Editorial

Dear ITEA Community,

As I am writing this editorial, the traditional Dutch Carnival festival is taking place again for the first time since the pandemic when two years ago COVID 19 struck the Netherlands during the same festival. Let’s hope this signals an end to the pandemic and gives us the freedom again to move and meet soon, which is so important for the creation and development of innovations, innovative communities and collaborations. Such as the PPPs, as Wilbert Schaap explains, that are at the heart of Dutch industry and innovation policy where success stands or falls by the “Top Team” effort.

This magazine shows some great examples of how innovations result from close cooperation, a culture of openness and possibilities to meet and connect. For Arda Güreller getting in touch with people from different R&D units and organisations within the ITEA Community has offered him a “landscape of opportunities” leading to new ideas and unexpected viewpoints. Besides the real need to meet face to face again, Arda acknowledges that we must also innovate and exploit new ways of interacting online. So far, ITEA has been able to adapt quickly to the circumstances and deploy online tools to keep activities running and facilitate a smooth and seamless transition to ITEA 4. Well done to the ITEA Office team!

ITEA 4 aims to extend and intensify its customer-oriented activities by increasingly involving users and customers in their projects. Assar combines professional expertise as architects and urban planners with the insights and desires of users, neighbourhood residents and institutions enabling co-creation in urban development. The ITEA Community is working hard to create better cities for the future, with the involvement of customers.

Seppo Hatajaa (City of Tampere) of our Smart City Advisory Board stimulates and supports exchange and interaction between cities and our project partners. Read the article about how Tampere is anticipating its future as smart city. And how the integration of data in one platform enables the Dutch and Canadian partners of PS-CRIMSON to create cities in which our lives can be more secure and safe. The first results are already being applied in the Dutch city of Hilversum.

In response to the ‘Emergency on Planet Earth’, the 90’s classic album by Jamiroquai, driven by the urgency to tackle pandemics, wars and climate change, ITEA and its Community is fully dedicated to actively deliver a response to the different challenges we face together with the whole Eureka Community. We are currently joining forces with our fellow Clusters in the Eureka Clusters Joint Call on Sustainability. Go to the website https://eureka-clusters.eu/sustainability.html. I hope to see good and innovative projects submitted.

Jan Jonker