USAGE

Urban Data Space for Green Deal

Our vision

How can we adapt the Green New Deal into Local Green Deals with data? 

We support the implementation of the European strategy for data and various European Green Deal priority actions at the level where climate change is mostly felt: cities and towns. 

With USAGE (Urban Data Space for Green Deal) we provide solutions and mechanisms for making city-level environmental and climate data available to everyone based on FAIR principles, like: innovative governance mechanisms, consolidated arrangements, AI-based tools, and data analytics to share, access, and use city-level data from Earth Observation (EO), Internet of Things (IoT), authoritative and crowdsources, leveraging on standards for data and service interoperability. 

USAGE wants to become a decentralized infrastructure for trustworthy data collection, processing, and exchange based on commonly agreed principles, facilitating the combination of heterogeneous data for policy analysis. 

 Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours, or to the question it asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx.

(Calvino I., 1959, The invisible cities)

Is it possible for a data-driven city to tackle climate change? 

We are validating USAGE solutions in 4 diverse pilot areas located in 4 different countries, focusing also on the reusability of the solutions in other urban areas.

Aim: Expanding green spaces, mitigating heat islands and flash flooding events, with IoT and sensor data

Aim: Modelling, simulating and predicting urban climate conditions with AI and real-time environmental data


Aim: Becoming climate neutral by 2050, with ML to identify buildings suitable for green roofs


Aim: Connecting citizen participation, open data and geospatial data to local Green Deal priorities


Our mantra

Twin Transitions are mutually connected (see Local Green Deals LGD - A Blueprint for Action). Cities need to see the value in connecting digital data tools to create circular value chains in various sectors related to LGD: the amount of detailed data will continue to rise in the coming years, therefore LGD shall support innovation in data-driven policies related to energy efficiency / performance of buildings, air quality and climate conditions, water resources and management, food and agriculture, waste and circular digital hardware.