Networks and cities' news

Jelgava City Municipality Operative Information Center (MOIC)

Jelgava City in Latvia is widely recognised in Baltic region as one of the North European leaders in the practical implementation of Smart City concepts. The Jelgava Smart City programs began with mobile citizen e-cards for transportation and social services for pensioners and school students, smart traffic flow management, lightning sensors, security cameras, energy efficiency, use of renewable energy resources and green transport, energy planning and data management.

One of the key city achievements included the establishment of Municipality Operative Information Centre (MOIC) in 2016 to monitor the city public area and critical infrastructure with the latest technology solutions (27/7 citizens contact centre, video surveillance system, GIS, energy monitoring, flood maps, road traffics accident map, drone images database, etc.)

After extensive experimentation with Smart City Monitor digital transformation technology platform during 2018-2019, the municipality decided to obtain the license for its implementation to support the ambitious city incentives in AI and Big Data - driven digital
transformation. In 2017, the investment research department of the Financial Times, ranked Jelgava 6th among Europeans micro cities in the category “connectivity”.

BioArchitecture & Sustainability Week 2021

The Agency for Energy and Sustainable Development (AESS) is a non-profit association for the sustainable energy development and was founded in 1999, with the support of the European Commission's SAVE II program, on the initiative of the Municipality and Province of Modena, together with three other founding members (Modena Chamber of Commerce, the then local multiutility META and the then public company for local transport ATCM). AESS is part of the European network of energy agencies ManagEnergy and the Italian network of energy agencies RENAEL.

Zero Carbon Cities partners have been invited to the AESS' first English speaking webinar as part of their BioArchitecture & Sustainability Week 2021. Please register for these interesting and valuable sessions. 

Co-creating a Healthy Vic at Puig dels Jueus

As an Action Planning Network aiming to improve health outcomes for city residents, Healthy Cities is committed to engaging citizens in our work. Each of our partner cities is reaching out to their communities through pilot activities – or Small-Scale Actions, as named in URBACT projects – in efforts to co-create a healthier city together.

“Time for review” – lessons learnt and outcomes from the Mid-Term Review of the ‘IoTXchange’ Action Planning Network, concluded on September 2021.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. The authorship of the quote is often debated and assigned to different authors, from Peter Drucker to Lord Kelvin or to Antoine-Augustin Cournot, but if there doubts on who said it first, anyone agrees with its reasoning. Especially in complex projects, you need to take time along the process to stand back, listen to the parts involved, and measure what you have achieved so far, in order to improve your doings and make sure you reach your final aims.

ServaNet – Regional Open Fiber Network

Miguel Sousa, Urbact Lead Expert developed a Case Study on ServaNet – Regional Open Fiber Network. The Scope of this case study is about municipalities in the same territory sharing the costs of developing a technological infrastructure, like it happens in the Västernorrland county in Sweden that includes Ånge and other 6 rural municipalities. The 7 municipalities are coowners of ServaNet, a regional broadband service provider, that is also implementing other lowcost/ low range solutions for IoT networks, such as LoRa.

ServaNet is a good example of a metropolitan area network, i.e. a broadband network available locally in one or more municipalities. ServaNet, like most other urban networks, is mostly built with fiber optics and is a so-called open net. It supplies fiber networks in the municipalities: Sundsvall, Härnösand, Timrå, Ånge, Strömsund and Ragunda, and is owned by the municipalities, or in some cases by utilities in municipalities, providing its inhabitants with access to the sharpest options in the Internet, television and smart services for the connected home, and ensuring the coordination of the offer across a vast region.

BioCanteens#2: cities engaged for food democracy and sovereignty

3 primary schools’ canteens in the city and a thousand lunches par day 100% organic and mostly local with no cost increase! That the magic of the Good Practice of Mouans-Sartoux, a small sustainable city, surrounded by the rather unsustainable French Riviera, where it’s all about real estate interest, high pressure on land use and mass tourism.