CITyFiED was based on a mix of demonstration, innovative technologies and sound business models towards the sustainable development of the EU. CITyFiED aimed to deliver sustainable and efficient urban districts and to provide a high quality of life to its inhabitants through optimal management of its resources.
1. A strategy towards the Smart City of the Future
The CITyFiED project aimed to deliver a replicable, systemic and integrated strategy to transform European cities into Smart Cities, focusing on reducing the energy demand and GHG emissions and increasing the use of renewable energy sources. This was achieved through the definition of an innovative methodology for city renovation at district level and sound business models that would drive extensive energy-efficient district renovations.
2. Demonstration sites
An extensive demonstration action was carried out as part of CITyFiED, involving a relevant number of cities and the necessary technological stakeholders in a cluster, with the aim of maximizing the impact and replication potential from three high level and very ambitious demonstration projects that were carried out in Laguna de Duero (Spain), Soma (Turkey) and Lund (Sweden).
The extensive demonstration action in the three cities involved the energy efficient retrofitting of 190,462 m2 of living space, 2,067 dwellings and more than 5,700 citizens. Laguna de Duero-Valladolid, Soma and Lund are a set of cities, strategically located around Europe, which represents a variety of demonstrative scenarios of city refurbishment at district level in terms of district and building typologies, ownership models, district heating systems and technological solutions for low voltage electricity distributed generation.
These cities have addressed holistic interventions for district renovation. All of the main technological aspects (retrofitting of buildings, district heating system and distributed low voltage generation) have been addressed by means of a systemic approach in each city, in order to achieve significant energy savings, very low energy buildings and very low CO2emissions. Each location has its own entity with respect to the demonstration capability, because the foreseen interventions were in-depth, covering ambitious energy targets and providing very high replication potential.
3. Innovative retrofitting methodologies
In parallel with the demonstrative actions, as a part of the integrated strategy to adapt the cities, CITyFiED developed an innovative methodology and procedures for planning, deploying and replicating energy efficient district retrofitting actions. This approach considered the technological availability for building retrofitting, district heating facilities, distributed electricity generation and monitoring in order to contribute to achieve low energy and CO2-emission urban districts. Renewable energy sources played a key role in this approach towards a clean energy city strategy that aimed to reduce drastically the CO2emissions.
4. Dissemination, communication and exploitation
Another key objective of the CITyFiED strategy was a very ambitious dissemination, communication and exploitation activity, in which a cluster of 11 cities was created and properly integrated to maximize the replication potential of the project results. Clear messages about the benefits of the energy efficiency in the city environment were conveyed to professionals, academic audiences and the citizens. Not only regarding the energy issues related to buildings, but also complementary issues such as the business models for district retrofitting and non-technological barriers were communicated in order to modify the user behaviour towards a more sustainable awareness.
To maximise the impact and reach of the project results, CITyFiED set up a Community of Interest involving 44 cities and organizations, which eases the access to more than 100,000 people in all of Europe by means of a wide dissemination and communication plan that uses the more innovative media technologies.
Moreover, throughout the different stages of the project the exploitation potential of CITyFiED exploitable results was assessed. As a consequence, tailor made exploitation strategies were inferred to support their market deployment.
5. Scientific and Technical objectives
The most important scientific and technical objectives are represented by the development of a systemic methodology for holistic district renovation and urban ecosystems' planning and the identification of sound technologies, methods and solutions to further improve:
- Residential district retrofitting
- District heating systems
- Integration of renewable energy sources
- Distributed generation
CITyFiED Scientific and Technical objectives