On 28 March, Stavanger partner Lyse successfully replicated the Blink service in the headquarters of AVAN in Sabadell and made pilot installations in the home of three different users. AVAN is an organization that does rehabilitation for patients that suffer from different neuro-physiological diseases, and the organization has by themselves done the last two of a total of five pilot installations in the patients  homes.

The Blink service brings Full-HD video conference service to end user’s TVs, as well as Android and iOS based smart phones and tablets. Smartphones and tablets is typically used by mobile health personnel or family and friends.

AVAN will use the service to follow up on their users for therapy and rehabilitation, and they will conduct a three-month research project where each user has three weekly consultations using the Blink solution, with the purpose of documenting effect.

The Blink solution can be implemented at the patient’s close family or friends, thus providing more social contact and activity. It can also provide sensor signals from medical devices like oximeter and spirometers, but this functionality will not be tested in Sabadell.

All users got to test the service themselves, and Lyses representatives Dagfinn Wåge and Birger Clementsen experienced a warm welcome and interest from both users and their relatives. Councilor for Social Action Gabriel Fernàndez i Díaz from Sabadell municipality, also tested the service to call the different homes.

Councilor for Social Action Gabriel Fernàndez i Díaz from Sabadell municipality, testing the service to call the different homes. (Picture: Lyse)

Dagfinn Wåge interviewing Nacho Perrote who is an occupational therapist at AVAN. (Picture: Lyse)

A videoconferencing room has been installed at the Industrial Business Centre of Can Roqueta, to be used by the companies located in this centre, as well as companies and entities throughout the city.

This technology, mostly used in medium or large meetings, offers a high quality and comfort and facilitates exchange between local companies and other partners. It furthermore enables face-to-face meetings and presentations in their own space, and allows them to disseminate content through streaming systems to a wide public.

The space is already operational and can be booked in two formats: a small one with the possibility of projecting from laptops or mobile devices (up to eight simultaneous devices, wireless option available) and a digital whiteboard or a large one, additionally including videoconferencing and streaming tools.

Videoconferencing Tool (Picture: Ajuntament de Sabadell)

The videoconferencing service incorporates HD audio and video reception and emission equipment, as well as access to professional videoconferencing software with the possibility to convene tele-meetings of up to 30 people simultaneously, although it can also be used with any free software available online. The high definition camera provides a 90 degree vision field, with inclined or panoramic zoom adjustable through a remote control, in addition to setting predefined plans. At the same time, the “hands-free” audio system through a base station cancels echo and reduces ambient noise, which allows sharper communication. It includes a 65-inch touch screen, which facilitates the projection of content from a mobile device or laptop located in the same room. Moreover, it can broadcast live content through streaming options and the screen can be used as a digital whiteboard.

Our Follower City Sabadell develops a strategy of implementation of ten innovative solutions integrating the fields of energy, transport and ICT. In the case of videoconferencing, replication has occurred mainly in cooperation with the City of Stavanger, which has implemented the videoconferencing system in several homes for medical tele-assistance for the elderly.

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How does Triangulum impact the Stavanger region? On 23 May, the communication group of Triangulum’s Lighthouse City Stavanger invites key stakeholders, politicians, partner employees and citizens to promote Triangulum project and its achievements.

The goal of the event is to give insights into which innovative solutions have been developed and what significance they have for the Stavanger region. In the course of this event, a brand-new movie will be launched, together with the new website, highlighting the implications of the Triangulum project from a citizen’s point of view.

Official invitation to event in Norwegian (Picture: Stavanger Kommune)

The City of Leipzig is establishing a new unit for digital issues within the administration. This unit will support the digitization process in Leipzig in different ways: It’s going to develop digital projects and it will start a participatory process with companies, scientific institutes and the citizenship about digitization. This means that the unit is going to manage and control funding projects and participation processes.

New Digital City Unit with Mayor Burkhard Jung and Acting Director Dr. Beate Ginzel (Picture: Markus Korzer Fotografie)

Furthermore, the Digital City Unit will coordinate joint application processes and project implementation with public utilities as well as joint city council and shareholder resolutions. It will collaborate with city offices regarding funding opportunities, facilitate networking between business partners, research and university institutions and support start-ups in implementing pilot projects. As a Smart City project, Triangulum and its representatives at the City of Leipzig will also move to this new unit.

