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06 apr

4 proven steps to save water and money

If your city is already running short of water from time to time, it is a problem that is only going to get worse. By 2050, water shortages could plague 70% of the world’s production areas.

What can you do? A lot. And by starting today, you better serve your citizens and businesses, reduce your environmental impact and likely save your city significant amounts of money.

 

1. Know what your water is worth
The first step in taking better care of your water is knowing what it’s worth. When you can attach a dollar value to the waste, it’s easier to make a business case for the improvements.

Veolia developed a Trust Cost of Water tool that considers direct costs (water price, operations and water infrastructure investments), indirect costs (administrative, legal and social responsibility) and risks (such as supply disruptions and regulatory problems.)

Knowing the true cost of your water allows you to better set your priorities to have the maximum impact.

2. Know how you stack up
Comparing yourself to others can provide valuable insight that holds your suppliers accountable and leads you to obvious improvements. This approach delivered an incredible efficiency gain in Washington, D.C., where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintenance staff was able to boost productivity by 43%.

The Peer Performance Solutions model, also from Veolia, helps utilities benchmark their performance so they can see where they have strong opportunities to improve. After the success in Washington, D.C., a number of other cities, including Winnipeg, New York City, Akron, Ohio, and Los Angeles have adopted the tool.

3. Consider public-private partnerships 
Resources are often constrained, but public-private partnerships can pay sizeable dividends. Veolia's work for the Atlanta-Fulton County Water Resources Commission has already saved ratepayers million.

Veolia manages, operates and maintains the drinking water treatment facilities and found ways to reduce power, chemical and operating costs, passing all of the savings on to the commission. Over the course of its work, it also tripled the treatment capacity.

4. Embrace creative approaches
If you’re like most cities, you’re struggling to keep infrastructure running beyond its planned lifespan. Replacing everything at once typically isn’t an option. But new technology can help you address the biggest issues quickly, giving you time to take a more measured approach.

Veolia is involved in two pilot projects in Milwaukee, testing approaches to prevent contaminants from getting into the water supply, reducing the burden on the treatment process. One uses satellite images to monitor storm water to devise strategies to contain it. Another uses solar power to clean water, harnessing ultraviolet light for purification.

 

http://smartcitiescouncil.com/article/4-proven-steps-save-water-and-money-atlanta-and-dc-are-using-them-already

 

06 apr

Why choose renewable energy? Because it's often CHEAPER

If you’ve been holding off on renewable energy because it’s too expensive, you are running out of excuses. Last year, for the first time ever, renewable energy accounted for a majority of the new production that came online.

And rapidly developing nations are leading the way. Emerging markets like China, India and Brazil accounted for half the new investment. Not long ago, they simply would have opted for coal, citing its cost advantage. But that cost benefit is rapidly eroding. In fact, renewable sources may soon have that advantage.

The cost of generating land-based wind power has dropped 14% over the past five years; solar generation costs have dropped more than 60%. And by 2020, India’s solar power may be 10% cheaper than coal.

Of course, moving to renewable sources quicker is better for the environment, but as the overall balance tips toward renewable energy, there’s also a financial reason to make the move. Read on for new renewable energy projects of note. And for more great ideas, please check out our recent Smart Energy Special Theme Edition. — Kevin Ebi

As renewable energy has become the largest new source of power, Council Associate Partner Enel has announced several new projects to build on its already sizable commitment to clean energy sources.

Speaking at the Bloomberg Future of Energy Summit 2016 in New York City, Enel Green Power CEO Francesco Venturini said Enel is moving toward doubling the amount of renewable capacity it adds each year. Worldwide, Enel now has about 11 GW of renewable energy capacity and it’s moving from adding 1 GW annually to 2.

Hybrid facility boosts and stabilizes production
Enel inaugurated a triple renewable hybrid plant in Fallon, Nevada, the world’s first plant that combines medium enthalpy, binary cycle geothermal, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic technologies at the same site.

