On Sunday, 22 April 2018, 15 people from our Follower City Leipzig in Germany got aboard a plane to visit our Lighthouse City Stavanger in Norway to learn more about the smart implementations happening there. Politicians, city representatives and mobility and transport representatives first visited the county council and the Triangulum partner Lyse, followed by an entire day at the municipality. During a joint dinner on Monday evening, which was hosted by the county council, people from Leipzig and Stavanger had the chance to really get to know each other as well as each other’s visions and to lay the foundation for an even deeper cooperation aimed at the replication of smart and innovative ideas.

Battery Bus in Full Function (Picture: Stavanger Kommune)

On Monday, the deputy county council mayor of Stavanger welcomed the Leipzig delegation and provided a general introduction to the programme of the day, thus welcoming the guests. Afterwards, the entire group drove to the new Kolumbus main bus station, which has only recently been built with the capacity of the old diesel and the new battery fleet. There, they also had a look at the newly built bus lanes. In the afternoon, the group went to visit Lyse where they listened to a general presentation with a focus on e-mobility, new platform based business models and how solar panels, storage and EV chargers can be utilized together. The Lyse partners showed them live examples of smart fast chargers and illustrated the technical know-how behind them. The day ended where it started: at the county council. During a presentation, the Leipzig delegation learned more about the building of Europe’s biggest bus rapid transit system BRTS, which is 50 km longs and which will be using only battery busses from 2023 on. Therefore, test drivings with three Triangulum battery busses are happening right now, on a daily basis within existing bus routes.

Representatives of Leipzig and Stavanger at the Kolumbus Main Bus Station, Stavanger (Picture: Stavanger Kommune)

On Tuesday, the visitors from Leipzig spent the day at the municipality. They were welcomed by the Mayor of Stavanger Christine Sage Helgø. They first listened to a general Triangulum project presentation, followed by a presentation of the progress in the Lighthouse City Stavanger in particular. For example, various smart parking systems in Stavanger were highlighted. In the afternoon, two parallel sessions were offered: One about climate and environmental actions and projects within Stavanger and one about energy solutions within the municipality.

After these two days full of new, smart and innovative ideas, I am sure that Leipzig went home with lots of new experiences, memories and, of course, a lot to think about. We are excited and curious to see which activities they might replicate in Leipzig!

Listening to a presentation from the head of economical development at Stavanger Municipality (Picture: Stavanger Kommune)

At Lyse AS, were the the locally solar powered smart EV chargers are being showcased and explained (Picture: Stavanger Kommune)

On 23 March, students of the postgraduate course on smart cities from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia visited the Sabadell municipality. This field trip was part of a practical session carried out in several cities to learn more about the most innovative municipal services related to urban mobility, energy, knowledge economy or information technology and communication. Vice versa, for the municipality, it is important to learn about the students’ visions and to establish permanent links with the university and research institutes. Like this, the city council has the chance to leverage the transfer of external knowledge directly into the city in the area of ​​innovation and new technologies, as established in the 2016-19 Government Plan of Sabadell.

(Pictures: Triangulum Sabadell)

Similarly, on 20 March, around 20 international master students from the Barcelona campus of the Toulouse Business School met with the city council at Sabadell’s Vapor Badia library. They talked about collaboration possibilities to implement Triangulum’s actions established in the Follower City Implementation Strategy of Sabadell by identifying applicable methodologies for acceleration of the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Sabadell in the fields of sport, health and urban innovation.

With the help of the municipal officers of economic promotion, mobility, and social housing, students have been able to visit the facilities of the Centre of Industrial Companies of Can Roqueta (CEICR), the traffic control centre and the Alexandra building, which hosts the Ponent Library and a housing compound for the elderly. Moreover, the city promotion and innovation officers also provided a short presentation of the Triangulum project.

