In front of more than 3.000 visitors at Innovative City in Nice, France on June 24 & 25 2015, EIT Digital showcased for the very first time 9 of its <link innovation-entrepreneurship urban-life-mobility>Urban Life & Mobility digital innovations to meet new smart citizens needs.
With 350.000 inhabitants, Nice is an ideal place to experiment smart city innovations. In 2015, Nice ranked number 4 among smart cities in the world, after Barcelona, New York, London and before Singapore, and was the only one in France as Christian Estrosi, mayor of Nice proudly reminded us by mentioning Juniper Research study.
Consequently, there is no surprise that Innovative City exhibition in Nice is one of the references when it deals with smart cities, together with Smart City Expo in Barcelona. The 4th edition of the event gathered 3.211 visitors, among which a lot of territorial governance bodies. More than 50 countries (China, Israel, Lebanon, Emirates, Russia, USA etc.) were represented through delegations. 70 exhibitors were showcasing on booths (eg. Bouygues Immobilier, Cisco, GE Lighting, IBM, Orange, Schneider Electric). More than 40 conferences, with 180 speakers all engaged into smart cities, were rolling out in parallel.
Since this year, the tagline of the event was "City Apps", EIT Digital decided to attend and showcase on booth #26 some of its digital innovations developed in the Urban Life & Mobility action line.
9 digital innovations were showcased through demos and pitches to visitors. These innovations, supported by EIT Digital, were all made in an entrepreneurial mind-set by:
- European start-ups (Localidata, PlugSurfing, wezzoo, Vulog) respectively from Madrid, Berlin, Paris and Nice,
- or multidisciplinary and international teams of partners (FlashPoll, Connecting Digital Cities, ProtoWorld, 3cixty, cityOmeters) brought together by EIT Digital.
They all answered new needs of citizens and city stakeholders at a time of instantaneity, big data, open data, social networks, mobility and sharing.
All innovations were carefully selected by EIT Digital for this event. If all were good of course, there was one which particularly grabbed the attention of the visitors: ProtoWorld.
ProtoWorld demo at Innovative City. Source: EIT Digital on Vine
ProtoWorld is a simulation tool that allows mobility stakeholders to envision new strategies and experiment different scenarios like on a gaming board. For example, ProtoWorld can show how the addition of checkpoints improves citizens security before and after a football match.
ProtoWorld is not only a platform that gathers and integrates in a holistic way different sources of data (incl. behavioural data), it also makes the difference with its playful, realistic and interactive interface which takes into account users experience (see demo on the left). By talking the same universal game language, this innovation results in a better awareness and understanding of a project among all stakeholders.
ProtoWorld is a European innovation conjointly developed by EIT Digital partners: KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Thales (France) and Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands).
At the end of the 2 days, all 9 innovations could meet their future market, make many contacts and get useful feedbacks.
If you missed them in Nice, you will be able to see them at Smart City Expo in Barcelona on November 17-19 2015. Some of them should also attend New Mobility World in Frankfurt in September 2015. Stay tuned!
Videos of Innovative City conferences are available here in French and in English.