26 March 2019, San Sebastián, Spain:

San Sebastián, Lighthouse City of Replicate, organized the European Smart Projects Summit and invited Triangulum and the other 13 European Smart Cities and Communities (Lighthouse) Projects to join as well. The purpose of the two-day summit was to foster further collaboration opportunities between the 14 projects, to exchange knowledge and to welcome the two new projects MAKING-CITY and +CityxChange to the family of Lighthouse Cities. The event was thus occasion for the signing of the manifesto of cooperation between the European SCC1 Projects. Furthermore, a culture of exchange and learning was supported through a number of high-level presentations, interactive workshops, a study visit to the demo sites of San Sebastián and internal working group meetings. From Triangulum, the project management team from Fraunhofer IAO, including the communication lead from Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, as well as replication representatives (Fraunhofer IAO) attended the event.

Signing the new manifesto (Picture: Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum)

Onto the workshops

Six parallel workshops covered issues like the transformation of districts into sustainable and smart buildings, sustainable urban mobility, funding possibilities for smart solutions, citizen engagement as well as data security and the energy transition. The coordinator of our project, Damian Wagner from Fraunhofer IAO, talked about experiences from five years of Triangulum at the workshop “How to fund the scalability of smart solutions”.

On the road

The study visit demonstrated smart implementations in the Urumea Riverside District that is part of Replicate’s Lighthouse City San Sebastián. The Urumea Riverside District consists of a residential, industrial and a green area and was reached by electric buses that connect the city centre with this smart district.

Here, the group visited the Txomin residential neighbourhood where the first urban District Heating Network of this size in the Basque Country is in operation. The district heating network is owned by Fomento San Sebastián (coordinator of Replicate) and managed through a public-private innovative model, which will give service to more than 1,500 new and 156 retrofitted homes.

The industrial park Polígono 27 displayed smart ICT and infrastructures deployment and a unique sustainable building named Enertic, where experiences on smart implementations, difficulties, challenges and results have been shared.

Here in San Sebastián, the municipality has upped its game on sustainable mobility by introducing electric vehicles to the local police enforcement. In the case of the BMW e-scooters, an additional battery was installed to power their sirens & lights.

Working group meetings

The two-day event was rounded off with internal working group meetings at Talent House, with a splendid view over sunny San Sebastián, with its beach and the historic city centre. There, the different working groups, such as the Board of Coordinators, the Replication or the Communication Group, met to discuss joint topics and to work on joint activities.

And Good Bye

What have we learnt from San Sebastián? Over these two days, we have learnt that we, the Smart City family, consisting now of 14 projects (quite a large family by now!), are delivering outstanding projects, encountering similar barriers and that we all need to find localised specific solutions to overcome them. However, across all the different projects, citizen engagement is the key to delivering a truly smart city. In addition, we are aware that political commitment is necessary to make smart urban transformation a reality.

Representatives from 14 European Smart Cities and Communities Projects (Picture: Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum)

The 14 European Smart Cities and Communities (Lighthouse) Projects are:

• Remourban www.remourban.eu
• Triangulum www.triangulum-project.eu
• GrowSmarter www.growsmarter.eu
• SmartEnCity www.smartencity.eu
• REPLICATE www.replicate-project.eu
• Smarter Together www.smartertogether.eu
• Sharing Cities www.sharingcities.eu
• RUGGEDISED www.ruggedised.eu
• mySMARTLife www.mysmartlife.eu
• IRIS www.irissmartcities.eu
• MAtchUP www.matchup-project.eu
• STARDUST www.stardustproject.eu
• MAKING-CITY http://makingcity.eu/
• +CityxChange https://cityxchange.eu/

IPR Prague, together with the City Hall of Prague, will be co-hosting the next UNaLaB Project Consortium Meeting and their General Assembly at the end of May 2019, expecting up to 70 members of the UNaLab Consortium to participate.

