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.
Read more: EU: Smart city projects share policy recommendations in Brussels
The internet and digital technologies are already transforming the EU member states’ knowledge and operation systems. During last five years the turn has come to science, research and innovation with a new concept of free access to all kind of research (called “open access”). The Baltic States science community has to take this challenge seriously.
Most states in Europe, as well as in the world, are witnessing a serious increase both in the amount of science information produced and research data for use in social development. There are already billions of managed data in digital devices and services for personal and professional needs, as well as data through the science digitized literature.
Read more: Turning digital: challenges and perspectives for science and research in the EU
Smart is increasingly becoming the “pre-fix” of cities when talking about the near future or even the present of the places where most of us live (or spend most of our lives).
Mayors across the Globe, and even more across Europe, are announcing claims to promote the smartness of their cities, in opposition to a presumed “dumbness” of less developed areas. But, what is really a smart city? And are digital technologies (the always acknowledged building blocks of a smart city) enough to make a city really smart?
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.
Read more: EU: €30 Million Triangulum sustainable cities project reaches completion
Romania has the lowest performance among EU Member States when it comes to digital public services, the country having a score of 43.2 in the European Commission's Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2019. By comparison, the average EU score is 62.9.
DESI is a composite index that summarises relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU member states in digital competitiveness. The index evaluates the EU countries on five criteria, namely connectivity, human capital, use of internet services, integration of digital technology, and digital public services.
Read more: EC report: Romania ranks last in EU for digital public services