Programme: Horizon 2020

Grant Agreement number: 664604

Project acronym: SMARTPOLIS

Type of action: SGA-CSA

Background

Europe called for a strategic initiative on Smart Cities and Communities by establishing the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP SCC) in 2011. While Western European EU member states have started to leverage modern ICT for improving energy efficiency and urban mobility, Eastern European Countries are still lacking skills and financial strength and business models to do so. Therefore, capacity building within the region is of utmost importance and connecting the knowledge centre with leading partners with a proven track record of connecting to a large pool of partners providing the required knowledge transfer into the region.

BME has started this knowledge acquisition for smart cities by conducting a series of workshops and meetings with a special emphasis on the larger Danube regions. Based on these activities, the need of a Budapest Centre of Excellence for Smart Cities has been identified. Active engagement with cities such as Miskolc, Szolnok, Novi Sad, and Timisoara to name a few has shown the need of local expertise and knowledge sharing.

The Centre should serve as a vendor independent knowledge pool which will be capable to transfer the strategic implementation plan and the upcoming operational implementation plan of the EIP SCC into local actions within Eastern Central Europe.

The Centre will play a vital role in both helping cities in Eastern Central Europe to cope with the EU climate goals and how to respond to the needs of change in build environments, transport, and public & private infrastructures. The Centre will be committed to support the propagation of standards and open data for the sake of affordability and economy of scale.

Project idea

While Western European EU Member States have started the journey of modernizing their cities and built capacity and related knowledge centres, Hungary and others in Eastern Central Europe are lacking such a comprehensive initiative. The Budapest Centre of Excellence for Smart Cities will be the nucleus and hub for building up capacity and knowledge sharing within the larger European Initiative EIP SCC. Because the required knowledge development needs a multi-disciplinary approach including but not limited to city planning, high level modelling, situation awareness, urban sensors, analysis & simulation of possible solutions and multi criteria decision support, such a Centre will benefit largely from the infrastructure of a technical university. The Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) has the capabilities to combine the engineering solutions with economic aspects and innovation management.

The project idea is to establish a Centre of Expertise which will be well-connected to the EIP SCC, its strategic implementation plan, and the Smart Cities Stakeholder Platform utilizing the expertise of BME for developing a regional knowledge centre. Furthermore, helping local business to build up capacity and knowledge which should lead to new products & solutions as well as protecting related intellectual property.

Project Objectives

Though the cooperation of the parties the long term goal of establishing a centre of excellence for smart city technologies and their implementation with regional reach in Central Eastern Europe.

The establishment of a successful new operation is achieved through the realization of short and medium term goals and targets.

Short term goals satisfy the requirements of the first phase of the TEAMING project by elaborating a concept and associated business plan for the establishment and operating principles of the new centre of excellence, while the long term goal is the successful launch and operation of this new centre.

  
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