Work package 4 – Wireless City

(leader City of Groningen)

Mobile is the future. Smart Cities’ partners are developing a range of new and innovative services for mobile platforms, while testing and evaluating new forms of urban wireless networks.

Leiedal is a regional public body representing thirteen municipalities in the Kortrijk region. This region is situated in the south of Flanders, close to the French metropolitan region of Lille. The region has 296,447 inhabitants, 8,920 companies (mainly SMEs) and over 3,200 ha of business parks.

The city of Kortrijk has a population of 75,000, and is in the south of the Belgian province of West-Flanders on the Leie River. It is 25 kilometres north-east of the French city of Lille and 42 km southwest of Ghent. Kortrijk, Lille and the Belgian city of Tournai make up the transnational Eurodistrict of Rijsel-Kortrijk-Doornik, which has a population of approximately 1,900,000.

The city of Bremerhaven (population of 115,000) was founded in 1827, and is located on the east side of the Weser estuary, at the confluence of the Geest and the Weser. Bremerhaven and the city of Bremen (560,000 inhabitants) make up the Federal State of Bremen – one of Germany’s sixteen Federal States (Bundesland).

Groningen is the largest city in the Northern Netherlands, with a population of 187,000, and is the eighth largest city in the Netherlands. Groningen has a university, a university of applied sciences, a school for fine art and design, an academy of music and many more training institutes. It is a young city – half of the population is under 35 years of age.

The pilot will develop a mobile phone application that will provide real-time information on public transportation e.g. bus schedules, movements etc.. It will develop an API for this approach which will be shared amongst partners.

The Smart Cities partners will create six pilots on mobile services in 2010. This is the result of a workshop on wireless services in Groningen. The partners will work on tourism, parking and library services, and will exchange methodologies to build mobile services. Check also the video.

Members of the Eurocities group have developed a benchmarking process for e-services provided by local authorities. The project identified core services and looked at who provided what.

Gartner, Inc. has identified the top 10 consumer mobile applications for 2012. Gartner listed applications based on their impact on consumers and industry players, considering revenue, loyalty, business model, consumer value and estimated market penetration.

The Mayor of Groningen, mr. Peter Rehwinkel, officially inaugurated the Groningen Unwired Network at the NITE (Northern IT Event). The first phase of the network, in the city center and in the Zernike campus has been rolled out. Though the network is only in the first phase, the Zernike Campus is already the largest wifi employment in the Netherlands.