Some months ago, we announced that the amount of cities joining the Open & Agile initiative had climbed up to 50. “Capitals and cities with a population of millions, as well as small- and medium-sized cities are finding their role in this pragmatic network of networks”, said Martin Brynskov, Chair of the Connected Smart Cities Network Board. “We have experienced”, Brynskov continues, “a strong interest from cities to join this second wave, actually much stronger than anticipated, so we have decided to reschedule the launch and allow more cities and countries to join”.
During the second half of September (22nd-23rd), an event in Tampere (Finland) gathered the main representatives of this initiative and let them evaluate the direction of this effort to establish some Smart City standards. The event also included workshops to learn and share experiences about the OASC mechanisms, which meant a great opportunity for OASC partners to meet colleagues and partners from the rest of the world. It was the inaugural OASC Task Force meeting for new countries that had already joined. And, according to the webpage of the Connected Smart Cities Network, “national events are scheduled as we speak”. The Dutch cities in OASC NL met on June 25th to discuss the next steps, and in Belgium, OASC BE did so on June 24th. The Danish cities met on June 2nd to launch Open Data DK, forming the basis for OASC DK.
Did new cities join the Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative?
So far, the total amount of cities in the Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative is 59, among which we could highlight the incorporation of new cities from Ireland, Scotland, France, the Netherlands and… Australia. FIWARE is in fact focusing its efforts towards new latitudes and we may soon witness the effects of its work. Are you still a bit lost in all these cities? You can see which ones are part of this initiative in this map.
Apart from announcing the incorporation of new cities, some work teams were created, each one of them focusing on a different aspect of the Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative; i.e. a technical team, a funding team, a communication team and a team working on the engagement of cities. Some of the tasks of the technical team, for instance, include the publication of NGSI resources in open data publication portals, the creation of mechanisms to acquire access rights to open data or the federation of open data publication portals. All of its responsibilities will be then included into some clear guidelines that may help adopters to implement the Open & Agile Smart Cities principles.
Open & Agile Smart Cities in ICT 2015
If you want to learn more about the Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative and how Smart Cities bank on FIWARE to develop their projects, visit us at the networking sessions that will take place during ICT Lisbon 2015. Visit the agenda of the session for more detailed information.
