As we know very well, interoperability starts with standards. Standard-based technologies can work seamlessly together because they share common protocols and data models. As cities increasingly recognize the long-term value of avoiding any vendor lock-in, interoperability has become a key requirement in public tenders and smart city projects.
Yet one important challenge remains. Municipalities still lack a common way to describe their operational needs in a form that different standards organizations can consistently understand and manage. Bridging this gap is precisely the mission of the Smart Cities Special Interest Group (SIG), and we are proud to be among its participants.
Established in early 2026, the Smart Cities SIG is a collaborative, implementation-neutral initiative facilitated by the Open Mobile Alliance and initiated by Madrid Digital Office, the organization leading the City of Madrid’s digital transformation. The SIG brings together municipalities, standards development organizations, industry leaders, and academia to tackle the interoperability challenges that continue to limit smart city deployments.
What makes the initiative unique is its approach. Instead of starting from technical specifications, the SIG begins with municipalities’ operational requirements. Its objective is to develop an operational semantic abstraction – a common methodology for expressing cities’ needs and translating them into actionable information within a Capability Assessment Framework.
This framework will make it easier to determine whether existing standards already address specific municipal requirements and to identify any remaining gaps. Each standards organization will then be able to assess its own specifications independently while retaining full ownership of its roadmap and evolution. Digital Twins will provide a unified context to improve decisions and operations.
Within the Smart Cities SIG, Paradox Engineering will provide its extensive R&D expertise in Smart Lighting and IoT to contribute to the validation of the proposed data models. We will also support interoperability testing by using our lighting controllers to verify system performance and ensure compliance with the defined data models.
By participating in this initiative, we reaffirm our commitment to helping cities build open, reliable, secure, and future-proof IoT infrastructures. We are excited to collaborate with authoritative organizations that share the vision of truly interoperable smart cities.
The first public results are expected in November 2026 and will be presented at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. Stay tuned!
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