Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre, is investing €500,000 in a Science Foundation Ireland funded research project designed to develop the IT and enterprise architecture needed to create smart cities of the future. Limerick has been selected as a national case study for the project. As part of the case study, researchers from Lero at Dublin City University together with Limerick City and County Council will develop a new digital service (Insight Limerick) which offers citizens a portal for information sharing, open data and data visualisation while analytics will be used to gain insights leading to better services. The Internet of Things will facilitate data capture from potentially thousands of sensors and devices from water, soil and air quality, traffic, cycling and pedestrian movement, parking event management and other sources. For the people, communities and businesses in Limerick to maximise the benefits derived from these new sources of information the data needs to be connected, shared, analysed and protected in a coherent and consistent way in order for new services to be developed and existing ones improved. “It’s a coup for Limerick to be selected for this important case study as it can be a valuable stepping stone on our vision to make Limerick a sustainable smart city, region and community,” said Councillor Kieran O’Hanlon, Mayor of Limerick. “Our goal is to make Limerick an increasingly attractive location for foreign direct investment as well as indigenous investment which will boost jobs. At the same time, we want to make Limerick a positive experience for locals and visitors through better transportation solutions, reduced traffic, a cleaner environment and a safer community,” he added. “There is a lot of talk about smart cities globally but one of the big challenges is to develop IT and enterprise architecture which suits the needs of the entire city rather than focused on information silos, said Dr Markus Helfert, director of the Business Informatics Group at Dublin City University. “The IT architectural requirements for a city are fundamentally different and need to take account of a broader range of stakeholders and more complex functional requirements than in an enterprise situation. Working with Limerick we aim to design this framework on top of which exciting digital services can be placed. “The objective is to develop the Limerick enterprise architecture. Successful development of a smart city requires a unified ICT infrastructure to allow sustainable economic growth. The unified ICT platform must be suitable to model, measure, optimise, control and monitor complex interdependent systems of urban life,” he concluded.