Research and innovation roadmap for ICTs supporting energy systems in smart cities

The European Union has created a series of targets to mitigate the climate change. The key objectives of these targets are to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, to increase the share of renewables in energy production and to improve the energy efficiency. The optimal and sustainable energy use requires smart energy management, collaboration and interconnections among various systems and stakeholders in a complex operation environment. Roadmaps suggesting research and development actions with the aim to increase the energy efficiency of buildings and neighbourhoods have already been created earlier. However, there is also a need for efficient energy systems at the city level. The adaption and development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) solutions for such systems is investigated in the READY4SmartCities project. The project focuses on the future energy systems of smart cities and especially on how ICT is enabling and supporting them. This paper summarizes the proposed research and innovation strategy for interoperable energy systems. The results presented in this paper are the READY4SmartCities vision, the draft roadmap and the implementation recommendations. The paper is structured as follows. First, the methodology used for creating a roadmap for ICT supporting energy systems in smart cities is described. Then, the vision is presented. Next, an overview of the interoperability concept is given and a general solution approach is discussed. Finally, the highlights of the roadmap are provided and the conclusions of the main findings in the paper are drawn.