Key Takeaway
Access to open public data is enabling municipalities in smart cities across Europe, along with their residents, to develop technological initiatives in an effort make their cities safer, more efficient and better prepared to take on climate change and the data revolution.
Copenhagen: a cyclist’s paradise
A self-proclaimed “living laboratory” for tech innovation, Copenhagen is taking massive steps in testing new applications, thanks to significant public-private partnerships and open access to data, with a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025.
In a project by Hitachi Insight started in 2016, Copenhagen features the world’s first open data exchange, making public and private data accessible in an effort to power innovation. According to the European Commission, Denmark is involved in 24% of smart grid R&D projects in the EU.
“Data is the fuel powering our digital world, but in most cities it is unused,” said Hans Lindeman, Senior Vice President, Hitachi Insight Group, EMEA. “Even where data sits in public, freely accessible databases, the cost of extracting and processing it can easily outweigh the benefits.
Hitachi has developed two applications: Journey Insight, to help citizens track their transportation usage over time and understand the carbon footprint of their travel; and Energy Insight, which allows households and businesses to see how much energy they use.
The ROI? A reduced carbon footprint, improved efficiency, and according to Frank Jensen, the Lord Mayor of Copenhagen, more jobs: “The City Data Exchange will help us all to create better public spaces and – for companies in Copenhagen – to offer better services and create jobs.”
Data company Vizalytics is one of the startups leveraging this data access to create a knowledge graph based on Outside Insight that offers business intelligence to local merchants.
Thoughtful city planning has enabled Copenhagen to lead the charge in the green revolution for a number of years. The city is well known for its cycling-friendly streets, with 400km of wide cycle paths accessible including 26 new Cycle “Super Highways”.
Geneva’s IoT sensors seek to improve urban living
Connected city tech is being piloted in Geneva in an effort to improve quality of life in public places. In what’s called the “Smart Canton” project, sensors that interact with connected objects such as telephones and GPS devices are distributed throughout the city. According to House of Switzerland, “the data collected by the sensors is analysed to improve the quality of certain services and equipment.”
The goal is to provide citizens with information about open parking spaces, to reduce the time they spend searching. As well, the city intends to reduce traffic noise by testing the impact of changes in speed limit, road surface or building construction.
Barcelona leads the way in open data and tech innovation
Barcelona has long been a leader in implementing new technologies. Already well on its way to becoming one of the world’s leading smart cities, the municipality has installed kilometers of fibre optics, free wifi via street lights and smart IoT sensors to monitor air quality, parking and waste.
The city has a Chief Technology Officer and digital commissioner – Francesca Bria, who has approached tech innovation by looking at how it can best serve Barcelona’s residents. Barcelona’s Digital City Plan intends to combat issues from urban planning to education, affordable housing, climate change, energy transition and sustainability.
Bria and her team intend to implement what the city calls “‘digital by default’ government services, focused on technological sovereignty, free software and open code, and the ethical use of data, in an effort to be more open and transparent.”
"The city believes that city data is a common good that should be openly accessible, helping over 13,000 local tech companies to build future data-driven services through a blockchain-based platform that we are developing in the DECODE project.”
The city is also working on a large-scale open source platform called decidim.barcelona to encourage citizen participation in government and policy.
Helsinki encourages co-creation, develops mobility-as-a-service
Finland has enabled open data nearly since the dawn of the Internet. According to HuffPost, today it’s mostly machine-readable. This is driven by the 250-year-old Freedom of Information law, created in Sweden and Finland back when they were one.
Finland’s journalists have been capitalizing on the country’s open data efforts to improve data-driven journalism and encourage citizen participation and government accountability for years. According to HuffPost, “Everyone can access the city’s public data, including foreigners (provided they understand Finnish), unless the information relates to national security or may violate people’s privacy.”
What’s more? The government’s fully on board. “Politicians don’t complain about data sharing,” said Tuomas Peltomaki from the daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. “It’s democracy at work.” With access to so much data, journalists can work to check existing policies, initiatives and public services and help the government understand what’s working and what isn’t. Think of it as outsourcing audit to their own citizens.
Finland’s Helsinki Loves Developers platform encourages creators to work together to put their city’s data to good use, via co-creation. They’ve developed an entire region – the Smart Kalasatama District – which encourages innovation and is built much like a testing ground for piloting new Smart City initiatives. Its goal? To give all residents one more hour per day that’s freed up via smart services that improve quality of life and efficiency.
One startup leading the way toward improved efficiency in Finland is MaaS Global, the first self-proclaimed “mobility-as-a-service” product. The platform combines all means of travel to “work out the best option for every journey – whether that’s a taxi, public transport, a car service or a bike share.”
European cities are investing heavily in open data initiatives and improved efficiency to make quality of life in urban areas increasingly more pleasant, efficient and environmentally sustainable. In the coming weeks, we’ll explore cities in other areas of the world competing for the title of the World’s Smartest City.
