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BABLE at AHK's Business...
BABLE was proud to take part in the implementation of a Romanian-German economic collaboration project with the theme ' Energy Infrastructure in Cities '. The initiative of the Romanian-German economic collaboration project and its financing come from the Federal Ministry of Economy and Energy in Germany within the “ Energy Solutions made in Germany ” program.The project is addressed to Romanian and German companies interested in developing bilateral business in the field of urban infrastructure and aims to promote locally German systems and products in this field. During the delegation, AHK Romania organised an online symposium attended by German and Romanian experts who offered participants an overview of methods of efficiency and modernisation of urban infrastructure. In order to promote German companies, their representatives held online meetings with potential Romanian employees. The article (in Romanian) can be read here ! Big thanks to the participants, including: @Ileana Bănucu , @Szabolcs Szilveszter , @Alexandru Petrovici , @Paul Gribincea , @Dan Nichiforel
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Data Management Canvas
KnowNow Information was commissioned by the Energy Systems Catapult to create a new method to help local energy generation projects define joined up, holistic, citizen centric, purpose led data requirements. With the objective that these data requirements would ensure that projects were not over engineered. All data required had an owner and the data itself would be loved and curated for as long as it was required. This means projects would not be bloated by having too much data. Projects could be ambtious in the use of personal data (as it had an identified purpose); plus projects would be able to articulate the value of the data in their domain. The data canvas is available here: https://es.catapult.org.uk/brochures/energy-data-management-canvas/ "The goal of this document is to guide you through a process of putting together an appropriate data management plan for your project to help you to understand the overall picture and ask the right questions. We have taken a broad view of what constitutes data, and the questions in this document are (for the most part) applicable to qualitative data, as well as quantitative." The data canvas can support any type of smart community project. Be that energy, mobility, utilities or any other data intensive project.
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How to make your Smart...
Experienced smart city consultants will tend to have a good idea as to the chance of success of a smart city project just from the questions asked by the project team. Questions Places Ask that mean they are probably not ready Warning questions that mean the community is at a very immature stage include: My leader wants to make an impact and have a very visual digital/smart project to show off to the population. Unless this investment is in digital infrastructures such as connectivity, skills uplift, innovation spaces and knowledge exchanges then it will likely be a white elephant. So steer clear. I have been given a grant and I have plans to run 30 parallel projects across 6 different themes and they have to be complete in the next 36 months across the city. This is too ambitious, with not enough focus and way too many strands that will likely unravel rapidly. Successful smart communities start focused, small and sustainable. They embrace iterative improvement. They replicate across the city based on a success elsewhere in the city. I have great contacts in the tech industry. They are looking for places to try something out and are offering 90% discounts! Time-limited offer we need to take advantage of. Top-down and industry-led projects are typically short-lived and great for marketing purposes. So they do have a role. But they often lack that key ingredient. Citizens. So end up being shelfware.. ‘aka not doing much’. These answers are warnings signs of a troubled or soon to be troubled smart community project. Consultant Questions seeking a great response The questions I ask when discussing smart places and communities are this: Does your place embrace open data? Do you actively engage citizens with this open data? Do the community leaders and citizens agree on the outcomes that are being captured as open data? Are these outcomes constantly being refined and questioned as being relevant for the place? A great response will go along these lines: Q1: Does your place embrace open data? A1: Absolutely, yes. Our community has an open data portal and active users across a number of different organisations and sectors interacting with the portal. Both consuming open data and creating new insights from the data and then posting this back to the portal. Q2: Do you actively engage citizens with this open data? A2: Our communities have active investigators and storytellers. Which combine to inform citizens on a regular basis. This includes as well, capturing feedback from citizens and ensuring this is fed into the decision making process. Q3: Do the community leaders and citizens agree on the outcomes that are being captured as open data? A3: We have a shared governance board that regularly meets and also runs engagement actions on social media and outreach activities in communities direct. These include information roadshows; digital displays in community meeting points (GP surgeries, schools, community halls, on the web). Outcomes are agreed by the community, with active ongoing voting and sentiment measurement through digital tools and social media platforms. Whilst not forgetting those not digitally connected. Q4: Are these outcomes constantly being refined and questioned as being relevant for the place? A4: At these meetings and direct engagements, a review of the information and trend analysis and whether expectations against the outcome are being realised is assessed. If not, then new outcomes are agreed or expectations re-set. How to Fix the Gap So quite a big gap. The question then is how to be more like the best behaved smart community versus the enthusiastic amateur? Use Smart City Standards. In particular embrace the sustainable smart communities model which is enshrined in ISO37106 . Along with the following PAS184 Guide to Successful Smart City Projects. See the circles image below. Which provides nine focus areas with each sub-divided again into a measurable element. With a clear statement of what ‘good looks like’. It is the measure of how close to that pass mark which informs a place as to what they need to do next.
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'Citython' - Opportunity...
Citython is a mobility hackathon where a group of experts and students in urban planning, sociology, engineering, data science, and business creation work together to foster innovation in our cities . As part of EIT Urban Mobility’s core activities, the aim of this year is to celebrate new Citython editions in the top European cities of Eindhoven (Netherlands), Bilbao and Barcelona (Spain), and Hamburg (Germany), and Lublin (Poland). Who is it for? If you are a bachelor's, master's, Ph.D. student, or researcher with expertise in urbanism, urban data, or computer sciences willing to ideate the most innovative solutions to solve the urban mobility challenges existing in the cities, you can participate. The winners are also offered the opportunity to work with cities and industry professionals to implement their solutions and present them at a world-famous exposition such as the Dutch Technology Week, the ITS World Congress in Hamburg, or the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. Find out more information here !
