Location Intelligence for cities and regions: preparing the ground for smart places of the future

The webinar on Location Intelligence for Cities and Regions presented state of the art and future perspectives on the use of location data and technologies by local and regional governments. The webinar aimed to demonstrate how location intelligence is vital for turning subnational governments into smart places.

Content

1. What are “smart places”? Technical and policy context
2. Understanding the role of local and regional governments in the provision of services
3. Location intelligence for smarter local and regional public services
4. Location Intelligence supporting transformation in smart local & regional projects
5. Strategies & actions shifting towards smart places

Description

The webinar opened with an introduction to the concept of smart places by looking first at different perspectives of “smart places” and “smart world”. Following this, the policy and technological context in which smart places and smart subnational governments operate were illustrated. Regarding technological context, it was stated that local and regional initiatives are rapidly developing and leveraging disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), 5G, robotics, blockchain, and others. However, it is important to understand the local and regional governments’ capacity to deal with these new technologies and deliver new solutions varies greatly. Moreover, to develop smart cities sustainably, a shift in focus is required from a technology-dominated approach to a more human-centric and holistic approach.

The second part of the presentation focused on the role of local and regional governments in digital services. In Europe, there are more than 80.000 local and regional governments, which together are responsible for 50% of public investments, receive 25% of tax revenues and are major public employers. These subnational governments have a wide range of responsibilities in crucial domains such as education, spatial planning, economic development, social affairs, health, culture, recreation and public transport. While there are important differences between municipal and regional governments, but also between governments in rural areas and those in urban areas, all subnational governments play a key role in tackling various urgent challenges: mobility, housing, ageing, climate action, social segregation, environmental footprint, etc. From a service delivery perspective, these subnational governments are supporting and interacting with citizens during many key life events, such as birth, starting school, starting higher education or training, transitioning to work, marriage, having a family, retiring, caring for someone, or the death of a loved one. Especially in recent years, they have strongly invested in digitalising their services in a drive to modernise, increase their internal efficiency, improve citizen experience and facilitate access to information.

The third part of the presentation focused on the role of location intelligence in supporting digital services by subnational governments. Local and regional governments increasingly rely on location data and technologies to design and deliver services around key events in citizens and businesses’ lives. Starting or changing schools, starting up a business, building a house and reporting a crime are examples of location-enabled services provided by subnational governments. The recent European Data Strategy enhances geospatial opportunities. Many existing initiatives in the geospatial domain – such as INSPIRE and national Spatial Data Infrastructures – already support many of the key elements proposed in the strategy. Also important is the strong local and subnational component in many of these elements, particularly in creating common European data spaces. In this light, the initiative is taken to create a ‘smart communities’ data space. Location intelligence supports subnational governments in transforming into digital governments, enabling new ways of delivering public value and making services and government procedures digital by design.

In the fourth part of the presentation, three cases were presented in which location intelligence enables digital transformation in smart local & regional projects. Each of these cases addressed a particular type of challenge in the realisation of smart local and regional places:

• The ObjectTypeLibrary from the Flanders Regional Public works Department focused on the “physical infrastructure and standardisation challenges.
• The FINEST Twins platform for cross-border collaboration between Helsinki and Estonia addressed the establishment of a “collaboration ecosystem.
• The IIsac-Watts smart energy solution in France illustrated how location intelligence is critical to improving the “quality of Life citizens and the competitiveness of a rural area.

The fifth and final part of the webinar presentation provided a set of recommendations on how to make the shift towards more intelligent subnational governments. While the subnational governments themselves clearly play a role in this transformation process, national governments and the European Commission can support this process considerably.

More information about the webinar can be found on the Interoperable Europe Portal.