EIP-SCC Participation and Matchmaking Event at Smart City Expo World Congress, 13 – 15 November 2018, Barcelona, Spain
The European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) together with the EU Smart Cities Information System (SCIS) and 12 Horizon 2020 Smart City Lighthouse projects from across Europe participated in the Smart City Expo World Congress, 13-15 November 2018 in Barcelona, Spain.
These smart city projects are testing and implementing a range of innovative solutions in specific city districts with the aim of stimulating uptake and growth in the market and the transition to a more sustainable Europe. The participating Lighthouse projects were GrowSmarter, IRIS, MatchUp, My Smart Life, RemoUrban, Replicate, Ruggedised, Sharing Cities, SmartEnCity, Smarter Together, Stardust and Triangulum.
The common EU Smart Cities stand showcased the above-mentioned Lighthouse projects and initiatives working closely together to shape the market of smart cities in Europe. At the stand, a number of discussion sessions and workshops, ranging in topic from citizen engagement to mobility and retrofitting were hosted.
In addition, three so-called Agora Sessions were organised in the exhibition space covering various smart city areas.
The first topic “Trial. Innovate. Replicate. Smart Cities and Communities.” moderated by Jens Bartholmes, Policy Officer, European Commission, DG ENERGY, presented the world's biggest Smart City R&D Initiative being ready to scale up.
The second session titled ‘Future mobility: How will new transport systems change the urban landscape?’ was moderated by Eunice Ribeiro from UBIWHERE. It covered the topic of mobility of the city of the future: e-bikes, self-driving busses, automated beacon-powered infrastructure inclusion and provided further discussion on the wider rollout.
The final agora session, moderated by Svetoslav Mihaylov, Policy Officer, European Commission, DG CONNECT, was a panel discussion on various approaches to the collection and utilisation of urban datasets in cities, data platform solutions and progress of digitalisation in municipalities. The focus was on lessons learned and recommendations.
Besides the mentioned sessions, Georg Houben, Policy Officer, EC, DG ENERGY and Jordi Puignero, Minister of Digital Policy and Public Administration, Government of Catalonia held a panel discussion about the EIP-SCC and how the municipalities and stakeholders from smartCATALONIA will benefit from engaging with it. This also marked the signing of the letter of adherence of the Generalitat de Catalunya, thus enabling joining forces to facilitate the access of the local governments to European funds and development and implementation of innovative smart cities projects.
Finally, and in addition to the above-mentioned activities the EIP-SCC hosted the next Matchmaking event, which took place on 14 November 2018. The EIP-SCC Marketplace Matchmaking is focused on “matching” urban project promoters with financiers through one-
to-one meetings in order to reach financial agreements and to start the concrete development of smart city projects covering any combination of the areas energy, mobility and ICT. As a result, 53 meetings were organised during the one-day Matchmaking event, involving 7 financiers and 29 project promoters. Furthermore, the Investor Confidence Project (ICP) Europe, which is an EU co-funded project aiming to standardise the way energy efficiency projects are developed, documented and measured in order to facilitate private investments and enable project aggregation, was present during the whole Matchmaking event and had discussions on how to support project promoters in the development of their technical skills. Also, ICP Europe provided opportunities to connect the project promoters with new potential financiers.
The Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), which takes place annually in Barcelona, brought together this year 21,331 visitors, 844 exhibitors from 146 countries and over 700 cities from across the world to share research, best practices and potential common solutions, achieved through effective collaboration.
Alongside an impressive Smart City Expo a mix of keynote speeches, discussion sessions and presentations make up the conference programme, with a wide range of topics under discussion.