Climate-KIC participates in Smart Cities World Summit in Barcelona

The Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) is a worldwide event addressed to cities, enterprises and entrepreneurs, research centres, universities and other public or non-governmental organizations with ideas, research, insights and innovative solutions around the Smart City. This year took place the 5th edition, which gathered almost 500 cities from all over the world (among the others Istanbul, Kyoto, New York, Paris or Vienna), 465 exhibitors and over 400 speakers divided in more than 40 sessions above 6 different core Topics: Technology, Society, Governance; Sustainability, Mobility, e Innovation & Startups.

Within the theme of Innovation and Start-up’s, Bianca Dragomir, Coordinator and Responsible of the entrepreneurship pillar of Climate-KIC Spain, participated as a speaker in the Session “How start’s ups innovate cities”. In this panel representatives of various accelerators, innovation centres and foundations of intelligent cities like InnoCité (Canada), Global Futures Group (US), Entiq (UK) and Climate-KIC, presented their perspectives on the role of start-up’s in the smart city industry, how they are entering the market and what challenges they are facing. The debate, organised by 4YFN, was also an occasion for the experts to share visions on smart city developments in the following 4 years, as well as digress on collaboration between large firms and start’s up, in the smart city industries.  After the debate, the speakers participated in the jury to select the winner of 4YFN 2015 Smart City Award.

Dragomir states: “Smart cities that opt for low carbon development, provide endless opportunities for new clean technology company’s enactment. The aim is to create a type of company that, through the Climate-KIC Accelerator, is ready to face climate change, paving the way towards a zero carbon economy, and at the same time offering enormous business opportunities in the 18 cities Climate-KIC Europe where it operates”.

Explaining the methodology used by the Climate-KIC accelerator, Dragomir said: “it is important that these companies are involved in a real innovation ecosystem throughout all stages of development, in order to get the right product.” Further she added that: “The citizens are the one who, in the end, benefit from that, so that it can be replicated across the pan-European cities network“. Nevertheless, Climate-KIC is giving help and support to close to 400 new start-ups annually.

 “Pioneers into Practice” also presents in the Smart City Expo World Congress

  In Climate-KIC’s showroom there has also been members of the 2015 edition of the Pioneers into Practice program, also known PIP, the Climate-KIC  mobility program who gathered expert on climate change’s topics, like education, research, administration, to create, through the sharing knowledge  and experience, new products and services in the struggle against climate change. Xavier Costa, one of the Pioneer of the 2015 edition, the mentor  Antonio Garcia and Kate Martin, coordinator in Birmingham of the PIP program, they had explained the project “Cities that Listen”. This Project  permits through sensors like IBeacons and Eddystones, the interactive communication with the public transport use to make it more inclusive,  personalized, and participative, improving in that way the services offered to the citizenship.

“Our participation in the Exposition was very interesting. I would define as a starting point for a cooperation within the citizens of the world, to develop “Cities that Listen” properly.” Xavier Costa, Pioneer 2015

Almost 450 between already existing companies and start-up, showcased their latest urban solutions and also their different platforms of integrated urban management. Among the multinational company there were Amazon, Audi, Airbnb, Google, and IBM.

This worldwide meeting about Smart Cities rewarded the most advanced projects and innovative initiatives all over the world through the World Smart City Awards. The winners of the three prizes for the categories of initiative and innovative city project were respectively: the Findeter Initiative (Colombia), the Hebei Digital Education Centre (China) and the city of Peterborough (United Kingdom). The strong commitment and will of this British city to become the capital of the environment in the UK, in addition to being the first city to implement circular economy strategies and a model of citizen participation, convinced the jury to give the city the award. On the last day it was announced that Istanbul will host a regional edition of the event in April 2016.