The City of Aarhus hosted a two-day study trip for the City of Stavanger and presented Aarhus’s way of working with smart cities. As part of their visit they came by Aarhus University on a Friday afternoon to learn about our work with smart cities internationally, nationally and locally in Aarhus. The visit started with a tour around the Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction (CAVI) where the visitors from Stavanger were introduced to some of the most relevant projects and CAVI's way of working with projects from ideas to implementation.

Making Technology Work in Smart Cities and Communities

The projects in CAVI are eye-catching and engaging and for this visit with smart cities and communities in focus this served as a good reminder, that the technology is already there - and it can take us almost everywhere. What is needed in order to make the technology work in smart cities and communities is a reorganisation of our way of working within cities and communities - nationally as well as internationally. This issue was therefore the focal point for the presentation that Martin Brynskov gave afterwards. "We can build an endless amount of systems, but the important thing now is to find a way of organising us in cities and communities in a way that isn’t normative but opens up for collaborations nationally as well as internationally," he said.

The visitors form Stavanger raised their concerns about not having a smart city strategy in place, but it turns out that this might just be an advantage after all as smart cities and communities are ever-changing, and the cities that have had strategies for several years already need to adjust them. "Those who have been holding back in creating strategies have an advantage now, because they have the opportunity to organise themselves with an up-to-date approach," Martin Brynskov said. 

Warm-up for the Nordic Edge Expo

Stavanger is a member city of the Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) network that Martin Brynskov is chairing and at this years Nordic Edge Expo in Stavanger OASC is organising the session "Scaling Up Smart City Solutions in Europe" where Martin will be speaking.  

Nordic Edge Expo takes place from 24 to 26 September and Martin will be speaking on 25 September from 15:00 to 17:00 in the session "Scaling Up Smart City Solutions in Europe." You can find more information here.

He is also key-note at a project-led pre-event (led by Triangulum) called "Energising Cities: Innovations, Challenges & Solutions" on 23 September from 10:00-10:45. You can see the programme here.