RSS
Conference "Different City - Smart City" organized in Bucharest, 3-4 November
The smart city concept is analyzed on Thursday and Friday by specialists from Romania and abroad, during a conference organized in Bucharest by the Different Angle Cluster.
"We have organized this event to endow as many specialists and people interested in starting the smart city concept in Bucharest as possible. We want to show that smart things can be done in any city if it is wanted and if interests are left aside. We have brought in municipal authorities from other large cities to tell us how they implemented solutions and became smart cities. Specialists coming from Cyprus, Crete, Italy, the Netherlands. We have the capability to develop ideas and funding, but we are looking for a relation with the state authorities," said, for AGERPRES, Eduard Dimitriev, director for International Relations with the cluster.
The debates at the conference titled "Different City - Smart City" tackle topics that can develop the concept of smart city, such as technological advancement, reducing bureaucracy, waste recycling and reduction of pollutants.
The ambassador of the Netherlands in Bucharest, Stella Ronner-Grubacic, has emphasized that the subject is important to her country as well.
"78 percent of the population lives in cities today and this rate of growth generates other effects regarding climate change, economy, which means we must think of how to make these cities ready for the future. (...) In my country, smart cities have become a necessity and are putting pressure on the transport system, energy and creative methods [to solve issues] must be found," said Stella Ronner-Grubacic.,
She added that European legislation has a high impact on cities that are not yet sufficiently developed in elaborating "green" policies.
State Secretary Radu Puchiu noted, in his turn, that the subject is ever more present on the public agenda and showed that a mechanism to offer data registered with different services is ncessary.
"From the perspective of the partnership for open governance that we are coordinating at a national level, I believe an important matter in the smart city sector is that of open data, which serve as the basis of a package of applications that can be useful to people. (...) In Romania there is an open data portal, there are over 700 sets of data and many are used, transformed into applications, and cities can benefit from resources of the local IT community," Puchiu stated.
The "Different City - Smart City" international conference and exhibition comprises several sessions on topics such as infrastructure, transport and mobility, innovation, and technology.