The municipal councillor for “Innovation and City”, Miquel Soler, highlighted the importance of these collaborations with universities located within our geographical scope: “Sabadell will not be innovative based on the amount of technology that has been implemented in the public space or the municipal services, but because of its ability to better connect the various innovative actors, including universities and research centres, which are located in the city and its surroundings. The City Council plays a key role in this objective, and projects we are involved in such as Triangulum or the Sport and Innovation Network, are tangible examples.”

Students have been informed about the Triangulum project and its objective of implementing 10 actions in Sabadell in the field of mobility, energy and ICT, based on the replication of experiences of the three Lighthouse Cities Manchester (United Kingdom), Eindhoven (Netherlands) and Stavanger (Norway). Among them, a special focus has been put onto the digital platform for real-time data integration, which is being developed by the municipal IT department, and the acceleration of the economic sectors linked to health, sport and urban innovation, driven within the framework of the Sport and Innovation Network (Xarxa esport i innovació).

At the CEICR, students learned about the function of this unique facility, focused on hosting business projects and newly created companies which aim to help their creation and consolidation, and offer multiple support services and advice, with the opportunity to interact daily with more than 40 different companies / activities.

In the traffic control centre, located in the municipal offices of Can Marcet, they have been able to check the real-time information available on the various screens, which allow constant monitoring of the urban bus network, traffic lights crossroads or incidents in underground tunnels or traffic cameras.

Finally, in the Alexandra building in the Can Rull neighbourhood, they have visited the geothermal energy installations, which provide heating and water to residents in the building, as well as other innovations in passive elements that make this building an example of energy performance with an energy rating “A” – the most efficient possible.

In Eindhoven’s Eckart district, Woonbedrijf invites tenants to take ownership of the renovation processes of their own houses. To make this possible, Woonbedrijf experiments with renovating in a ‘series of one’. This means that an individual house in a block of houses can be renovated at the most convenient time of the tenant according to his or her individual choices – and not when the housing association deems it appropriate. The entire project is about understanding that a housing association may own houses, but that it is the tenants who call it their home!

(Picture: Triangulum Eindhoven)

This new approach develops through a process of prototyping, which means that one is developing the renovation process with the help of a computer tool by trial and error. Woonbedrijf thus starts the renovation with a prototype, developed though co-production of Woonbedrijf, the construction company and the participating tenants. By using this WoonConnect tool, tenants can see a 3D digital version of their house. They make their own choices and immediately see the expected impacts on their energy costs. With WoonConnect, they get an insight into how they can change their behaviour in order to lower energy costs, for example by insulating their roof, by replacing their windows or by installing solar PV panels. Tenants can also go and visit a model house where several of the offered renovation processes have already been implemented.

(Picture: Triangulum Eindhoven)

With the beginning of this year, the Follower City Leipzig has been overhauling and improving its communication strategy for promoting smart city activities in Leipzig. Besides the communication channels of Triangulum (such as this newsletter), each participating city is faced with the task of successfully communicating itself the “Smart City” towards its citizens, businesses and institutions.

(Picture: Triangulum Leipzig)

The newly developed communication strategy will help to further advance the communication efforts in Leipzig. Besides the renewal of the visual components, the existing website (http://smartcity.leipziger-westen.de) will be restructured. A common visual concept will be established, which will be used in presentations, flyers and any other publication in the future.

Additionally, the communication strategy will help to highlight all the progress that Leipzig has made so far within the Triangulum project and beyond. The importance of the Smart City shall be communicated more powerfully by presenting the faces behind the concept.

The development of the communication strategy is an important step to further professionalize and institutionalize the smart city process in Leipzig. It is accompanied by a Leipzig-based communication and design agency.

The Follower City Leipzig continues its efforts to realize measures and projects which have been developed within the Triangulum-Project so far. At the beginning of April 2018, Leipzig submitted the proposal SPARCs (Sustainable energy Positive & zero cARbon Communities) in response to the Horizon 2020 call “H2020-LC-SC3-2018-2019-2020 – BUILDING A LOW-CARBON, CLIMATE RESILIENT FUTURE: SECURE, CLEAN AND EFFICIENT ENERGY”.