By taking advantage of complementary power sources, Enel is to improve overall efficiency and smooth out fluctuations. For example, solar is more effective on hot sunny days when geothermal is less efficient. A study showed this combination boosted overall output by nearly 4%. Locating them together also allows them to share infrastructure.

Brazil meets power needs with new solar park
Enel Green Power Brasil Participações has started work on the Lapa solar park, two facilities that will be able to supply 166,000 Brazilian households with power whileavoiding 198,000 tons of CO2 emissions. The park is located in an area of especially strong solar radiation.

Of the subsidiary’s current capacity, only about 2% comes from solar (nearly 80% is from wind), but of its new projects, solar makes up the lion’s share — nearly double the wind capacity that’s under development and nearly eight times the hydro development.

Enel’s Mexico subsidiary is also boosting its solar work in that country. It’s investing about  billion in new solar facilities after winning the largest share of solar production in a new government tender.

 

http://smartcitiescouncil.com/article/why-choose-renewable-energy-because-its-often-cheaper-no-really

 

 

05 apr

America's biggest winners and losers (and what you can learn from them)

You’ve undoubtedly heard the prediction: cities are getting bigger. The vast majority of the world’s population will be living in cities by the middle of the century. But while that’s true for cities overall, it’s not true for all cities. In fact, some cities are already losing people. A lot of people.

It’s worth checking out two new rankings of American cities: fastest growing and fastest shrinking. Each list provides some interesting insights — best practices to steal and pitfalls to avoid. We summarize a few of the highlights below.

And while the trend toward more populated cities is expected to evolve over the next several decades, it’s best to starting thinking about the future today. After all, some cities are already losing significant numbers of residents and there are rarely quick fixes for problems like that.

1. Don’t get stuck in the past
More than two-thirds of the cities on the losing list are heavily dependent on manufacturing. The problem is that manufacturers aren’t dependent on those cities. The businesses have already moved away or shuttered their factories.

Cities that fall into this trap are marked by a death rate that exceeds the birth rate, something that rarely happens. Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is the third-fastest shrinking city. Deaths have outpaced births for five years and 5,000 people have moved away. One big reason why: its unemployment rate is nearly 7%.

To grow, you need to attract businesses that are going to attract the next generation of workers. That’s what San Francisco and the Silicon Valley have done. Those tech-heavy areas were the second- and eighth-fastest growing cities last year.

2. Watch your vibe and cost of living
Desirable jobs are just one part of the equation, as Austin, Texas, has learned. It has been the fastest-growing cities in five of the past six years, according to Forbes. And the one year it didn’t place first, it placed second.

Highly-educated college graduates have a lot of employment options. Just having high-tech jobs isn’t enough anymore. Austin thrives because it has a low cost of living and cool vibe in addition to the technology jobs.

3. Take a bite out of crime
Does your city have a crime problem? Citizens notice. And if they don’t feel safe, they will leave.

The top two cities on the losing list — Farmington, New Mexico and Pine Bluff, Arkansas — have some of the highest rates of violent crime in the country. And their populations have dropped by nearly 9% and 6% respectively over the past five years.

4. Give incentives, if they make sense
Several metropolitan areas in Utah — Salt Lake City, Ogden and Provo — are growing rapidly and it’s largely because of government incentives that are attracting new businesses.

In all, Forbes found that more than 120 companies accepted incentives to move to or expand in Utah since 2010. Some of the growth came in new industries, such as clean energy, but the state added thousands of jobs in older industries, including paper manufacturing, through carefully managed incentives.

http://smartcitiescouncil.com/article/americas-biggest-winners-and-losers-and-what-you-can-learn-them

21 mar

COMBINANDO TECNOLOGÍA E INNOVACIÓN ABIERTA

La evolución de las ciudades hacia el concepto de Smart City o ciudad del futuro implica necesariamente la utilización de las tecnologías como herramienta aglutinadora de productos y servicios entre administración y habitantes.