UNaLab Logo (Picture: UNaLab)

UNaLab (Urban Nature Labs) is a project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. The UNaLab consortium comprises 28 partners from 10 cities across Europe and beyond, including municipalities, research institutes, businesses and industry representatives. The UNaLab partner cities are committed to addressing the challenges that today’s cities are facing today by focusing on climate and water related issues, within an innovative and citizen-driven paradigm.
With three demonstration cities, seven replication cities and several observers, the UNaLab project aims to develop smarter, more inclusive, more resilient and increasingly sustainable societies through innovative nature-based solutions (NBS). These topics are strongly correlating with Triangulum project’s targets. That is the reason why not only Triangulum Follower City Prague but also our Lighthouse Cities Eindhoven and Stavanger are part of the UNaLaB project: Eindhoven as a Front Runner City (similar to our Lighthouse City concept) and Stavanger as a Follower City are working on the basis of the experience they have gained during the course of Triangulum Project. Prague is acting as an Observer City in the project, represented by IPR Prague, in collaboration with the Capital City of Prague. The project was launched in June 2017 and will run until May 2022.
This project has received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 730052 Topic: SCC-2-2016-2017: Smart Cities and Communities Nature based solutions.
For more information, please visit UNaLaB’s website.

For decades, Strijp-S, one of the Triangulum demo sites in Eindhoven, was home to the Philips factories. This caused contamination of the soil which had to be cleaned up when it came to developing the area. The municipality of Eindhoven and VolkerWessels, both owners of the buildings and grounds on Strijp-S, worked together with joint forces and developed a system that purifies the soil and at the same time extracts energy from ground water.

The system is based on water pumps that circulate the soil water while bacteria demolish the detrimental components in the soil. The main disadvantage is that it takes about 30 years to complete but during that time, the area can be developed. The main advantage is that it is 5 to 10 times less expensive than removing the soil and purifying it the conventional way.

Energy saving

At the same time, the system is able to extract energy from ground water by using water pumps. This energy could be used to heat and cool the new developed and transformed buildings in this area. This is the reason why the system contributes to reduce the use of fossil fuels and therefore lowers carbon dioxide emissions.

“Sanergy” is only one of the activities happening in the district of Strijp-S. Strijp-S is a living lab, a dynamic environment in which innovative products and services are developed, refined, demonstrated and replicated.

The Strijp-S area with the new developments on the right and the former Philips factories on the left. (Picture: Eindhoven municipality)

Already in 2001, Prague has started to build its own 3D model of the city and since then, 3D data has been an elementary part of the data platform of the City of Prague. The core value of the 3D model is its supporting function for decision making in urban and strategic planning. Therefore, it is utilised as a data input for environmental and other analyses. 3D models in general can also serve as a communication tool in participatory planning processes for new developments or for revitalization processes in parts of the city.

3d model of Podlaznost, Prague (Picture: IPR Prague)

Prague’s 3D data is applicable on various fields and therefore, the city needs reliable tools to export 3D data into different formats without losing quality. To use 3D data for planning and analytical as well as participatory projects, data such as the topologically data has to be precise, reliable and constantly updated.

However, the model missed a system for maintenance of its 3D data such as a system for web presentation and had difficulties to ensure high data quality. Therefore, a further goal is to update the 3D model through the implementation of a system of software tools for maintenance and web presentation and to improve the data quality.

Before setting up the tender for the update of the 3D model, the spatial data section of IPR Prague analysed similar projects in other European cities. For instance, the 3D city models of Berlin, Zurich and Vienna were tested and a knowledge exchange with the Lighthouse City Eindhoven during the Follower City Days in 2017 took place. Afterwards, in 2018, a tender process for the selection of the provider of the technological update of the 3D model was published. Already in 2019, the update has been implemented and currently, the available geo data is undergoing an adaptation process.

During the implementation process, three milestones were set to measure the progress of the implementation of the 3D model: Firstly, setting up and signing the contract with the supplier (in 2018), secondly, the implementation of the new system in IPR Prague´s environment (in 2018) and thirdly, launching a web presentation of the city model (in 2019).

The European Union H2020 Smart Cities and Communities (SCC) programme has funded 14 Lighthouse projects with a total of 40 Lighthouse Cities to demonstrate how smart technology can deliver sustainability benefits to cities and their residents. These projects are monitoring and assessing the impacts of interventions in cities across Europe in order to provide evidence that will support wider uptake and replication. This is a timely opportunity to share learning and drive optimal monitoring and assessment activities, as the projects originally funded in the first year are now entering their fifth and final year, whilst the final projects of the programme have now begun.

