Metropolitan Cities Met in Berlin for a Smarter World

Metropolitan Solutions, the biggest conference and exhibition for smart urban development was held in Berlin on May 20-22, 2015. TAGES presented the smart city RADICAL Solutions during the event.

Metropolitan Solutions (http://www.metropolitansolutions.de/home) which is an annual event organized by Deutsche Messe took place in CityCube, Berlin on May 20-22, 2015 this year. During three days 4,000 experts from science and industry plus decision-makers and government officials from cities around the world gathered at the CityCube complex to discuss new ways of making cities more sustainable, internationally competitive and liveable.[1] The main topics of the event were energy efficiency, sustainable mobility, transportation infrastructure, urban management, water & waste management, intelligent lighting solutions and intelligent sensor networks.

Besides 27 parallel conferences and workshops organized by independent partners, the exhibition area where 146 industrial-sector exhibitors exhibited the innovative city solutions and products was also one of the most attractive part of the event. The attendees expanded their business network in terms of several activities took place in the exhibition area such as matchmaking event and city business talks.

During the event TAGES, one of the partners of the ICT PSP Smart City RADICAL Project (http://www.radical-project.eu/), met cities and introduced them the smart city RADICAL platform and services (in the areas of Cycling Safety Improvement, Products Carbon Footprint Management, Object‐driven Data Journalism, Participatory Urbanism, Augmented Reality and Eco‐consciousness) in order to see their replication possibilities in the cities. The cities Munih, Innsbruck and Wien showed great interest to the RADICAL solutions especially Carbon Footprint Management, Augmented Reality and Participatory Urbanism.

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The European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP SCC) also hold their General Assembly on the 2nd day of the event. The session opened by the speech of Violeta Bulc, European Commissioner for Transport and continued with three panels on smart city related topics such as how to create synergies between policies and funds to boost demand, how to create the right solutions that meet cities’ needs and the next steps of EIP SCC. Especially the importance of the smart city policies was pointed out by the panellists. The mayor of Ghent City, Daniel Termont, stated that innovative technologies, IT tools, etc. were very important for a smart city but first of all the policies should have been established and then the tools and technologies should have been developed according to these policies. During the assembly, the ideas of the panellists have also been visually designed.

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