European universities collaborate for smart cities
Researchers at the University of Bradford, UK, are joining with the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Aarhus University, Denmark to develop smart technologies for nine European cities.
The five-year Smart Cities and Open Data Re-use (SCORE) project aims to improve the delivery of public services with applications such as interactive bins that can sense when they are full, intelligent car parks that can highlight empty spaces, and real-time flood-warning information data.
These ideas will be trialled and potentially implemented in cities across Europe, including; Aarhus, Amsterdam, Aberdeen, Bergen, Bradford, Dordrecht, Ghent, Gothenberg and Hamburg.
Dr Dhaval Thakker, SCORE project principal investigator at the University of Bradford, said: “The aim of the project is to improve the delivery of public services, using innovative software and data-sharing.
“Our role is to use our expertise in creating IoT inspired solutions, to assist cities in developing new, and more efficient ways of delivering essential services.”
As part of the project, the SCORE partners will define 12 shared challenges to improve municipal services, covering services such as the environment, water, parking and sustainable transport. They will then be tested in living labs with the data and insights generated shared across all partners, helping them to implement these solutions.
All cities taking part are targeting a 10% reduction in the cost of service provision and a 20% improvement in the quality of these services, as measured by public perception. It is hoped that the smart cities taking part in the SCORE project could save up to €50m by 2021.
Funded through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the SCORE project embraces an ‘open-source’ approach, where information, data and innovation are shared across all partners.
