Following the establishment of the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities & Communities (EIP SCC), related Austrian business and city representatives face the challenge to represent the strengths acquired in previous years via the research and technology programmes in a European context.
The goal of this project was to address the most important challenges of Smart City-projects for Austria, which should also contribute to establishing Austria as a possible location for one of the ‚Lighthouse Projects’ mentioned in the Communication „Smart Cities and Communities – European Innovation Partnership“ by the European Commission.
Period: September 2013 to May 2014
Project Partner: BMVIT - Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Innovation und Technologie
Goals
A number of structured one to one-conversations have been conducted to reach a common view of the relevant stakeholders’ opinions. The different findings have been condensed to positions. The analysis of the interview results made the identification of key positions possible that can serve as a basis for consecutive stakeholder initiatives. Both an extension of existing strengths of Austrian Smart City project participants as well as a reduction of weaknesses, particularly information deficits, are in focus here.
Results
The results have been used as input to an Austrian position paper ‚Smart Cities’, and are summarised as follows:
- To make numerous successful Smart City-projects possible, decision makers in the public administration should both be aware of the complexity and the substantial economic benefit of such projects and thereby function as „Enablers“.
- The acquisition of comprehensive procurement know how of public clients should be promoted, accelerated and financially supported.
- Legislation typically relevant for Smart City-project planning and approval should be evaluated and opportunities for simplification examined.
- Legal definition and examination of life cycle cost and -revenue evaluations and moving away from short term profitability benchmarks as criteria for investment.
The analysis of the positions made also clear that beside requested improvements, a specific interest exists in increased interaction between potential project participants (e.g. in the form of an expert platform) and in detailed, real-life information supply.
This report makes current Austrian Smart City-project positioning possible and highlights existing challenges.