BIG IoT improved the interoperability among different Internet of Things platforms that were made available by the project partners and it promoted the development of new services and applications. It valorised the great quantity of public and private data from interconnected mobile devices and sensors, that can interact in real time with the external environment. Thanks to the BIG IoT project, service and app developers can use the data made available from heterogeneous platforms, without the need to develop specific access solutions each time.

The interoperability gap among the platforms was indeed overcome defining a generic and unified web interface (called BIG IoT API) developed with an open community approach and adopted by 8 smart objects platforms: in Italy by CSI Piemonte Smart Data Platform and by 7 other platforms in Germany, Greece, Ireland and Spain.

April 2017 saw the launch of the first open call to SMEs, start-ups, universities and research centres, to fund initiatives that would enrich the platform with data sources. The call was replicated in 2018 with a focus on the development of services. The participants integrated their platform with the BIG IoT infrastructure to make data usable through the project marketplace. Different solutions were developed for the mobility and air quality sectors in the pilot areas of BIG IoT (Biella, Vercelli, Barcelona and Berlin).

To promote the adoption of the BIG IoT API, the project partners involved the developer communities through different events and hackathons: the core of the dissemination of the project results is the BIG IoT marketplace – to share IoT services and application.

CSI worked to make the data present on the regional Smart Data Platform (yucca.smartdatanet.it) accessible through the BIG IoT infrastructure and developed two pilot projects in this framework with the towns of Biella and Vercelli, the areas of experimentation of the solutions.

Facts and figures about BIG IoT
50 dataset available on the marketplace
14 new projects (3 in Piedmont) selected through two open calls 

Sensors installed in Biella and Vercelli for the pilot projects 

• 50 air quality measurement stations
• 30 parking sensors 
• 20 webcams to monitor traffic in real time 
• 4 apps developed for Public Administrations and citizens: smart parking (Vercelli) for the availability of parking spaces; smart biking for the availability of bike sharing slots; smart traffic management to monitor urban traffic; healthy path to identify healthy urban routes, optimised in terms of traffic and air quality 

BIG IoT offered interesting opportunities:

• valorisation of our Smart Data Platform as a Smart City platform, with the integration of new data from sensors: air quality, traffic, availability of parking places, availability of bike sharing slots
• development of apps and services for citizens and PA
• involvement of SMEs with the open calls of April 2017 and January 2018
• possible involvement of start-ups and universities in local and European hackathons 
• participation to the European Partner Initiative to set up new relations with partners outside of the project