Last week the Nordic Smart City Network had its first meeting of 2022. More than 20 delegates from the Nordic countries were gathered in Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands to discuss the Nordic way of developing smart cities and to explore innovative solutions at the three-day meeting.
On the first day of the meeting members of the steering group met up with the mayor of Tórshavn, explaining about the main objectives of the network, and thanking for the possibility to have the meeting here in one of the smallest – yet smartest – capitals of the World. When it comes to developing a smart and connected society, The Faroes are truly pioneers. This was also the topic of one of the talks about the exceptionally good tele- and internet coverage of more than 95% in the Faroes, enabling not only its citizens to be connected with each other and the rest of the world, but also creating perfect conditions for testing out new smart city solutions.
Also inspiring were the insights gained on Tórshavn’s work with different types of data on a city level and the aspiration to create a digital twin – an aspiration shared by many of the present cities. Thus, the talks continued in the breaks between the presentations, clearly underlining the value of bringing together the network members physically.
“When we meet in real life is when the magic happens!”
After a long and tiresome period of COVID-19 pandemic where the vast majority of meetings has been moved to digital formats, it was nice to finally meet up in real life again, to bid welcome new faces in the network and be able to explore existing and future projects face to face. As it was mentioned at the round table discussions; “When we meet in real life is when the magic happens!”.
The value creation when bringing together people of expertise face to face is something that the network will strive for even more in the future, as it was underlined by several cities in the network, that there is a great need for – and value to be gained from – connecting experts on topics which are not necessarily directly represented in the network today.
Current and future projects and events
At the meeting in Tórshavn the project leads on the different parts of the Nordic Healthy Cities project, which is coming to a conclusion later this year, also gave status updates on the projects, presenting results and drawing attention to obstacles and successes along the way. There were many takeaways and inspiration from the Nordic Healthy Cities programme and fruitful discussions which can prove useful for the cities both in present and coming smart city projects.
During the meet-up the cities also entered into discussions about new projects, and a project consortium working with sustainable buildings was being established by cities and provided with the needed information to continue forming the project proposal by Nordic Innovation who was also present in Tórshavn. More on this to come in the near future.
Finally, the network discussed our presence at several future smart city related events throughout the Nordics. Amongst them are the Nordic Edge Expo in Stavanger (NOR) in May and the Smart City Week in Tampere (FIN) in June. Information about these and other events will soon be posted to the event section.
The next network meeting in the Nordic Smart City Network will be 5th and 6th of September in Stockholm (SWE).
