Last month, IRIS Smart Cities partners visited lighthouse city Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur in one of the last in person meetings of project to discuss actions for the final phase as well as witness the latest project driven developments in the city.
Around 50 participants from seven European countries attended the IRIS Smart Cities meeting 28-30 September in Nice, France to share latest activities, participate in dedicated workshops to better understand how best measure KPI results in smart city projects and discuss how best to pass on the lessons learned to future city innovators. The meeting was full of ideas and exchanges on activities to carry out by the project’s end in March 2023, including participation in a joint stand with 29 other smart city initiatives at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, the generation of an IRIS best practices magazine and the organization of the IRIS final conference to be held in Gothenburg in March 2023.
The meeting also included practical site visits to the Mediterranean Institute of Risk, Environment and Sustainable Development (IMREDD), a state-of-the-art hub for innovative public-private and academic partnership. Here partners visited their Smart City Innovation Center (SCIC) an open technological platform analysing real-time of air quality, noise, water and energy consumption and much more from across the entire city. Among the features here, clear visualisations transform data from a network of nearly 3,000 micro sensors across 160 hectares to empower better decision-making, planning and engagement of all urban actors.
Partners also got the chance to visit the Nice’s geothermal plant inaugurated by Idex in late 2021. The power plant is supplied with water from the Var Alluvial aquifer at 15◦C, where the recovered underground water is pumped through 40m deep geothermal boreholes before passing through heat exchangers. The energy created then supplies the whole district with up to 80% renewable energy and the smart network system also helps to also avoid energy loss allowing for prices 15% lower than the average prices in France for non-renewable energies.
In addition, partners also got the opportunity to learn more about the ambitious City Innovation Platform (CIP). A digital platform which collects and sorts all the mobility, energy and environmental data produced from the various districts, and will coordinate with the CIPs from the other IRIS lighthouse cities, Utrecht and Gothenburg.
The meeting concluded with attendance to the TRANSITION FORUM, a forum committed to accelerating the transition to a clean and sustainable future that provided an opportunity for discussions and business 2 business meetings with experts and stakeholders from several sectors including energy, mobility, food, housing all sharing a common interest to promote the green transition and meet the EU Green Deal objectives.
To learn more about IRIS activities in Nice watch the video below produced as part of the IAMEUROPE campaign:
