Brussels unveils its Smart City strategy

City of Brussels has presented its Smart City strategy on Friday, 17 March aiming to improve the citizen services via new tech tools. Reducing environmental impact will also be one of the goals of this initiative. The strategy aims to bring digitalisation at all levels of social life in Brussels with the concept of “smart city”.

Brussels’ Smart City Councillor Fabian Maingain explained that the city is targeting seven areas via 48 projects. “One of the areas is proximity — we want everything essential in Brussels to be accessible within 10 minutes on foot or by bike”, said Maingain for Politico Europe. He also added: “We also want to build [positive energy districts] that produce more energy than they consume.”

The City wishes to support “Smart City” initiatives on the territory of the City of Brussels which respond to the technological, resilience and sustainability challenges specific to the current global context and reach a wide and varied audience. This year, the projects will have to fall under the theme specific to this edition: “Internet of Things (IoT) & Smart Data”.

Broken down into 48 projects targeting 7 main areas, Brussels’ Smart City strategy is based on the desire to use resources and services for citizens in a coherent manner while keeping social, economic and environmental challenges in sight. It relies on the various departments of the municipal administration but also on a series of actors such as companies, research institutions, civil society, encouraged to deploy their own initiatives with the support of the City through the call for projects, the 2023 edition of which has just been launched.

The City is thus currently carrying out a digital mapping of the services and facilities available to the population as part of the city (services) project 10 minutes away (nurseries, schools, public transport, infrastructure, sports ,…). The model will make it possible to gauge the impact of a project in a given neighborhood on the existing offer and to define a coverage rate.

A total amount of 80,000 euros will be reserved for the selected initiatives, in the form of subsidies of a maximum of 30,000 euros.

Get more info on this initiative here: https://smartcity.brussels/news-933-the-city-of-brussels-is-launching-a-call-for-smart-city-projects-iot-smart-data-2023