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

The Challenges we face

Cities are both the source of and solution to today's economic, environmental, and social challenges, but they need to frame data into policy practices, for example, Local Green Deals and their related policy instruments (procurement, long-term investment, etc.) to leverage evidence-based data informing policy to support decision making.

In one sentence, cities need to play a central role and will be the main players to achieve the overall objectives of the EU Green Deal.

USAGE has three main objectives:

  • first, to better understand what is currently possible with the available data and technology;

  • second, what additional data and technology needs to be developed to better meet the needs of cities in reaching goals of the EU Green Deal; and

  • third, to share best practices for multi-player data-sharing, and to allow to copy and transform as many use-cases as possible to other cities.

USAGE aims at overcoming legal and technical barriers to the sharing and exploitation of urban data needed for policies related to Local Green Deal (LGD) among public bodies, private organisations and civil society.

This will be achieved, by combining the necessary tools and infrastructures for addressing issues of data trust. USAGE will include:

  • the deployment of software solutions for data-sharing and their exploitation

  • the creation of data governance frameworks for cities

  • the improvement of availability, quality, and interoperability of data for LGD

USAGE components will enable data-search, data-access, data-processing and data-visualization. They facilitate integration of EU and national data with local data, and serve as hubs for climate resilience knowledge sharing.

USAGE is focused on small and medium-sized European cities, to provide them with the reference implementation of Urban Data Space for the Green Deal in the form of decoupled, reusable, open components. These components support the full data flow from initial collection to value-added products in the form of Analysis Ready Data and Decision Ready Information towards representations directly suitable for policy-imaking and long-term knowledge gathering.

We are going to validate USAGE solutions in 4 diverse pilot areas located in 4 different countries, focusing also on the reusability of the solutions in other urban areas:


Do you know?

  • In Europe there are over 800 cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants (PBL, 2016); cities are home to over two-thirds of the EU's population, they account for about 80% of energy use and generate up to 85% of Europe's GDP (EC, 2017).

  • Cities are mandated to promote the long-term well-being of their citizens and often are responsible for the direct provision of many public services.

  • Cities implement 70% of EU legislation, handle one-third of public spending, and manage two-thirds of public investment (EC, 2021).