For the last decade the smart city concept became reality by the accelerated development of new technologies and the increasing need of society for establishing sustainable, cost effective, green and safe living environment. Therefore development of smart cities is one of the key elements of Horizon 2020 dedicated to generating excellent science, creating industrial leadership and tackling social challenges.
The consortium organized for this proposal has defined the overall goal to establish the Budapest Centre of Excellence for Smart Cties. The Centre called Smartpolis will become an incubator of smart city concepts and solutions in the region through its high level theoretical research, system and technology developments, accelerated deployment, as well as its educational and consulting activities.
The Central and Eastern European (CEE) region is lagging behind the development level of the Western European smart cities. The Central and Eastern-European region needs a special centre of excellence for smart city developments, as
• there is no regionally effective centre for smart city developments,
• there is a considerable gap between the Central and Eastern European urbanization and cities in terms of infrastructure conditions relative to the more advanced part of Europe,
• the region has specific ways in urban planning, control and management.
The planned centre should:
• closely cooperate with academic institutions to have access to the required competences,
• have a good practice in international scientific research networking and industry cooperation
• have a good vision on the development of the future, next generation smart city solutions and technologies.
The following regional specifics also underline the need and justify the establishment of a local Centre of Excellence:
• relatively large number of cities with less than 200,000 populations in the CEE region and lower levels of over-all urbanisation, at about 10-15% below WEU regions,
• significantly lower investment and modernization of city infrastructures including road infrastructure, utility infrastructures, construction quality and in particular energy efficiency in the built environment,
• Smart City actions supported mostly by limited funding from national and municipal government without creating appropriate impact,
• the lower level of participation of the widening countries in the Central Eastern EU region (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia) in the lead initiatives of the EIP SCC.
