Newsletter #9

The recent period of mySMARTLife has been a time full of changes. There have been some shifts in our city coordinators in Nantes and Hamburg, as our friends Benoît and Julian moved to other responsibilities in their cities. We will for sure miss them.

Also, an extension of our activities towards the end of the project due to some technical adjustments as well as difficulties to continue various installations due to the covid-19 situation were necessary.

Now, with these changes ready to be formally approved, we look towards a promising future and towards the finalisation of mySMARTLife as one of the most ambitious projects in the European Smart City family.

In mySMARTLife, we are ready to implement our final evaluation and to start drafting our main conclusions and lessons learnt. This will be very valuable input for other EU cities that are requested now to implement a radical paradigm change to become climate-neutral by 2050. The activities implemented in our three Lighthouse Cities Nantes, Hamburg and Helsinki are an excellent set of examples that can be part of the necessary transition pathway for climate neutrality in EU cities.

Parallel to my activity as coordinator of mySMARTLife, during the last 10 months, I was honoured to lead the Board of Coordinators (BoC) of the lighthouse projects, the main collaboration body of the family of 18 lighthouse projects that counts with more than 100 cities collaborating to shape the future of our continent. Among all the activities carried out by the group during this period, I can highlight the following: the alignment of the BoC with the new service contract SCALE that started its operation during this period, the signature of a new Collaboration Manifesto, the re-shaping of the Task Groups and the liaison with the representatives of the Mission of Climate Neutral and Smart Cities. In Mr. Mathew Baldwin’s words, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission's DG MOVE to whom now we have established a fluent dialogue, “the lighthouse projects family is a good example of good practices for the cities that would be interested in participating in the Mission”.

So, in mySMARTLife, we are ready to showcase our results. Please continue following us in this very exciting (and last) period of our project!

Rubén García Pajares
CARTIF Technology Centre
Project Coordinator

Funchal and Lappeenranta are part of the mySMARTLife Cities Network composed by 16 cities from Europe and beyond. For this newsletter, we wanted to give two of our network cities a voice. If you are interested in finding out more about the mySMARTLife Cities Network, please have a look at our website.

Funchal’s sustainable mobility actions

Inspired by the mySMARTLife Cities Network, the Municipality of Funchal on the island of Madeira (PT) has been pursuing a sustainable vision that includes urban rehabilitation, territorial cohesion, technological innovation, energy efficiency, multimodality regarding transport, mobility management and accessibility. READ MORE

City of Lappeenranta Excels in Data driven Building Energy Management

The City of Lappeenranta (FI) puts a lot of effort in research and development of data-driven energy efficiency services in its building stock and uses a data platform in energy management. The information related to building automation as well as energy use and operating conditions is collected into one platform, which enables better monitoring and management of energy efficiency in buildings. READ MORE

mySMARTLife is one of eighteen European Smart Cities and Communities Lighthouse projects, currently receiving funding within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme.

Smart Cities Marketplace: Financing of smart city solutions – share your best case

The Smart Cities Marketplace is searching for cases to highlight the possibilities of private financing to deploy smart city solutions. Share your successful case to highlight different forms of private finance and help share the best ideas for cities, and/or their partners, to exploit private finance to make communities, smarter, more sustainable, and better to live in. Read more here.

Atelier: Bratislava on its way to Climate Neutrality

Look at Fellow City Bratislava and its efforts towards a more sustainable future with public greens, the use of RES and its efforts about building a Positive Energy district (PED) at Janikov Dvor located in Petržalka, district of Bratislava. Read the full Atelier Story here.

POCITYF: Urban Platform has been nominated as the best digital solution from Portugal by WSA 2021

The Urban Platform, an innovative solution that aims to transform the future of sustainable cities, is nominated as ’’Best Digital Solution in Portugal’’ by WSA 2021. The Urban Platform is the City Information Platform implemented in the (Lighthouse) City of Évora to benchmark the performance of POCITYF outcomes. Read the full news article here.