Hi #smartcommunity friends. In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I have a brilliant conversation with Lea Hemetsberger, the Communications and Projects Director for Open and Agile Smart Cities, which is an international network of cities and communities. Lea tells us about her background in journalism and passion for cities, mobility and literature, before sharing with us how her Masters degree sparked her interest in the Smart City space. We discuss the importance of having a long term vision and strong basic foundations for Smart Cities, as well as a bit about how Open and Agile Cities came to be and what they do. Then we dive into a great chat about digital twins, exploring the real use cases as a way of moving through the hype-disillusionment cycle and the mindset changes that are needed to get all stakeholders onboard. We finish our conversation discussing the emerging trends of standards and interoperability. As always we hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it. 

Listen here: 

What we cover in this episode:

• Lea’s background in journalism and passion for cities, mobility and literature
• How her Masters degree sparked her interest in the Smart City space 
• The importance of having a long term vision and strong basic foundations for Smart Cities
• About Open and Agile Smart Cities
• Projects they’ve worked on, including digital twins, Smart standards and data protocols 
• How exploring the real use cases of digital twins can be a way of moving through the hype-disillusionment cycle 
• The mindset changes needed to get all stakeholders on board from day 1 to make successful digital twin projects
• The emerging trends of standards and interoperability

Quotes:

“Especially recently, we’re seeing that Smart City tech, also digital solutions overall, is seen as a means to reduce the carbon footprint of cities and communities. So that is also quite interesting, a new aspect that is also linking to improving the lives of citizens.”

“I think sometimes people do get sidetracked by the term Smart City, and they say, ‘Oh, we need to do the coolest, newest thing ever, we need to innovate.’ But maybe that’s not true for your city, maybe it’s just better to replicate at this point, check out what the others have done and see how you can use what is already there and just implement it in your city.”

“[Open and Agile Smart Cities] are a city network, an international network of cities and communities. At the moment, we have more than 150 members across 31 countries…We started out as a grassroots organisation. And basically as a forum where some people came together from a more academic background, also the city background, figuring out that there is an issue with innovation and smart city technology.”

“Basically, we [at Open and Agile Smart Cities] thought about what is minimally needed to exchange data, to exchange services, to exchange solutions between cities. We came up with three mechanisms: context information management, shared data models, and enablers for marketplaces. What is important is that these mechanisms are built on open standards, and are validated by our members.”

“Now we also know that if you organise events, especially as an international network, it is just so much more inclusive towards all your members to do it digitally.”

“Oftentimes, you simply need one person that is thinking ahead, that is doing it, that is running around going to talk to different people from different departments. And if you find these people who are accessible, then [projects] can go fast.”

“[There are] more than 10,000 standards that are actually relevant for cities and communities, or potentially relevant. I mean, that’s madness. And how do you expect one Smart City Manager to navigate this? We need to find out what can we do to converge on standards that are essential for the digital transformation?”

Links:

Matt Schultz, former President of ASCA, featured in SCP E123

Connected Places Catapult in the UK

SCP E92 with Chris Cooper

SCP E199 with Vi Le 

Connect: 

Find the full show notes at: www.mysmart.community 

Connect with Lea via LinkedIn or email lea@oascities.org 

Follow Open and Agile Smart Cities on Twitter @oascities 

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community 

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn or Twitter and watch on YouTube

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.