(Picture: Sparks)

It demonstrates and validates technically and socio-economically viable and scalable solutions, for the planning and rollout of user-driven, smart and integrated energy solutions for the transition to a low-carbon and resource efficient economy. Within SPARCs, two Lighthouse and five Follower Cities will demonstrate about 100 actions turning single buildings, blocks, and districts, into energy prosumers. SPARCs targets a 64% carbon emission reduction, 65% increase in share of RES, and 53% of energy savings, bringing together citizens, companies, research organizations, city planning and technical departments and decision-making entities, transforming cities to carbon-free inclusive communities through co-creation. Besides Leipzig, the second Lighthouse City Espoo (FI) will also implement large demonstrations that will then be replicated in the five Follower Cities Rejkjavik (IS), Maia (PT), Lviv (UA), Kladno (CZ) and Philothei-Psychiko (GR).

With the participation in the SPARCs proposal, Leipzig had the chance to build upon the experiences and knowledge gained within Triangulum and used the opportunity to further develop its energy-related smart city projects in collaboration with the local partners such as the Leipziger Gruppe

(Picture: gogreen Week)

As current first place champions of the People & Planet University League, Manchester Metropolitan University hosted a jam-packed week of activities during February.

The Environment Team led the calendar of events, encouraging staff and students to take action on environmental and sustainability issues such as climate change and plastic pollution.

As part of the event, Triangulum was represented both through a general information stand in the exhibition area and also through the first of a series of ‘Energy Seminars’ hosted by project partner Siemens.

Approximately 58 staff, students and external visitors attended the inaugural talk entitled ‘Looking for solutions for the city of tomorrow, developing smart urban districts’ given by Mark Jenkinson, of Siemens’ Global Centre of Competence for Cities.  This has been the first of a series of talks given by Siemens’ subject experts, which will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester, and be open to all.

(Picture: Triangulum Manchester)

On Tuesday, 10 April 2018, the Triangulum project partners attended an iCity tender event at Strijp-S in Eindhoven, Netherlands, where the winning projects presented their innovative ideas. Together with the municipality of Eindhoven, TU/e and VolkerWessels were looking for the best ideas to stimulate the smart city ecosystem and to thus create new smart city services and products.

(Picture: Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum)

Out of 63 applications, eight projects stood out, receiving financial support of overall 280k. As Roger Boersma of iCity Smart Monitoring says, “funding speeds up the process of innovation”. And he is right! So let’s see who some of the final participants were and how they are planning to change the future of Eindhoven, and maybe the world:

• Abby is a sustainable smart mobility solution, offering e-bikes with integrated solar cells. It started as an interdisciplinary project at TU/e and has now become an innovative start-up that strives to improve urban mobility and bike sharing options in Eindhoven.
• ViNotion is an intelligent video analysis system whose goal it is to “make surveillance smart”. In case of a car accident, data from security cameras will be able to deliver information about the involved vehicles without harming privacy issues (by excluding license plate information). ViSense MobilityDynamics is thus able to provide insight into complex traffic scenarios by analysing the behaviour of pedestrians, cyclists, motorized vehicles and other traffic participants. Ideally, dangerous traffic situations may thus be recognized before the crash!
• BitSensor is an internet security start up offering protection against unwanted hacking attacks in real-time. With their help, companies are able to realize that they have been hacked before it is too late.
• 5D solutions offers to green your walls! With innovative and modular plant panels, 5D solutions uses a special strawberry plant with integrated water sensors to turn buildings into self-regulating “smart grids”.

(Picture: Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum)

The evening was an event full of smart people, innovative solutions and future-oriented ideas. It gave us an insight into what is possible and how life in cities can be improved in the future. Congratulations once more to the winners of the iCity tender and thank you for such an interesting and informative event!

