IRIS is a HORIZON 2020 EU funded project beginning October 2017 for a duration of five years.
The project has been developed around three lighthouse cities - Utrecht (The Netherlands, coordinator), Nice (France), and Gothenburg (Sweden) - who will work as collaborators and test-beds for follower cities Vaasa (Finland), Alexandroupolis (Greece), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain) and Focsani (Romania).
Each city will draw upon a mix of universities and research organisations, local authorities, innovation agencies and private expertise to accelerate entire communities to adopt ambitious energy, mobility and ICT initiatives.
Several exciting projects studying energy consumption are underway at IRIS Smart Cities’ Gothenburg based partner HSB a ‘living laboratory’ featuring 29 apartments and residents testing the latest developments in sustainable living. Since October 2018, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology are testing their latest app helping residents organise and track their own energy use.
The municipality of Utrecht and the Utrecht company 'LomboXnet' will install at least 145 public charging stations for electric cars in 2019. These innovative charging stations are suitable for storing solar energy in the batteries of electric cars and delivering them back to the neighborhood. The charging stations thus offer both the possibility of charging a car and discharging future cars. This ‘Vehicle 2 Grid’ technology is one of Iris Smart Cities’ 16 targeted solutions creating smarter, more sustainable cities.
Interview with Martin Brynskov, Chairman of the board of Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC). Open & Agile Smart Cities is a pioneering group of data-savvy municipalities committed to improving everyday lives. In addition to numerous OASC activities, they and their members are integral to a game-changing new global initiative for ‘front runner’ smart cities between open API leaders FIWARE and global industry association TMForum.