Cornelia Dinca

The fifth and final ICC City Lab will take place June 14 - 23. This special edition will focus on Local Ecosystems Mobilisation and Urban Innovation following feedback received from cities and experts on previous ICC City Labs.

The City Lab will launch on June 14th with sessions open to the ICC community and the public. Week 1 will be dedicated to mentor led Thematic Network sessions, where the ICC Mentor Cities will present successful solutions and good practices implemented in their cities. During week 2, the Peer Reviews sessions and Transversal Network sessions on Open Data and Public Procurement will be in the limelight. The closing event is scheduled for June 23rd.

As ICC mentor, the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region will contribute to the following sessions:

• Thursday, June 16, 11.30-12.30 Mentor session Amsterdam Metropolitan Region: Building Talent Development Ecosystems (open to ICC community)
• Tuesday, June 21, 12.00-13.30 Public session 2 – Artificial Intelligence – Redefining Urban innovation (open to the public; registration possible via the this link)
• Wednesday, Jun 22, 10.00-11.30 Transversal workshop on Public Procurement (open to ICC community)

Joining a session
Are you a stakeholder from the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region and would like to participate in any of the sessions dedicated to ICC community?  Please send a short email to Cornelia Dinca via cornelia@amsterdamsmartcity.com indicating which session(s) you would like to join in order to receive the relevant calendar invite(s).

For more information and the complete program please visit: https://www.intelligentcitieschallenge.eu/events/5th-icc-city-lab

Part of the New European Bauhaus Festival, the Intelligent Cities Challenge will host a side session: Developing circular and sharing economy practices in cities, on Thursday, June 9th at 10.00 to 11.30am CET.

The event will explore the innovative ways five European cities and regions are implementing circularity and sharing solutions to create more liveable and resilient communities.

Amsterdam Metropolitan Region, represented by Space & Matter will share the case of the circular community of Schoonschip, and a vision for scaling up sustainable and citizen-driven communities across Europe via the Crowdbuilding platform.

Alongside Amsterdam Region, best practices and lessons learned will also be shared by fellow ICC cities of Leuven (Belgium), Pescara (Italy), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Porto (Portugal).

The event is open to both ICC community members and all other interested stakeholders. Please subscribe to this registration form in order to receive the calendar invitation.

How can European cities and regions use “sandboxing” methodologies to develop their data ecosystems? This is the central question explored in the project: "Regional and local data-driven
innovation through collective intelligence and sandboxing”.

The purpose of the project is to support the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in identifying and assessing the impact of the development of regional and local data ecosystems on policy and data-driven public sector innovation.

The project has analyzed existing data ecosystems at local and regional level and has supported the cities of Barcelona, Helsinki, Milan and Poznan in experimenting with different sandboxing approaches, aiming to strengthen their data ecosystems, and draw policy lessons for data-driven innovation.

Defining "Sandboxing"
In the context of this project, “sandboxing” refers to testing solutions in a safe environment, with a focus on technical and organizational innovations to enable more efficient and effective delivery of public services through data sharing and reuse. As a result of ongoing interaction with cities, we learnt that it is helpful to differentiate between three types of sandboxing:

• Technical sandboxing: This refers to the process of safely developing and testing new applications before operationalising them. Within the project, technical sandboxing focused on enabling more visualization and analytics tools, as different data sources were combined.
• Traditional (technical) sandboxing: Traditionally, new applications are developed and tested in an isolated technical environment or sandbox before incorporating them into the operating environment. This continues to be a well-used and effective mechanism. There are, however, other options that allow development and testing to take place in a carefully managed way within an operating environment.
• Institutional sandboxing: While the sandbox is primarily a technical environment, the main barriers to developing and producing value in data ecosystems are non-technical. Institutional sandboxing refers to activities aimed at developing and testing solutions to these institutional barriers. Within the project, the institutional sandboxing focused on best practices and policies for Business to Government (B2G) data sharing, such as
  incentives, contracts and partnerships to acquire private sector data.

