New Sustainable Smart Cities Hub for Market Insights & Opportunity

“This initiative meets a real need: bringing together a disparate market; matching cities facing environmental challenges with new, innovative solutions; and providing an evidence base to unlock investment. As a neutral industry broker, EIC is bringing together all the key stakeholders that make this market work, to share best practice, open up new collaborations, and improve the quality of life of citizens living in cities at home and around the world,” states Matthew Farrow, EIC Executive Director.

SustainableSmartCities.org will assist in the promotion of accelerated industry growth through the following activities:

• Sharing of international case studies and best practice through a new online platform – helping all sectors, from government to industry, learn more efficiently and secure investments.
• Connecting previously isolated stakeholders, creating a nexus of collaboration – through seminars, roundtables, and a series of networking events.
• Providing thought leadership, market intelligence and investment insight – development of in-depth reports on policy and markets, regular blogs from industry and governmental leaders, strategic identification of opportunities for growth.
• Lobbying governments and policy makers for a regulatory framework that supports and encourages innovation and its implementation.
• Fostering needed cross-sectoral collaboration to enable needed change.

Sponsored by AECOM, Bird & Bird, and the Institute for Environmental Analytics, the initiative has been developed over the last three years through extensive stakeholder engagement, renowned research from the Environmental Industries Commission, and essential input across all sectors to turn this industry identified need into reality, including an industry taskforce.

“SustainableSmartCities.org is the solution to years of isolated smart cities work, helping to bridge the distance between pockets of knowledge, practical experience, strategic investments, political support and more. This collaboration will best ensure that our cities will leverage smart technologies or big data to create a cleaner, greener and more sustainable world.”
Alex Tosetti, Head of Smart Cities & Operations Director, AECOM

With all tickets fully booked to the launch event occurring Thursday evening (25 May) at AECOM offices, attendees represent the wide breadth of sectors engaged, with the evening events to include a demonstration of SustainableSmartCities.org case study database, outline of future plans, and discussion of the state of Smart Cities collaboration across sectors.

“Throughout the world, cities face complex challenges to become sustainable and smarter but are also ideally placed to drive investment, deploy innovation and offer the right scale for pilot projects. In EIC’s 2014 sustainable smart cities report it recommended a multi-faceted strategy to unlock the potential for sustainable smarter cities, including raising awareness of the challenges and opportunities to achieve this. SustainableSmartCities.org is an important platform to capture and share smart city case studies and other resources.”
Michael Rudd, Partner, Bird & Bird LLP

“The IEA is pleased to support this exciting initiative from the EIC to bring together those within industry and cities to share best practice to make cities both greener, smarter and more sustainable. The website will act as a focal point for disseminating this knowledge and we hope it will become the ‘go-to’ site for those wishing to seek new collaborators and find out about innovative projects from around the world.” Colin McKinnon, CEO, Institute for Environmental Analytics (IEA)