The workshop

James Evans presenting at the workshop (Picture: Triangulum)

The Impact Monitoring and Assessment Exchange was held on 7^th March 2019 by Triangulum and the Manchester Urban Institute at the University of Manchester. A total of 17 participants attended with five of the SCC projects represented: RemoUrban, Replicate, Sharing Cities, IRIS and Triangulum.

The workshop was aimed at colleagues responsible for monitoring and assessing impacts in the SCC Lighthouse projects, as well other key stakeholders and interested parties. It provided an opportunity to exchange approaches to monitoring and assessing impacts, and to discuss challenges and opportunities. The goals were to share best practice among the SCC Lighthouse projects and develop a shared agenda. The workshop was small and interactive to facilitate sharing ideas and expertise. Key topics were communicated in advance with attendees to focus the exchanges.

Key topics

• Monitoring and assessing at different spatial and temporal scales
• Measuring softer social impacts and trade-offs with hard impacts
• Moving from outcomes to impacts
• Capturing and upscaling benefits
• Alignment with needs of different partners
• Data and data management
• Complying with open data requirements
• Cross-SCC opportunities and collaborative research opportunities

Agenda

Exchange 1: Approaches to monitoring and assessment, including five short bursts from the SCC projects represented.

Exchange 2: Capturing impacts.

• Table 1: Soft impacts including processes, organisational change, stakeholder engagement
• Table 2: Monitoring at different scales, including use of platforms and aggregation of data

Exchange 3: Data and indicators.

• Table 1: Data collection, management and governance, including data access, openness, accuracy, use and compliance with EU requirements
• Table 2: KPIs, including harmonisation and creation, alignment with existing frameworks (e.g. SCIS)

Exchange 4: Conclusions and next steps.

Key messages

There was a strong consensus across attendees that there is a need to capture process learning in the projects. There is an opportunity to capture the governance, learning and institutional change processes and communicate these to the follower cities and more widely. The key messages in relation to process learning that were identified across the five SCC projects are:

• Process learning has been identified by Lighthouse City partners as the most important and lasting outcome of their participation in the SCC projects.
• Process learning involves organisations changing the ways in which they work in response to new experiences, and presents a major opportunity to accelerate the uptake of smart city solutions.
• Process learning has not been fully recognised or captured within the existing funding and project frameworks.

The Exchange discussions resulted in a shared agenda with an intention to develop a dedicated work stream to leverage the considerable amount of process learning that the SCC programme has generated. This is made up of the following actions:

1. Capture and measure process learning and exploit as a use case. Partner organisations involved in SCC projects have learnt how to become smarter through new ways of working in partnership (inter- and intra-partner organisation). This is one the most valuable assets to come out of the lighthouse projects in terms of leveraged benefits and legacy.
2. Capture process learning around soft impacts (esp. social impacts). Showcase the importance of stakeholder engagement and social impact methodologies and develop into a use case for replication. Identify how process learning facilitates leveraged investment and activities (e.g. new ways of working enable further project investment).
3. Develop KPIs for process learning. Identify KPIs and value capture techniques for process learning
4. Exploit potential for cross-SCC project collaboration in relation to process learning at a meta-scale. This activity realises value in two ways. First it enables vertical and horizontal project-project learning, and second it can be used to produce recommendations for how to transform processes to accelerate smart city adoption.

The Exchange organisers have disseminated these ideas as an output to the European Commission and will develop a work stream to address process learning in the final year of the project. The monitoring and assessment work package will also hold a follow-up workshop in late 2019 to consolidate the process learning work stream, including mechanisms to share and feed into the data and replication work packages. Finally, the potential to establish a cross-SCC process learning taskforce will be explored, in order to evidence the added value of the SCC programme and support the development of tools and methods to capture and leverage this value.

Workshop Report authored by:

Prof James Evans (James.Z.Evans@manchester.ac.uk)

Dr Kelly Watson (Kelly.Watson@manchester.ac.uk)