manchester (e-regeneration), Marseille (e-city administration), Siena and Helsinki (e-participation), Rome and Leicester (e-transport information) and Dresden (e-land use planning).

In this consortium, FEEM focuses its analysis on the impact of the IOSCP on potential users. This evaluation is mainly conduced through the organisation of different surveys on stakeholders, using conjoint analysis and contingent valuation techniques.

INTELCITIES addresses the EU policy objective by developing the intelligent city – an integrated city-wide ICT information system continuously accessible to all urban stakeholders (planners, developers, politicians, designers, engineers, transport and utility service providers and individual citizens) that enables more inclusive decision-making and supports more sustainable life-styles.

In this IP FEEM plays a role within two different WPs. In WP1, which aims at developing a virtual platform for easy access to public services provision for citizens and firms (e-administration) in the city of Marseille, FEEM analyses citizens’ requirements for electronic city services and develops a set of recommendations, business strategies for city councils and local governments in general. In WP2a, which aims at exploiting the potential of e-services provision in a fiber-optic wired town (such as Siena) through the distribution of a set top box in each apartment, FEEM focuses its activity in the analysis of user (households) needs and stake-holder interests. Building on the outcomes of the previous surveys, FEEM will perform an analysis on (local) market for e-services.