Periodic Reporting for period 4 - Ruggedised (Rotterdam, Umea and Glasgow: Generating Exemplar Districts In Sustainable Energy Deployment)
Período documentado: 2020-05-01 hasta 2022-10-31
RUGGEDISED has created urban spaces powered by secure, affordable and clean energy, smart electro-mobility, and smart tools and services. It showcased economic viability to significantly increase cities' overall energy and resource efficiency through actions addressing the energy systems, mobility, climate change, water and air quality.
The lighthouse cities (LHCs) in the project were Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Glasgow (Scotland/United Kingdom) and Umeå (Sweden). The fellow cities, Brno (Czech Republic), Parma (Italy) and Gdansk (Poland), have developed replication plans based on the LHCs’ smart solutions.
The overall aim of the project was to provide impact related to replicability, socio-economics, environment, market transformation and policy.
Replicability: Each LHC had partners from the ‘triple helix’ on board which ensured that good experiences generated in the lighthouse districts were and are up-scaled to other parts of the city, region or country. During the project, the fellow cities have defined concrete plans for replication of solutions inspired by the LHCs.
Socio-economics: The outcomes of the project benefit directly more than 200,000 citizens from a total of 1.3 million residents in the cities. It is estimated that the implementation of the project mobilizes investments of about 1 billion EUR and a total of >1,900 new jobs. The project has a significant impact on the energy cost for citizens and has successfully addressed energy poverty.
Environment: The LHCs have increased the energy efficiency on district level considerably depending on the specific case.
The lighthouse cities (LHCs) in the project were Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Glasgow (Scotland/United Kingdom) and Umeå (Sweden). The fellow cities, Brno (Czech Republic), Parma (Italy) and Gdansk (Poland), have developed replication plans based on the LHCs’ smart solutions.
The overall aim of the project was to provide impact related to replicability, socio-economics, environment, market transformation and policy.
Replicability: Each LHC had partners from the ‘triple helix’ on board which ensured that good experiences generated in the lighthouse districts were and are up-scaled to other parts of the city, region or country. During the project, the fellow cities have defined concrete plans for replication of solutions inspired by the LHCs.
Socio-economics: The outcomes of the project benefit directly more than 200,000 citizens from a total of 1.3 million residents in the cities. It is estimated that the implementation of the project mobilizes investments of about 1 billion EUR and a total of >1,900 new jobs. The project has a significant impact on the energy cost for citizens and has successfully addressed energy poverty.
Environment: The LHCs have increased the energy efficiency on district level considerably depending on the specific case.
Innovation
To provide a learning and exchange platform between LHCs, three Liaison groups on “hardware”, “software” and “orgware” were established and several intensive workshops took place to discuss pressing issues and challenges between practitioners and experts. Several guides were produced capturing the lessons learned from these workshops.
Lighthouses
In Rotterdam, the developments of the smart solutions of RUGGEDISED followed the developments of the area development in the Heart of South. Most of the original solutions have been implemented, and monitoring is being continued after the project’s end.
In Umeå, all solutions have been implemented, were monitored during the project and are still being monitored. Within Glasgow, several solutions have not been fully realised mainly due to consequences of the corona outbreak.
Monitoring
Monitoring has been running for at least a year for most of the implemented solutions. The monitoring team has performed quantitative and qualitative analyses on the LHCs performance throughout the project and final assessment reports have been produced.
Upscaling
Within the upscaling Work Package, further workshops have been held in the LHCs and to understand the baseline condition of internal collaboration structures in the LHCs, to which the Innovation platforms are built on. Conclusions and recommendations have been captured in the work package’s final report.
Replication
The Fellow Cities have all established effective local governance groups that show a strong commitment in carrying on and steering smart city’s activities and initiatives. In all cases, they have been set up and structured in such a way as to survive the numerous political elections.
Concerning the long-term strategy and planning, all Fellow cities concluded a participatory foresight process aimed at defining a medium-long term vision. As for the actual replication activities, all three Fellow cities have defined their individual replication and investment plans.
Dissemination and communication
Communication has continued using communication channels established in the earlier periods, such as the project website, social media, videos, tri-annual blog updates and e-updates, scientific publications and news in the media. Citizen and stakeholder engagement at the local level has been on-going in various ways. The RUGGEDISED final event was successfully held in conjunction with the Recharge Earth congress in September 2022 in Rotterdam, where RUGGEDISED had three well attended breakout sessions. RUGGEDISED was nominated as finalist for the Wold Smart City Award 2022 in the category “Energy and Environment’.
