CitySDK development started within the CitySDK project with a focus on several key areas:
- citizen participation,
- mobility and
- tourism.
These were chosen because of their importance to the target cities; the existence or emergence of standards that could be sensibly adopted; the potential for re-use; and the benefit for residents.
This focus has resulted in a number of tools that together form the 3 major Components of the Toolkit. For each of these we have provided guidelines for implementation, the source code that can be reused or extended, and technical specifications that can also be adopted for each city.
Extendable solutions
However, the tools that we have developed may have a wider application – so that “issue reporting” standards in Helsinki is beginning to be used for other forms of consultation, or customer queries elsewhere; the tourism API developed in Lisbon can include a much wider range of “points of interest” than just tourist attractions; and the open data platform developed in Amsterdam for mobility applications, can easily use other datasets as well.
The nature of the services that are being deployed means that there are different levels of complexity to integrating the toolkit in your city. For instance, the nature of a city “issue reporting” tool requires close integration with a city’s legacy systems and different cities have implemented this in different ways depending on the nature of these systems.
Elsewhere, we have seen benefits in both hosting datasets for other cities, and running a stand-alone instance. In each of the components you are advised to contact the technical lead if you have any questions on what might be the best approach for your city.