Brainport and Fraunhofer have agreed upon a “cooperation as part of a long-term strategy”. The cooperation focuses on development and implementation of smart city and smart society elements. Brainport will thereby operate as a living lab where proof-of-concepts will be developed and tested, before being rolled out in cities around the world, but foremost in Germany.
The memorandum states that cities are becoming more and more of a focal point for our economies and societies at large, particularly because of on-going urbanisation, and the trend towards increasingly knowledge-intensive economies, as well as their growing share of resource consumption and emissions. “To meet public policy objectives under these circumstances, cities need to change and develop, but in times of tight budgets this change needs to be achieved in a smart way: our cities need to become smart societies.”
Fraunhofer is a leading entity in applied research and application of smart city solutions in Europe. The Brainport region together with its knowledge institution TU/e is the leading region in smart city research, application and realisation as a living lab with one of the most dense quadruple helix ecosystem of all cities in the world. “Joining forces and focusing research and application on the topics of future cities on the area of the Brainport region, leads to unprecedented opportunities and will accelerate the development from smart cities towards smart societies.”
This partnership strives at a triple bottom line gain for Europe: a significant improvement of citizens’ quality of life, an increased competitiveness of Europe’s industry and innovative SMEs together with a strong contribution to sustainability and the EU’s 2020 energy and climate targets. This must be achieved through the wide-reaching roll out of integrated, scalable, sustainable Smart City solutions – specifically in areas where energy production, distribution and use; mobility and transport; and information and communication technologies are intimately linked.
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