To provide a learning and exchange platform between LHCs, three Liaison groups on “hardware”, “software” and “orgware” were established and several intensive workshops took place to discuss pressing issues and challenges between practitioners and experts. Several guides were produced capturing the lessons learned from these workshops.
Lighthouses
In Rotterdam, the developments of the smart solutions of RUGGEDISED followed the developments of the area development in the Heart of South. Most of the original solutions have been implemented, and monitoring is being continued after the project’s end.
In Umeå, all solutions have been implemented, were monitored during the project and are still being monitored. Within Glasgow, several solutions have not been fully realised mainly due to consequences of the corona outbreak.
Monitoring
Monitoring has been running for at least a year for most of the implemented solutions. The monitoring team has performed quantitative and qualitative analyses on the LHCs performance throughout the project and final assessment reports have been produced.
Upscaling
Within the upscaling Work Package, further workshops have been held in the LHCs and to understand the baseline condition of internal collaboration structures in the LHCs, to which the Innovation platforms are built on. Conclusions and recommendations have been captured in the work package’s final report.
Replication
The Fellow Cities have all established effective local governance groups that show a strong commitment in carrying on and steering smart city’s activities and initiatives. In all cases, they have been set up and structured in such a way as to survive the numerous political elections.
Concerning the long-term strategy and planning, all Fellow cities concluded a participatory foresight process aimed at defining a medium-long term vision. As for the actual replication activities, all three Fellow cities have defined their individual replication and investment plans.
Dissemination and communication
Communication has continued using communication channels established in the earlier periods, such as the project website, social media, videos, tri-annual blog updates and e-updates, scientific publications and news in the media. Citizen and stakeholder engagement at the local level has been on-going in various ways. The RUGGEDISED final event was successfully held in conjunction with the Recharge Earth congress in September 2022 in Rotterdam, where RUGGEDISED had three well attended breakout sessions. RUGGEDISED was nominated as finalist for the Wold Smart City Award 2022 in the category “Energy and Environment’.
As cities were clearly in the driving seat of RUGGEDISED, with concrete strategic climate and energy policy goals in mind (from the Sustainable Energy Action Plan each city had to have for applying, to cities declaring a climate and ecological emergency), the emphasis was not on bringing technologies to market, but on transformative innovations. Solutions were developed and implemented together with publicly owned or private utilities, infrastructure operators and technology providers, with research organisations and universities in a supportive role, e.g. in developing feasibility studies and business models.
Experimentation with new technologies has led to the exploration of new collaboration mechanisms between the key stakeholders (mostly, energy companies and city authorities) and to test new approaches and business models. This phenomenon is mostly due to the requirements of the combination of different technologies, and the new roles that have had to be assumed by these actors. Although these experiments are still far from generating a shift of paradigm on the classical relations between providers and consumers, they have set the basis to build more innovative business models in the future. Regarding the social impact of these new technologies, and despite most of the solutions analysed did not have a direct impact on citizen’s lives, the results of the social impact analysis highlight that the studied solutions are positively perceived by citizens, and that they are not disruptive for them, generating little opposition to their implementation in normal conditions and opening the door to further scale up and replication.
The RUGGEDISED project has been implemented during the last six years, overcoming important challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the global events that have followed. Despite these challenges, the evaluation indicates that the different solutions have effectively contributed to helping the participating lighthouse cities to adopt more sustainable practices, integrate innovative and more efficient technologies, and identify institutional and financial bottlenecks and potential solutions to ensure a smoother implementation and a successful scaling and replication in the future.
Experimentation with new technologies has led to the exploration of new collaboration mechanisms between the key stakeholders (mostly, energy companies and city authorities) and to test new approaches and business models. This phenomenon is mostly due to the requirements of the combination of different technologies, and the new roles that have had to be assumed by these actors. Although these experiments are still far from generating a shift of paradigm on the classical relations between providers and consumers, they have set the basis to build more innovative business models in the future. Regarding the social impact of these new technologies, and despite most of the solutions analysed did not have a direct impact on citizen’s lives, the results of the social impact analysis highlight that the studied solutions are positively perceived by citizens, and that they are not disruptive for them, generating little opposition to their implementation in normal conditions and opening the door to further scale up and replication.
The RUGGEDISED project has been implemented during the last six years, overcoming important challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the global events that have followed. Despite these challenges, the evaluation indicates that the different solutions have effectively contributed to helping the participating lighthouse cities to adopt more sustainable practices, integrate innovative and more efficient technologies, and identify institutional and financial bottlenecks and potential solutions to ensure a smoother implementation and a successful scaling and replication in the future.