The new Europe 2020 strategy focuses largely on “Climate change and energy sustainability”. Numerous projects were carried out regarding this important issue by Out of the Box International, Kamisoft, European Projects Association, Unioncamere del Veneto, ISTRIAN de Dignan – ECOMUSEUM and Informo and Fazana Municipality.
Our session took place in the Silver hall of the Brussels Convention Centre with over 140 participants registered. We are very pleased with the number of participants as this was one of bigger turnouts compared to the other sessions. Around 90 people attended the session and took an active part in the discussion, giving their opinions to the questions asked.
The first part of the session belonged to Marko Paunovic, and the work of OTB International. In this part, the work and methodology in the field of Energy efficiency, Ecology, Public safety and Open governance were presented for a vision of Sustainable and green cities of the future With the Real-time information and Citizens Involvement method, followed by the current rising trends. Participants were engaged to share opinions, concerns and information on this topic.
The next speaker was Franca Sallustio, Head of technologies services and digital transformation, Metropolitan City of Venice, Italy. In this part she presented 3 SMART SOLUTIONS for the Metropolitan City of Venice based on digital cartographic representation of the territory. First on the list was SITM (Metropolitan Territorial Information System). SITM is a Geographic Information System developed by Metropolitan City of Venice (CMVE) involving local municipalities. The goals of the project are to set up a uniform and real time updated spatial information system for the Venice metropolitan area, to share spatial data, to promote the growth of technological skills of the technicians of the municipalities in GIS processing data (Civil Protection data, Floods Monitoring, Urban land consumption, Traffic limitation App, WebMapp Venezia). Another smart solution is DeSK “Decision support System to improve territorial Knowledge” project, with the aim of spreading and improving best practices in a perspective of exchange and collaboration between institutions. Activities of the project are technical planning, management, coordination and monitoring, identification of all the components of the “re-use kit of the best practice, transfer of the best practice, evolution of the best practice, promotion, communication and dissemination. Final smart solution presented was Smart Road metropolitan actions. The main goals are to monitor the traffic flow into and out of the Metropolitan City of Venice in order to enhance the Public Safety. It includes continuous security monitoring, vehicle licence detection and automatic query to shared DBs to verify the regularity of insurance covers and the respect of the mandatory vehicles inspections and instant report of stolen cars to the competent police authorities.
In the final presentation part, Dino Babic the President of European Projects Association, Croatia, presented a multitude of diverse projects, which are the results of smart solutions to the burning issue of connecting communities. The main question behind them is how to create connected environments from divided communities. Through organizations including European Projects association, Informo, Istrian de Dignan – Ecomuseum, European Academy for education and social research, results were achieved in the field of Agriculture, Economy, Education, Training, Culture, Youth, Employment and Social Affairs, Energy and Natural Resources, Enterprise and Industry; Environment, Regions and Local Development, Research, Innovation and Technology and Tourism and Travel. By creating online platforms for learning and specialization and involving citizens in local and regional work, communities of practitioners have been created which continue to participate in further development. The workshop provided fresh ideas and innovative ways for achieving better governance of modern cities by using ICT solutions and models of active participation and advice on turnkey smart city management.
In the final part, the participants rated the workshop as inspiring, educational and interesting, with innovative and practical information on the current and future endeavors on the subject on SMART cities.