IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

An extended partnership has been signed between the European Investment Bank and Belgian bank, Belfius, to finance €400 million of smart city initiatives throughout Belgium.

The new programme, Smart Cities, Climate Action & Circular Economy II,will help local authorities, inter-municipal groupings and non-commercial organisations in the social and education sectors in Belgium to implement their smart and sustainable projects by granting finance on favourable terms.

Intelligente Städte und Gemeinschaften (Smart Cities and Communities, SCC) heißt ein neues Projekt der Europäischen Union (EU). Ziel ist, mit Hilfe von Computertechnik das Verkehrsaufkommen sowie den Energieverbrauch in Städten und Kommunen zu senken.

A total of 31 European and Brazilian cities have teamed up to create a new initiative, dubbed Open & Agile Smart Cities Task Force (OASC), designed to make it easier for city councils and startups to improve smart city services. The initiative will be presented at CeBit in Hannover and will be based on the EU-funded Fiware open source platform. Fiware offers cloud-based building blocks that can be used to develop and deploy advanced internet applications for transport, energy efficiency, environmental or e-health services.

The findings from the Manchester pilot will be used to develop smart city quarters in other cities around the world.

Participating cities in the €30 million Triangulum project are beginning to share the first results from the future smart cities programme, which is drawing to a close after five years.

A new agreement has been reached to accelerate innovation in the smart cities and smart mobility industries in Europe.

Europcar Mobility Group, a key player in the field of mobility in Europe, announced the partnership between its Mobility Lab and smart city startup incubator Plug and Play Technology Center.

The partnership aims to identify and fund next-generation mobility solutions.

By launching a Smart Cities and Communities European Innovation Partnership (SCC) the European Commission aims to boost the development of smart technologies in cities – by pooling research resources from energy, transport and ICT and concentrating them on a small number of demonstration projects which will be implemented in partnership with cities. For 2013 alone, € 365 million in EU funds have been earmarked for the demonstration of these types of urban technology solutions.

Mit der Gründung einer Europäischen Innovationspartnerschaft für Intelligente Städte und Gemeinschaften („Smart Cities and Communities“, SCC) möchte die Europäische Kommission die Entwicklung intelligenter städtischer Technologien vorantreiben. Dazu sollen Forschungsressourcen in den Bereichen Energie, Verkehr und Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) gebündelt und auf eine begrenzte Zahl von Demonstrationsprojekten konzentriert werden, die in Partnerschaften mit Städten umgesetzt werden. Allein im Jahr 2013 sind EU-Mittel in Höhe von 365 Mio. EUR für Demonstrationsprojekte zu solchen technischen Lösungen vorgesehen.

Technology can enable us to implement the smart cities of the future, but knowledge sharing is just as vital.

Faced with challenges such as climate change, health problems related to air pollution and increasingly concentrated amounts of people living in cities, adapting our cities in order to offer a better quality of life is vital. Technology can offer us a stepping stone to the cities of the future, but this is not the only aspect which needs to be focused on in order to implement new ideas and create better living areas and conditions for city dwellers.

During the European Week of Regions and Cities, the first three Smart Cities and Communities projects GrowSmarter, Remourban and Triangulum, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, hosted a joint session and shared a policy paper to summarize the experiences and the knowledge gained within the project's five years of smart city implementations.

The goal of this joint session was to present major outcomes and to share lessons learnt from five years of smart city projects in different European regions, focusing on technical as well as political aspects of creating smart cities.

Smart cities mean better urban services, less waste, and citizens empowered to make a difference. This is about improving the lives of millions of Europeans, building a stronger society, and making better use of all our resources.

ICT, digital technology, has a big role to play here. It can boost productivity, make services more efficient, and stimulate new ideas and innovations. In pretty much every economic sector.

An EU initiative has been demonstrating energy- efficient refurbishment, mobility and integrated infrastructure solutions to help Europe get smarter and greener.

In a rapidly urbanising world, the concept of smart cities is increasingly being used across Europe to improve the quality of life for citizens. Thanks to several EU-funded projects, such as MAtchUP, Sharing Cities and REMOURBAN, various steps have been taken in energy, mobility and ICT sectors to create more liveable and sustainable cities.

In concrete terms, this constitutes 121 projects benefiting more than 2 million people

“Smart Cities, Climate Action & Circular Economy II” has been launched with an additional EUR 400m to support ever smarter, more sustainable and circular projects helping to combat global warming

The EIB and Belfius are cementing their partnership and are both supporting local authorities in the implementation of their projects and according to their needs

Much has been written and spoken about smart cities, but as yet there are few real-world deployments in action.

This week at CeBIT, two European cities have taken the plunge to invest in smart city technologies, in an effort to provide better services, improving security and communication – all while saving money.

The City of Tilburg in the Netherlands signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Huawei for the development and deployment of a smart city.

ransforming the world by 2030 to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals will require the establishment of more smart cities, information and communication technology multinational Huawei industry, marketing and solution department CTO Joe So told delegates at the Smart City World Congress, in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday.

While there are many examples of cities worldwide implementing specific smart city initiatives and systems, and although there is common acknowledgement that the role of smart cities is key in achieving the development of the envisioned modern, more equitable and sustainable societies, only 19 of 87 cities surveyed by German global consultancy Roland Berger scored more than 50% in their development of a defining smart city strategy.

Nokia Bell Labs driven industry group is building key enablers for fast 5G network based on smart light poles, which will form the digital backbone of future smart cities. The LuxTurrim5G ecosystem project has developed the 5G smart pole concept where 5G base stations, a variety of different sensors, video cameras, displays and other devices have been integrated to light poles. This creates a novel platform providing fast, low latency mobile communications and possibilities to exploit huge amount of data to make new digital services for smart cities.

Helsinki is consistently rated among the most livable cities in the world, but it is also the 2019 European Capital of Smart Tourism. What sets the capital of Finland apart from its peers?

It all boils down to three factors, according to the Mayor of Helsinki Jan Vapaavuori: education, transparency and doing away with bureaucracy.

Ask around — every city wants to be all these things, but what exactly do they mean? And how are they feasible in today’s world of budget cuts and doing more with less?

The city of destiny, Suva, is envisioned to become a leader in sustainability, healthy living, equality and innovation.

Smart cities

A smart city is a highly connected place where intelligent decision-making enhances infrastructural efficiencies, economic growth, swift governance, sustainability and greater safety and security to enhance the quality of life of citizens.

Kenya has been hailed as a “progressive” country spearheading sectors in technology such as mobile money payments. This perception has seen foreign companies set up their African base in Nairobi to cash in on the technology trends. Companies such as Bolt, Uber and Glovo have seen their decision to set up in Nairobi pay dividends.

In many reports, Kenya has been hailed as one of the cities in Africa that could transform into a smart city. One of the reasons is the digitization of payments using mobile money. The country has been on a torpid journey to create Konza Technocity, another digitally-driven city.

Foreign “smart cities” could face GDPR fines for misusing EU citizens' data, a Government smart city tsar has warned.

Dr Jacqui Taylor, strategic advisor to the UK Government on smart cities, said that public bodies and companies based abroad could face fines worth millions of pounds if they fail to follow strict rules which protect EU residents from data misuse.