En el marco del proyecto europeo CLINES, el próximo 27 de Abril se celebrará el 4º Workshop de Innovación abierta, tras los celebrados en Bruselas, Aalborg y Munich. El workshop está especialmente orientado a las empresas interesadas en las Smart Cities y tiene como objetivo identificar necesidades, generar propuestas e ideas rompedoras y proponer soluciones y nuevos productos que mejoren la vida en las ciudades del futuro.

Si pertenece a una empresa dedicada a la tecnología desde un espectro amplio: servicios TIC avanzados, tecnologías embebidas, soluciones IoT, productos y soluciones Smart, etc. le interesa participar para abrir nuevos horizontes y oportunidades de negocio.

El número de plazas es limitado, inscríbase cuanto antes para reservar su sitio.

La jornada consistirá en el planteamiento de dos retos sobre los que se trabajará para obtener propuestas y soluciones basadas en la tecnología.

Se guiará a los participantes a través de dinámicas de innovación abierta que fomenten la asociación de todo tipo de ideas innovadoras y su aplicación en el ámbito de los retos planteados, para evaluar la viabilidad técnica o de negocio, identificar posibles socios, desechar propuestas…

Cada reto individual se planteará en su contexto determinado, de forma que el acercamiento y análisis del mismo por parte de los participantes se llevará a cabo con diferentes técnicas de trabajo de innovación en grupo.

Los retos que se plantearán en la jornada del 27 de Abril serán los siguientes:

Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa   Fomento San Sebastián
Cómo incrementar y mejorar la participación ciudadana a través de las TIC   El empleo de las TIC para el balance energético y modelos de negocio en la rehabilitación energética de edificios

AGENDA 4th CLINES Innovation Workshop

8:45h – 9:00h

 Recepción de participantes

9:00h – 9:15h

 Introducción y presentación de la jornada

9:15h – 9:30h

 Planteamiento del primer reto

9:30h – 11:45h

 Dinámica de trabajo para el primer reto

11:45h – 12:00h

 Pausa Café

12:00h – 12:15h

 Planteamiento del segundo reto

12:15h – 14:00h

 Dinámica de trabajo para el segundo reto

14:00h – 14:20h

 Conclusiones y cierre

14:20h – 15:00h

 Lunch

Lo sentimos el aforo está completo, le rogamos se ponga en contacto con Beatriz Salamanca para verificar esta información Tel: 943.31.66.66

11 mar

Smart street lights are coming to China

China has been taking smart cities seriously for years and is following an ambitious strategy to build them throughout the country. It doesn't have much choice. China's population of about 1.4 billion is expected to roughly double in 15 years, and most of those people will live in cities.

The Council and its members are doing their part to help Chinese cities achieve livability, workability and sustainability. Lead Partner Itron, for instance, supplied smart meters and more for Tianjin, the smart city showcase that is the subject of the article below. And the Council has signed MOUs with two leading Chinese agencies, the Zhong Cheng Smart City Construction Research Society and the China Center for Urban Development.

What Council Lead Partner GE's energy company, Current, will bring to its partnership with the Tianjin city government is an intelligent lighting network and GE's Predix connectivity and data management platform. The project will cover a section of Tianjin's Central Business District and will be what Current describes as the first clean and energy efficient demonstration city in the country.

Tianjin was one of 10 cities chosen by the Chinese government a few years ago as the most suitable for smart city investment and development.

"By cooperation with our local partner, we are extremely proud of what the many benefits our LED and intelligent technology will have for the city. The installation introduces a technology that provides significant energy savings and will allow the city to shine smarter," said Henry Eng, President and CEO for GE Lighting Asia.

Current, working with local company Tianjin High-Trend Company, is expected to create a more livable city, more services for citizens and better asset management. Some of the specific benefits the intelligent lighting network will bring include

  • WiFi coverage
  • Public information services
  • Air quality monitoring and alerts
  • Cloud platform management
  • A variety of smart city apps

 

Of course, the Tianjin smart city demo isn't GE's first venture in China. The company has provided equipment and services for China's offshore wind energy development and its rail transportation system, among others.

