What's behind EUREKA's Smart City initiative? (part 3)

EUREKA publishes a series of short articles to explain the concept behind Smart City, an initiative of the EUREKA Inter-Cluster committee aiming to support investments in this technological field (read here part 1 and part 2).

In a globalised world, reinventing business models will require cooperation between countries and companies to change regulation to include putting a greater value on considerations like the environment, for instance. “EUREKA Clusters can play a role in getting players together to create standards,” Guus Derks, who works for the Netherlands’ enterprise agency, SMEs are driving the kind of innovation needed in tomorrow’s cities, says Derks, while large companies are needed to integrate it in existing systems and infrastructure. Citizens will also drive change in future cities as taxpayers and consumers.

Evolving cities will use ICT to tackle the specific challenges of their populations, whether that means getting fresh food every day to the millions of people in Jakarta, the largest population in Indonesia, with new methods like small electric trucks, or doctors in Canada serving an ageing population in their homes through TV conference link-ups.

Once standards are set in important domains, developers will produce products and applications to meet changing consumer habits, predicts Derks. He thinks in the future technology could allow consumers to be sustainable by selling solar energy produced in their homes on to a neighbour or to even select from one of six sports cars through car sharing. He says: “With digitalisation, we’re moving to cities where we own less and less and just pay for what we use”(read here part 1 and part 2).

For more information about the EUREKA Smart City initiative go to www.eureka-smart-cities.org