Benchmarking the role of the Public Sector and Location Intelligence in Smart Spaces

The diffusion of technologies has enabled many cities to transform into hubs of digital transformation, deploying urban platforms, digital twins of cities and other digital ecosystems that leverage geospatial information. Smart cities are part of a wider trend, which has a strong element of location - the Smart Space. While we witness the market for Smart Spaces expanding, we lack a deeper understanding of its challenges and the possible solutions that location intelligence might provide. We see a particular opportunity to identify areas where the public sector can help address these challenges. It will thus inform relevant policies, such as the interoperability policy and the EU Data Strategy. Developing a benchmarking framework to analyse Smart Spaces in this context is particularly important to identify barriers, for example, in the interoperability of (location) data and technology, anticipating emerging market demands, and the derived recommendations for improving the status quo – especially for required actions of the public sector. This report details how the Smart Space Benchmark Framework was designed, the insight gathered from the four case studies, an analysis of how to improve the use of location intelligence in Smart Spaces, and provides conclusions and recommendations. Our conclusions address the outcomes of these areas of study, setting the key takeaways from benchmarking the roles of the public sector and location intelligence in a wider context and suggesting future research.