Living labs for smart cities: A use case in Guadalajara city to foster innovation and develop citizen-centered solutions

Pursuing innovative projects for the development of Smart Cities requires collaborative efforts from members of the triple helix (government, industry and academia). Developing Smart Cities solutions faces the challenge of validating prototypes with respect to the following criteria: scalability, interoperability, modularity, resiliency, and security. The first Living Lab for Smart Cities at the University of Guadalajara aims to provide a test bed for the verification and validation of Smart City solutions with a focus on IT core technologies. Smart City indicators aim to provide metrics that evaluate the performance of a city from a specific perspective (e.g., mobility). Living Labs are designed to facilitate the generation of such metrics at the development phase. In this paper, we present our experience on implementing a test bed with scalable architecture for testing multiple solutions. We also describe our current efforts towards creating an international network for Living Labs through an interdisciplinary consortium of academia and industry for Smart Cities.