AAVIT sets the trend in sustainable cities

As a follow up to the January visit of AAVIT representatives to Norway, yesterday we continued to promote the topic of sustainable cities in public space through the workshop THE OF NORWAY – SUSTAINABLE CITIES. The event at the Hybernská Campus brought together a number of interesting people from the world of politics, public sector and municipalities, business and universities. As the name suggests, several Norwegian guests were also present, both physically and digitally from Oslo and Trondheim.

The event was opened by the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Norway, His Excellency Conrad Rønneberg, who highlighted its importance for the cooperation between the two countries. His speech was followed by Prague politicians Jan Chabr and Martin Benkovič, who, based on their work in the Prague City Council, briefly summarised the importance of sustainable solutions for the quality of life of city dwellers in the 21st century. Then, the CEO of our partner IT association from Norway Abelia, Øystein Søreide, gave a very concise description of the motivations that led the Norwegian company to promote sustainable solutions, as well as some practical examples of their application in everyday life in Norwegian cities. Øyvind Tanum, Head of Sustainable Cities from Trondheim, closed the morning programme. He described, through remote access, the methodology and indicator system that Trondheim officials have used to develop strategies for making life as good as possible for the city’s inhabitants.

After a break for lunch and networking, the seminar programme continued with several presentations on the implementation of smart solutions, especially in the field of sustainable mobility. In her presentation from Oslo, Laura Herzig from Beta Mobility described the factors influencing sustainable mobility and some examples from the service environment, autonomous devices, drones or electric vehicles. Laura was followed by Kari Anne Solfjeld Eid, founder of the Norwegian start-up Whee! The latter is based on the principle of renting safe electric bikes that are specially designed for transporting children. She succinctly summarised the negatives of car traffic and the potential of similar solutions for cities other than Oslo. The last presentation of the workshop was given by Filip Neterda, among others one of the spiritual fathers of the Communities in Data project. Within the framework of this project, a precisely refined index has been created to measure the quality of life of residents in Czech cities and towns. Based on this, municipalities can be compared with each other, which brings a very interesting impulse to the public debate.

The workshop was the culmination of a project that AAVIT successfully submitted to the 4th Open Call of the Fund for Bilateral Relations under the EEA and Norway Grants 2014-2021. We hope that in the future we will be able to implement interesting international activities that build on this initiative. At the same time, we would like to thank all the participants from the Czech and Norwegian side, without whom the workshop would not have been possible. Sustainable cities are just one of the many topics that clearly demonstrate the necessity of digitalization to create a modern and competitive society. We welcome other incentives that will help transform the thinking of responsible authorities and ordinary citizens.