SmartSpires, a EUR 3.1 million initiative co-funded by the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), aims to turn Luxembourg’s Belval campus into a smart city living lab – a blueprint for cities across Europe. Spinverse supported the project consortium in the successful proposal preparation phase and upon the launch of the project, also provides project coordination services.
Led by a public-private consortium including 5SKYE, Gcore, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and Orange Luxembourg, the three-year project will demonstrate how digital infrastructure and AI can power safer, cleaner and more efficient urban services for residents and local authorities.
A living lab for mobility, safety and sustainability
SmartSpires aims to combine densified 5G connectivity with edge computing infrastructure to enable AI-driven and IoT-based services in ultra low-latency environments. The project will deploy at least three smart towers, each equipped with 5G for advanced connectivity, computing for local AI and edge applications, IoT sensors and various local add-ons to support innovative use cases in the campus. These towers will form the backbone for real-time and data-intensive applications that enhance urban management and services, offering a scalable model for European cities seeking to integrate advanced 5G, edge computing and IoT solutions.
What sets this initiative apart is the integration of connectivity, computing and edge intelligence within a single infrastructure, enabling local data processing and decision-making. This approach reduces latency, optimises energy consumption, and enhances data governance, as sensitive information can be processed closer to its source. It also opens the door for entirely new classes of applications that require real-time responses and high-bandwidth data streams, which would be impractical or inefficient to handle in conventional cloud-based architectures.
Four key smart city use cases
At the heart of the initiative are four key smart city use cases. currently being specified in collaboration with local stakeholders. A Smart City Living Lab, operated by LIST, will serve as an experimentation platform for testing and scaling new 5G-enabled urban solutions.
In parallel, three additional use cases are targeted to directly exploit the smart towers: mobility services will leverage 5G and edge computing to improve public transportation and traffic management; crowd analytics will enhance public safety and urban planning by analysing the real-time flow of people and traffic; and waste management will leverage IoT sensors and local processing to optimise collection and recycling processes.
A strong technical consortium supported by Spinverse
The SmartSpires consortium brings together four key players: 5SKYE installs multifunctional smart infrastructure that acts as a neutral host, integrating densified 5G, MEC, digital signage and AI-based CCTV analytics; Gcore, as Project Coordinator, coordinates the project and leads edge infrastructure deployment; LIST, as Technical Coordinator, coordinates the technical design, operationalisation and evaluation of the use cases, and oversees the Belval Living Lab; and Orange Luxembourg provides the 5G network backbone.
Spinverse funding experts supported the project consortium with a full project proposal service for the competitive Connecting Europe Facility call. The team contributed to the project proposal and provided support in the Grant Agreement phase. After the successful funding decision, Spinverse provides project coordination support.
Clara Ulken, Product Director from Gcore, says: “Spinverse provided invaluable support in bringing SmartSpires to life. Their expert guidance through the CEF proposal process and their help in navigating complex administrative and coordination challenges were essential to our success. With strong project management skills, deep knowledge of EU-funded initiatives, and unwavering reliability, Spinverse has proven to be an exceptional partner. Working with their team is not only seamless and professional, but also genuinely energizing and inspiring.”
While focused on Belval, the project’s ambition is broader: to demonstrate how Europe’s cities can build smarter, more connected communities through scalable, efficient infrastructure innovation.
More information: https://www.smartspires.eu/
Photo credit: LIST Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology