This week Gothenburg in Sweden will host an international project meeting gathering all participants of the EU initiative IRIS Smart Cities. The project, of which Gothenburg is one of three Lighthouse cities, aims to develop and replicate smart solutions for European cities to become increasingly energy efficient, sustainable and attractive for their inhabitants. The meeting will be held within walking distance of several of the testbed areas used in the project.
“Campus Johanneberg of Chalmers University of Technology is our demonstration district within IRIS Smart Cities. This is where concepts and solutions are tested in order to be scaled up and implemented in other European cities,” says Eva Pavic, project manager at Johanneberg Science Park who coordinates the project on behalf of the City of Gothenburg.
The delegates of the IRIS meeting will get the opportunity to visit for example HSB Living Lab, where the 30 residents will be given the opportunity to closely monitor their own and their neighbors’ energy consumption in order to reduce it. Right outside the conference center is a bus stop for the electrical bus line, part of the ElectriCity collaboration, that will take delegates on a quiet and emission-free ride through the city. Funding from IRIS will allow used batteries from these buses to get a new life storing energy at the Positive Footprint Housing project under construction a stone’s throw away.
“One of the reasons that Gothenburg was chosen as a lighthouse city in IRIS Smart Cities is that we already have strong innovation environments where research and testing of new ideas has been going on for a long time. For Gothenburg, this type of project means more than direct financing for development – it also strengthens our position as an innovation city and opens up for more future investments that will enable our city to stay at the forefront and offer its inhabitants an even better quality of life,” says Gunilla Åkerström, Head of the Innovation Program of the City of Gothenburg.
The project IRIS Smart Cities started in October 2017 and is presently working to map good examples from the three lighthouse cities Gothenburg (Sweden), Nice (France) and Utrecht (Netherlands). Smart solutions meeting future needs such as energy efficiency, open data and infrastructure will then be developed and implemented in four follower cities: Vaasa (Finland), Alexandroupolis (Greece), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain) and Foscani (Romania). In each city several companies and organizations are participating in the project and their representatives will attend the meeting in Gothenburg on 27-29 March to share their experiences and to map out the road ahead.
“I look forward to a concrete exchange of knowledge with our European colleagues, where we can all learn from each other to make our cities smarter,” says Eva Pavic.
26 Mar 2018