Validation Survey
To better understand the experience from other European cities and their stakeholders in using sandboxing to improve data-driven innovation, the project team invites all stakeholders to share their experience with using sandboxing activities to develop data ecosystem via our short Validation Survey which should only take 10-15 min to complete: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcucuuprDIvH9z1j6XP-fMtM6dxgYuySWaX

Validation Workshop
All interested stakeholders are also invited to participate in a Validation Workshop on April 28, 14:00-16:00 CET, where the project team will present and validate the key findings from the project which focus on challenges and best practices in implementing sandboxing to develop data ecosystems.

The agenda for the workshop will be communicate shortly. Registration is possible via the following link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcucuuprDIvH9z1j6XP-fMtM6dxgYuySWaX

Are you working on a project, art piece, cultural or social initiative that presents an inspirational vision for an inclusive, beautiful, and sustainable future?  If so, the Festival of the New European Bauhaus is looking for you!

The Festival brings together people from all walks of life to debate and shape our future. A future that is sustainable, inclusive and beautiful. It is a great opportunity to network, exchange and celebrate – from science to art, from design to politics, from architecture to technology. It will feature debates, great speakers, artistic performances, exhibitions and networking opportunities.

How to be part of it
The Festival offers many opportunities for individuals and groups to get involved. Whether you want to present a project or initiative at the Fair, showcase artistic or cultural performances, or organise a side event in your own country, region or town. It is also possible to propose your venue to host an event within the festival, such as a project exhibit or an artistic performance.

Find out more and submit your application by March 21: https://new-european-bauhaus-festival.eu/

One of the key priorities of the European Commission is to support the twin transition to a green and digital economy.  One way the Commission is shaping this transition is by co-creating transition pathways for more resilient, green and digital industrial ecosystems, across different sectors.

Within the scope of the Intelligent Cities Challenge, Amsterdam Region contributed to a stakeholder consultation session on 9 February 2022. Mirko van Vliet, Amsterdam Economic Board  Strategic Advisor shared the region’s experience using future scenarios as a tool for assessing developments in inherently unpredictable and complex systems. In this approach, scenarios are not forecasts but alternative images of how the future can unfold. The approach can be used to stimulate discussion and action around key opportunities, threats, driving forces and no regret measures to achieve a desired vision.

Beyond visions, achieving the digital and green transition requires concrete initiatives. Mirko shared the example of LEAP,  a coalition of the willing that aims to speed up the transition to a sustainable digital infrastructure by deploying and accelerating existing and new technologies.  One of the topics explored within LEAP is the possibility of shifting away from hyper-scale, monolithic data-centers to more flexible, distributed and disaggregated infrastructures.  LEAP exemplifies Amsterdam Economic Board's approach to building a robust ecosystem through multi-stakeholder collaboration in order to transition the data-center and digital infrastructure value chains.

Would you like to help shape the transition pathways for more resilient, greener and digital industrial ecosystems?  The Commission is inviting all interested stakeholders to co-create transition pathways for three sectors / ecosystems:

• Proximity & social economy ecosystem, consultation closes February 28
• Construction ecosystem,  consultation closes February 28
• Mobility ecosystem, consultation closes March 31

Based on the results of these consultations, the Commission will organise further meetings with stakeholders to finalise the various pathways in 2022.

For more information visit: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/consultations_en

The Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, UN-Habitat, UCLG and Eurocities, in partnership with Open Society Foundation, are launching an open call to find experts and city governments in Europe to pilot the Digital Rights Governance Framework.

Selected cities will receive support to design and implement the Digital Rights Governance Framework at the local level, and will be provided with technical advice, ad hoc support and advisory input.

The goal of the project is to tackle local digital-rights challenges around digital rights thematic areas such as digital inclusion, individual’s control and autonomy of data, transparency and accountability, public participation and community engagement, privacy, digital public goods and open digital infrastructures, procurement by developing a Digital Rights Governance Framework and a capacity-building programme in these topics.

Using challenge-driven innovation, the pilot process will include assessments, workshops and a capacity-building approach that will be carried out in collaboration with the city’s local staff.

The call is open to:

• “CITIES”, where city governments in Europe are welcome to apply by sharing local challenges in the different digital rights areas 
• “EXPERTS”, for professionals with background in the thematic areas related to digital rights

Find out more and submit your application via: https://citiesfordigitalrights.org/opencall

Deadline: Sunday, 27 February 2022