Photo: The Living Lab Scheveningen wins the smart city award in Barcelona
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The Living Lab Scheveningen today won the Energy and Environment Award for the most innovative and successful smart project for the urban living environment. The award was presented at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona,
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With the result, the project leaves the FloodNet NYC project from New York and the Agricultural Field Analysis and Reporting Application from Konya behind.
The Living Lab Scheveningen started in the past as the Smart Cities program team for the Municipality of The Hague, with the Scheveningen boulevard as a test environment for the municipality and market parties to test innovative applications in practice. A special smart infrastructure has been installed for this, which is connected to light towers and kiosks. Sensors collect data about crowd management and biodiversity. The infrastructure also acts as an ‘energy marketplace’ and enables electricity users, such as emergency services and event organizers, to better buy and sell energy.
‘The other entries are also innovative, otherwise you will not be a nominee and finalist in Barcelona,’ says Tijn Kuyper, account manager Digital Innovation and Smart Cities of the Municipality of The Hague, when he explains why the Municipality of The Hague was chosen as the winner. According to him, the difference lies in the different scale sizes of the projects. ‘Our living lab has a greater chance of scaling up, many projects often lag behind. We work with many different partners, which also makes it very complex. And we would like to share our results and be open and transparent about it.’
Now the living lab has grown into the expertise center for Digital Innovations and Smart Cities. ‘That means permanent. This gives the Living Lab Scheveningen easier access to budgets and it is easier to expand and apply its lessons in other areas’, says Kuyper. He mentions the Binckhorst district in The Hague and the The Hague Southwest area as examples.
‘We are in a growth phase’, emphasizes Kuyper. As part of the Dutch delegation, he also hopes to take lessons from the conference in Barcelona for the living lab in which he is involved. ‘Recognition of the award is a motivation to go bigger. We especially want to continue applying knowledge in other areas, each of which deals with different issues.’
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