Several Council partners in addition to GE have been active in security and other smart cities efforts in China, including Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Itron and Associate Partner Siemens.

http://smartcitiescouncil.com/article/smart-street-lights-are-coming-china-time-your-city-take-look

04 mar

Want a smart energy future for your city? Here are 2 tools you really need

When Con Edison of New York and Orange and Rockford electric utilities decided they needed to improve how they respond to customers and meet their needs, upgrade their energy network and do a better job of managing their electric grid they chose to go with an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) program and install 3.9 million smart electric meters and 1.3 million gas meters.

And Council Lead Partner IBM was chosen to provide the services needed to support thetechnology transformation for the two utilities.

IBM will create the IT platform, manage the integration of new systems to collect data from those millions of new meters and develop the critical business processes related to the project.

So what happens with all that data and why does it matter so much?
"This technology transformation involving the collection, transfer and analysis of billions of data points will give Con Edison, O&R and their customers the tools to improve decision making and reliable energy distribution," said Michael Valocchi, managing partner for IBM Global Business Services.

That data will bring several benefits to both sides of the meter. For customers, they can get a better understanding of their energy use and control it to save on power bills. For utilities, smart meters and their AMI communications network offer utilities the ability to do a better job of monitoring and managing distributed energy (think solar and wind power, for example), pinpoint power outages, repair them much more quickly and allow the grid to provide power at the voltage levels best suited to reducing energy losses -- which is kinder for the environment. Of course, all of those things benefit customers too.

Sensors are critical too…                          
The electric grid is getting more complicated as power comes from a bigger variety of sources like solar and wind and electric cars are connected to it and used as backup energy storage. Because of those complications, questions of grid reliability are going to come up. That's why utilities turn to sensors (and data analytics) to keep a very close eye on how the grid is performing, what the weather is like and other conditions that affect grid operation.

The data collected from those IoT-connected sensors is essential if grid operators are to be able to predict the health of specific equipment and the grid overall -- and prevent outages.

That's what Council Lead Partner SAS Institute's predictive analytics and its partner OSIsoft's infrastructure management software do for the Salt River Project (SRP), the electric utility serving the Phoenix metro area. With 100 degree plus weather for a third of the year, customer demand on SRP's grid is enormous as they try to keep their homes cool.

SRP considers itself a customer-oriented utility and wanted to ensure those customers' demands were met and that downtime for equipment maintenance was kept to a minimum. Among other things, SRP relies on SAS analytics to analyze data from thousands of sensors to let the utility know when combustion turbines will need to be maintained -- before the work needs to be done. Predictive analytics also are used to provide SRP with a power supply outlook over the next five years. That means the utility has a pretty good idea when it may need to buy power or sell power it doesn't need.

"Reliability is critical for our customers and our business. SAS powers our ability to forecast, plan and update in real time, helping Salt River Project keep the lights on for our customers and the grid reliable whether the temperature is 75 or 105 degrees in Phoenix," said Steve Patruso, senior software developer for SRP's Supply and Trading Group."

 

http://smartcitiescouncil.com/article/want-smart-energy-future-your-city-here-are-2-tools-you-really-need

22 feb

The Members of CLINES Participate in Embedded World

THE MEMBERS OF THE CLINES PROJECT PARTICIPATE IN EUROPE'S MOST IMPORTANT EMBEDDED SYSTEMS TRADE SHOW

Come and visit us at our stand in Hall 4, booth no. 140

The Embedded World Conference, the most important European industry event, will bring together the leading providers of electronic systems safety, distributed intelligence and the Internet of Things in Nuremberg from 23 to 25 February.

The members of the Clines Project will have a strong presence at the Trade Show, and will present the activities carried out in order to position Europe in the global solutions market for growing world urbanisation to leading industrial agents.

The Embedded World Conference is one of Europe's most important events in terms of electronic systems and distributed intelligence. Besides offering a commercial exchange market and exchange of experiences, the Conference acts as a checkpoint for the main trends in a constantly growing market.

