AI4Cities is a 3-year EU-funded project bringing together leading European cities looking for pre-commercial artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to accelerate their endeavour to reach carbon neutrality. Helsinki (Finland), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Copenhagen (Denmark), Paris region (France), Stavanger (Norway) and Tallinn (Estonia) are the six European cities and regions that want to ask companies to provide with AI solutions for different mobility and energy challenges, that will ultimately contribute to reduce CO2 emissions and meet their climate commitments. The total funding amount to be divided among the selected suppliers throughout the whole PCP process is EUR 4.6 million.
The ‘Get ready: AI4Cities Bootcamp’ will be organised as the first step or phase 0 of the PCP process to coach motivated participants to write their best applications yet for upcoming tender. Aim of the bootcamp is to coach and spar participating teams about their preliminary solution ideas and application process. During Phase 0 feedback for the tender qualifications will be collected, so participants will have a unique opportunity to impact on the contents of the following tender. In addition to the aforementioned, phase 0 has the following goals:
— to map companies with innovative and state-of-the-art solutions for hosting cities problems;
— to get a better understanding of the state-of-the-art and future developments in order to develop a call for proposals with the optimal scope;
— to gain a broad understanding of all relevant and available users, stakeholders, technologies and possible solutions in the marketplace;
— to consult with the potential companies the validity of the challenge topics and its specifications, as well as to gather feedback on the feasibility of response;
— to identify remaining gaps and challenges and where R&D is still required.
Companies hesitating about participating in this PCP can ask themselves following questions to guide them to right conclusion:
— Are you developing or planning to develop innovative and/or state-of-the-art AI solutions related to energy or mobility?
— Want to reach six big European cities as possible customers?
— Want to grow your understanding of the public procurement application process and learn the best tricks?
— Want to get sparring and feedback about your solution before the actual procurement?
— Want to write your best public procurement application ever?
Timeline
24.8. — 11.9. Application period
3.9.9 — 12 CET Info Webinar
8.9. CET 2h OMC Matchmaking Event
Week 38 team selections and announcing participating teams
23.- 24.9. Co-Creation Days (1 day for each track, days TBC)
December-January PCP application period
December PCP matchmaking event
Mid January 2021 coaching webinar.
Pre-commercial procurement (PCP) focuses on radical innovation and is meant for services, tools or products that are not yet on or close to market. With the support and participation of like-minded cities, a Europe-wide PCP challenge-based competition will be launched.
The PCP focused on procuring R&D development of solutions that support cities transition to carbon neutrality via AI and related enabling digital technologies. Based on this, two key domains linked to the cities’ strategies and carbon-positive goals have been pre-selected and will most likely form the two subchallenges of the PCP action, hereon referred to as lots, which are:
Lot 1: Mobility, and
Lot 2: Energy.
This PCP is done by buyers group, with Forum Virium Helsinki as its lead procurer. Additional buyers group members are: City of Amsterdam, Cap Digital (Paris Region), City of Copenhagen, City of Tallinn and City of Stavanger.
Phase 0 of the PCP process will now start with an open market consultation (OMC), which is the subject of this announcement. During the OMC a large-scale co-creation process will take place in the form of Get ready: AI4Cities Bootcamp based on the underlying premise of applying AI towards solving Cities GHG emissions. Innovative solutions must produce an impact in helping cities reduce their GHG emissions.
After the OMC period and based on its results, a request for tenders (RfT) will be launched December 2020/January 2021. Each selected supplier will be awarded a framework agreement that covers three R&D phases. Number of suppliers reduces with each phase and at the same time funding per supplier will increase within each phase.
The PCP execution stage consists of 3 phases, as follows.
1) Phase 1 (concept phase) will focus on the feasibility of the proposed solutions. It aims to verify their conceptual, technological, organisational, regulatory, safety and budgetary feasibility. The expected output from participating companies is a report and presentation. It will also a description of the results of their feasibility studies and their conclusions for the continuation of the development activities in phase 2.
Phase 1 foresees the awarding of 20 contracts for each lot. We estimate that Phase 1 lasts for 3 months.
2) During phase 2, consists of a first prototype development. The prototype development phase will have an expected duration of 4 months. It will focus on a strong collaboration between buyer group and suppliers. Therefore it maximises dialogue and collaboration between the city actors and the teams. Phase 2 foresees the awarding of 10 contracts per lot.
3) in phase 3 a limited number of consortia from phase 2 will be selected for the testing of prototypes in real-life pilots. It is intended to verify and compare the full feature set and performance of each solution, in operational conditions and provide meaningful feedback to the suppliers for their prototype’s continuous development. The piloting phase has an estimated duration of 6 months and it is expected that the piloted solutions will be tested in two of the buyers group cities.
A total procurement budget of EUR 4 666 630 is allocated to this PCP to be distributed among the three phases of the PCP.
AI4Cities hackathon/bootcamp will be facilitated by Industryhack Ltd
https://industryhack.com/ai4cities-bootcamp/