During 2017, IPR Prague put a cross-sectoral cooperation into practice, in close collaboration with the City District of Prague 7 and the University Center for Energy Efficient Buildings (UCEEB), which is an institute of the Czech Technical University in Prague. In 2017, UCEEB was subcontracted to conduct a feasibility study which examines the system of social and health care for the elderly within the city district Prague 7. The study was created in collaboration with the IPR Prague between June 2017 and December 2017. Through the process of participatory design, relevant local stakeholders were engaged and individual needs of the represented seniors in Prague were mapped. There were interviews and workshops, also as part of planned activities within the replication activities of the Triangulum project.

The feasibility study served and continues to serve as a founded analysis and overview about identified needs for social and health care in Prague 7 and its results are therefore essential for the formulation of Prague’s implementation strategy. To respond to the needs, a comprehensive list of seven suitable measures for implementation were developed, which are a result of local discussions and workshops and as well a result of the inspiration from the Lighthouse Cities within the Triangulum project. The innovative measures are in the field of ICT, mobility and energy efficiency at the city district level. The implementation strategy also identifies several financing options for the measures and incorporates the measures into a high-level implementation roadmap. The deployment of technologies has to be preceded by organisational and procedural changes. These prerequisites are summarised in M0 of the following seven measures:

• M0: Project management and coordination
• M1: System for support of integrated care
• M2: Service Portal for Senior Citizens
• M3: Extended emergency care
• M4: Smart homes for seniors
• M5: Electro-mobility for social services and seniors
• M6: Mobility of seniors

(Picture: IPR Prague)

These measures are meant for the city district of Prague 7 and to be implemented in a pilot project. Another measure of IPR Prague in the implementation strategy is the update of the city’s 3D model, which will have city-wide implications and which will support and improve the work of IPR Prague. The update of the 3D model will be partly financed by Triangulum project.

As a result of this the working process on the implementation strategy, a quadruple helix model of cooperation was strongly encouraged, new cross-sectoral partnerships were established and important insights were exchanged. The suggested measures, combined into a pilot project as proposed in the implementation strategy, have the potential to indirectly impact the whole City of Prague, as they deal with city-wide challenges on a district level. The pilot project is proposed to start during spring 2018. Should the implemented solution prove to be successful, it has the potential to be replicated in the other city districts. However, the implementation and potential replication is mainly dependent on whether the leadership of the district of Prague 7 takes ownership of the proposed pilot project during 2018.

(Picture: Nordic Edge)

During this year’s Nordic Edge Expo and conference in Stavanger, there will be the opportunity to meet, discuss and work together with all the H2020 SCC1 Lighthouse- and Follower Cities.
Triangulum’s Lighthouse City Stavanger, in collaboration with Nordic Edge, will be hosting sessions for Lighthouse- and Follower Cities, both open and closed to the public. There will be dedicated sessions for project coordinators, city coordinators, communication coordinators, city communication coordinators, the business models and finance task group (BM&F) as well as the big data group.
Nordic Edge is an excellent opportunity to share insights, learn from each other and share best practices with the public.

Save the Dates
The conference and expo will take place from September 25th – 27th.          On Wednesday 26th, there will be closed SCC1 sessions for the big data group, business models and finance task group (BM&F) and project coordinators, giving them the chance to discuss ideas and collaboration opportunities. On the afternoon, there will be a Smart City Safari in the Stavanger region that ends with an informal get-together.
The Lighthouse- and Follower Cities program with various open panel sessions (e.g. by the communication task group, the business models and finance task group and the city coordinators) and internal SCC1 meetings takes place on Thursday 27th.
Moreover, the SCC1 projects will be represented at a joint booth at the Nordic Edge Expo during all three days!

About Nordic Edge 
In just three years, Nordic Edge has established itself as the most significant Smart City event in the Nordics. From 500 participants in 2015 to 4500 visitors in 2017! This year’s theme is “Smart with a heart.” which emphasizes the quest that smart cities and societies are all about the citizens.

