Cities need to change and develop, but in times of tight budgets
this change needs to be achieved in a smart way
Cities are becoming more and more of a focal point for EU economies and societies at large, due to the on-going urbanisation, and the trend towards increasingly knowledge-intensive economies as well as their growing share of resource consumption and emissions.
Major urbanisation requires new and innovative ways to manage the complexity of urban living and new ways to target problems of overcrowding, energy consumption, resource management and environmental protection.
Under these circumstances, cities need to change and develop, but in times of tight budgets this change needs to be achieved in a smart way.
Based on the summary provided by the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC), the European grants, loans and equity investments supporting the roll-out of smart city solutions involving local authorities, SMEs, large companies and civil society exceed 723 billion Euros for the period 2014 -2020, with 678 billion in the form of grants and 45 billion as loans and equity managed by European Investment Bank.
The EIP-SCC is an initiative supported by the European Commission bringing together cities, industry, SMEs, banks, research and other smart city actors and together to: develop and implement integrated smart city solutions, support networking and partnering accumulate knowledge and facilitate exchange of information, and focus on the intersection of Energy, ICT and Transport.
To benefit from the European Commission initiatives, cities, industry, academia and SME’s need to work together and form partnerships to share ideas, views and experiences, to obtain funding and finance and to act in collaboration with local governments to remove regulatory, standardization, governance and other hurdles slowing down development.
“Smart Cities Mediterranean” (SMART-MED) Strategic Partnership was founded in May 2014 based on a plan that was submitted as a Project/Commitment 4817 to EIP-SCC and in response to a call for projects/commitments issued in February 2014, aiming to work for ‘smartening’ cities in the Mediterranean region by sharing resources, knowhow and experience. The commitment is listed in the EIP-SCC Market Place website as “Smart cities framework for the Mediterranean area”.
The scope of the Partnership is to identify, develop and deploy replicable, balanced and integrated solutions in the energy, transport, and ICT, in small and medium sized cities and islands in the Euro-Mediterranean region.
Within this framework, SMART-MED is organizing the 1st Euro-Mediterranean Conference and Exhibition 2016, in cooperation with the National Technical University of Athens and the KIOS Research Center for Intelligent Systems and Networks, of the University of Cyprus.
The Conference is focusing on “Smart Urban Development and Blue Growth opportunities for cities, communities and islands in the Mediterranean basin”.
The aim of the Conference is to bring together academia, industry and local authorities, to present recent scientific knowledge developments and technology innovations/ products/ services to city representatives for serving their efforts to achieve smart and blue growth.
Presentation sessions will be dedicated to smart products and solutions and in presenting projects that will be submitted for funding to European initiatives for smart cities.
