The Smart City Ecosystem (SCitE) project, funded under the German federal code 13FH0I71IA and carried out by Fachhochschule Dortmund from 1 May 2021 to 31 December 2022, aimed to break down data silos in urban environments while preserving privacy and enabling secure data exchange across neighbouring smart cities. The initiative was split into two interrelated sub‑projects: SCitE.Data, which focused on data processing, integration, and privacy‑compliant exchange, and SCitE.Operations, which addressed the operational deployment of connectors and the overall ecosystem.
SCitE.Data produced a custom modelling language for describing heterogeneous data structures and their exchange formats, together with a specification of interfaces to the central integration platform. A dedicated privacy‑policy modelling language was also conceived to identify data‑handling risks and to enable the definition of usage policies. The project evaluated existing modelling languages for technical data protection and ultimately selected a bespoke language that could be embedded into the connectors. In parallel, a protocol was defined for communication between SCitE.Data connectors and their plugins, and a continuous‑integration pipeline was established using GitLab to automate the deployment of these plugins. A prototype implementation demonstrated the feasibility of the software‑technical concept, although no quantitative performance metrics were reported in the final report.
SCitE.Operations concentrated on modelling the deployment process of connectors and the platform itself. After surveying available solutions for software‑system deployment modelling, the team adopted LEMMA’s Operation Modeling Language to describe the provisioning of SCitE.Data artefacts within existing municipal IT landscapes. This choice was driven by the language’s expressive power and its compatibility with the heterogeneous environments typical of smart cities. The operational modelling was complemented by a requirement analysis that identified the necessary capabilities for secure, scalable, and privacy‑aware deployment.
The project’s collaboration network included the Ruhrvalley Core‑Team and Research‑Board, which provided strategic oversight and facilitated participation in the Ruhrvalley conventions of 2021 and 2022, where SCitE’s focus on smart cities was highlighted. Workshops were organised to elicit five application scenarios in partnership with the SCiSusMob and SCiLivLabs projects, leading to a comprehensive requirements document for both SCitE.Data and SCitE.Operations. The IDiAL organisation contributed to the annual reporting and dissemination of project outcomes.
SCitE’s timeline was extended to 31 December 2022 at no additional cost to accommodate staffing shortages and the shift to digital workshops caused by the COVID‑19 pandemic. The extension allowed the completion of all five work packages, including the development of the modelling languages, the specification of the connector‑plugin protocol, the CI pipeline, and the deployment modelling. The project also integrated insights from external research, notably Gupta et al., who identified openness, spread, and a shared vision as critical for smart‑city data ecosystems; SCitE echoed these findings in its design of an open, easily integrable platform.
In summary, SCitE delivered a set of modelling languages, a connector‑plugin communication protocol, a CI‑enabled deployment pipeline, and a deployment modelling framework that collectively enable the integration of diverse data sources—municipal, corporate, and citizen—while ensuring privacy compliance and facilitating cross‑city data exchange. The collaborative effort among academic, industry, and regional partners, supported by the German federal funding, positioned SCitE as a system‑of‑systems approach to smart‑city data management.