Find more information about the Nordic Edge 2018

On 12 April 2018, Triangulum and the representatives of the other eleven Horizon 2020 SCC1 smart city projects met in Lisbon during the Portugal Smart City Summit to sign a manifesto of cooperation. The manifesto is an agreement between cities to significantly change the smart city market place. The signing took place during a day full of workshops where the 76 cities from all over Europe discussed their progress in enhancing energy efficiency and collaborating with the private sector to create models for doing business that will perpetuate and multiply the effects of the EU’s investment.

(Picture: Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum)

In one such model, companies are fronting the money for green developments, asserting their social responsibility, and recouping investment from energy savings that accrue from systems that are more efficient. By fitting old buildings with better insulation, solar panels and management systems that give residents more control over their energy use, cities can slash their CO2 outputs. The money saved then pays for the initial investment, plus an attractive return. Projects that pilot these and other business models create precedents that can then be employed across Europe to benefit the economy, the cities and their citizens.

Just as shops buy food at one price and sell it at another, there are different price potentials for smart city solutions. ‘Packaging’ means agreeing on a set of standards, for example when building smart lampposts, that are sufficiently generic for one product, or model, to be employed in many cities – while still allowing for personalisation. During one of the Lisbon workshops, cities worked to find the common ground upon which they could find easy-to-build solutions with a clear value proposition, at once component-based and interoperable at an affordable price. Packaging is a tool which cities can employ to cut costs so that residents can enjoy a better future with a lower price tag. Through European funded projects, cities become laboratories where innovative ideas like these are tested, and when projects collaborate and share their results, effective solutions can be replicated, and common barriers can be identified and overcome.

The projects’ communication leaders and coordinators attended a branding workshop designed to help create a coherent brand for the Lighthouse Cities. Having a common brand helps to secure a legacy of the Lighthouse projects’ results by speaking with one voice to the outside world such as investors, suppliers, the broad public, etc. Based on intensive brainstorming and great discussions, the branding workshop worked out five key areas that the twelve SCC1 projects should act on in order to deliver better results, such as working pro-actively with large counter parties (big suppliers, banks, or even the EC), engaging with other (also non-European) cities to inspire replication and to encourage application as future Lighthouse Cities or developing a long-term plan for the SCC1 impact.

(Picture: Fraunhofer IAO)

After intensive thinking and collaborative working, a study visit to the historic Lisbon city hall inspired city leaders by showing how heritage buildings can be protected while at the same time improving energy ratings: The Lisbon city hall is a 150 year old historic building that has been fitted with 100 solar panels (during office hours!), insulated glass, a charging station for electric vehicles and a computerised sustainable energy management system hooked up to its LED lights.
At the Sharing Cities Shop right across from the Lisbon city hall, visitors heard how the Royal Borough of Greenwich, London, which is one of the Sharing Cities Lighthouse Cities, had come up against heritage regulations that made it impossible to install solar panels in the World Heritage Site on the banks of the river Thames. The solution? Focus instead on renewable energy – a Water Source Heat Pump, using water from the Thames basin – that will not change the outward appearance of the buildings and in fact take advantage of the resources of the Heritage Site. Innovative solutions like this are at the heart of smart cities, and by using EU funds to implement them, data from test cases provides proven results that convince other cities that change is possible.

(Picture: Fraunhofer IAO)

By cross-referencing results and conclusions regarding the approach and execution of smart measures, cities boost each other’s potential for success. The demonstration and highlighting of new, tested practices encourages replication in other cities, and allows synergies between projects to emerge. When cities come together and share these result, a lot of false starts and potholes that waste money and resources while slowing down the journey to a sustainable Europe can be avoided.

In the manifesto, the Lighthouse projects therefore declared to commit to identifying opportunities and enhance impact through collaboration. Consequently, synergies will be achieved that will help to spread best practices and thus bring Europe closer to realising its climate commitments. Moreover, the Lighthouse Cities commit to continue collaboration and consultation with businesses and citizens through their Lighthouse collaboration and work together with SCIS and the EIP-SCC to develop tools and standards that can be exploited by cities outside the Lighthouse projects.