 The growing urbanisation of cities and the development of necessary services is an unstoppable trend throughout the world. According to estimates, 65% of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2040, and this trend will increase the need for all types of solutions in order to guarantee a decent standard of living, entailing services and solutions in all fields: individuals, environments, mobility, governance, new economy, etc.

 

19 feb

Why waste management is changing -- and why you should be happy about it

With city populations expected to grow at an increasing rate for the next 10 years or so, cities are doing everything they can to keep up with the demand for improved and expanded services and a better quality of life -- and do it while simultaneously finding ways to cut operating costs.

That's a tough job, particularly so where waste management (which can require eight to 10% of a city's budget) is concerned. Olli Gunst, marketing manager for Council Associate Partner Enevo, offers several reasons to take heart. His company provides smart logistics and expertise in waste management and recycling for waste companies and public organizations, so he has inside knowledge of what's to come -- and shared it in the company's first blog post.

First, the circular economy gained a lot of steam in 2015. And that industrial economy with a goal of producing no waste or pollution, and cycling useful materials extracted from waste back in to the supply chain to be used again will continue to grow in 2016 and well into the future, Gunst said.

He cites local government agencies in Victoria, Australia that partnered to create a software tool to target which businesses could potentially trade those resources. A similar project was launched in Detroit to match up business and industry in a system where waste from one company or business would be used as raw materials for another -- all with the goal of reducing the amount of waste, cutting costs and improving economic development.

Why is that happening? As he put it "The main drivers behind circular economy initiatives like these are cost efficiency, reduced waste and emissions, but legislation and regulation is playing an increasing role too."

Waste management technology also is cause for optimism, Gunst said. "The good news is that new technology solutions have reached maturity and are proven to significantly reduce collection costs and the physical impact of waste collection whilst also increasing efficiency, cleanliness and reducing complaints."

There are other factors and drivers involved in moving sustainable waste management forward. You can read about them in his blog.

 

http://smartcitiescouncil.com/article/why-waste-management-changing-and-why-you-should-be-happy-about-it

01 dec

European Smart & Living City Conference 2015

The European Smart & Living City Conference 2015, under the topic 'Disrupt your City to Smarten it up!', will take place in Luxembourg on 1st and 2nd December.

The event will highlight Luxembourg and international smartest projects in fields such as ICT, vocational training, building and the Living City.

This year’s edition will put the spotlight on interactivity. Workshops and participatory sessions moderated by successful entrepreneurs and international Smart City experts will enable all city stakeholders to co-create Luxembourg’s Living City while identifying elements that can be replicated in other European cities

Many recognised national and international Smart City experts will participate to make attendees discover successful Smart solutions and to share their vision of the Smart & Living City.

For registrations, click here.

For more information, follow this link.

City: City of Luxembourg

Country: Luxemburg

Event Date:
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - 09:00 to Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - 17:00
 
02 nov

Agoria Smart Cities Forum and Award 2015

The Agoria Smart Cities Forum and Award 2015, organised by Agoria and Belfius, will be held in Brussels (Belgium) on 2nd December.

The fourth edition of this event will focus on the exchange of best practices between cities, governments, research institutions and industry.

This Forum will provide participants the vision of the technology industry regarding Smart Cities, examples and best practices of our Belgian cities and municipalities and the Smart Cities strategy of the Brussels-Capital Region.

Moreover, the event will conclude with the Belfius & Agoria Smart Cities Award 2015 and the five following awards will be given:

  • Belfius Smart City Award 2015
  • Agoria Smart Technology Award Energy
  • Agoria Smart Technology Award Mobility
  • Agoria Smart Technology Award Living
  • Agoria Smart Technology Award Digital

 

For registrations, click here.

City: Brussels

Country: Belgium

Event Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - 09:30 to 19:45

Source: 

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Contact us

For more information about the Clines project, please contact the Technical Coordinator:

Arne Skou

Vice-Director, CISS

(+45) 9940 8851

ask@cs.aau.dk

www.ciss.aau.dk/en

You can also contact:

Charlotte Fonseca Holmene

Administrative project manager

(+45) 9940 7345

cfh@adm.aau.dk