The EPIC platform combines the industrial strength of IBM’s ‘Smart City’ vision and cloud computing infrastructure with the knowledge and expertise of leading European LL’s and municipalities such as iMinds iLab.o, ISSY-Media and Manchester to ensure the development of a European ‘innovation ecosystem’ that provides an extensive range of opportunities for sustainable, user-driven web-based services for citizens and businesses. EPIC accelerates the uptake of these new services across Europe by combining the world-leading business expertise of Deloitte Consulting with the practical, first-hand knowledge of ENoLL to deliver a robust roadmap that will help cities across Europe upscale from the LL environment to real-life urban deployment.

The EPIC team understands that to be truly ‘smart’ a city must be able to easily access and leverage the benefits of SME and citizen-driven and tested services as well as to anticipate and plan for powerful new innovations such as the Internet of Things (IOT) and Future of the Internet which will, among other things, enable them to digitise and connect their infrastructures in a manner that infuses them with intelligence. Toward this end, IOT specialists Birmingham City University will work closely with technology partners such as IBM to ensure that the EPIC platform is fully capable of providing IOT-enabled services. Business consultant partners like Deloitte and 21c additionally ensure that the EPIC roadmap is fully future-proofed for new instrumentations such as ‘smart water, electricity and transport grids.’

EPIC combines i) user-driven open innovation, ii) connected smart cities and iii) web-based services in the following manner:

1. Partner Living Labs engage citizens and SME’s in the innovation process, driving creation of new services that citizens, businesses and city visitors want
2. Partner cities plug existing and new co-designed web-based services into the open EPIC platform so that other cities, such as relative newcomers like Tirgu-Mures in Romania,  can easily connect to the platform and use them

Partner consultants and subject matter experts leverage pilot findings to help create a business-oriented, public-private partnership roadmap that incorporates a variety of differing business models from open source, to pay per use and licensing.