What will the smart cities of our future look like?

Over 20,000 people attended the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month to answer that question. 

The conference showcased a full array of city-improving technologies, from renewable energy systems to autonomous vehicles to indoor plant farms. Bax & Company’s Smart Cities and Future Mobility teams attended the Expo to share our experiences helping clients build better Smart Cities.

Hear thoughts from partner Sebastiaan van Herk and Smart Cities Consultants Dana van der Zee and Manon Bax below:

Future Mobility consultants Christian Riester and Sami Angsthelm joined the Smart City Expo’s sister expo Tomorrow Mobility to share the future of movement in our cities.

They shared lessons that public authorities and site operators can learn from our autonomous vehicle integrator Pendel Mobility‘s deployment of the first autonomous vehicle pilot on live roads in Barcelona.

They shared the following lessons for mobility providers that want to be leaders in the autonomous transition of vehicle-based transport:

1. Choosing the right conditions is key to autonomous success

Deploy a shuttle in the right conditions, and it can already serve your mobility needs.

Choose wrong, and mobility providers risk an expensive experiment with little to show for it.

We’ll be helping providers understand which of their mobility problems shuttles can and cannot solve in the current state of the art.

2. Mobility providers should starting planning the road ahead today

Autonomous vehicle technology is improving on a smartphone trajectory.

Public transport authorities and private site operators need to establish a roadmap today to prevent the technology driving off without them.

We’ll be sharing ways that transport providers can prepare.

3. We need to bring future everyday users – and workers into the conversation

Autonomous mobility will improve the way we all move – a message we must share with future everyday users.

Designing better public transport with autonomy will improve affordability and access for all, in both rural and urban settings.

Future leaders in autonomy need to spend time listening and engaging with the people that will one day benefit from these services in their daily lives.

Bax & Company’s Energy team, led by Rolf Bastiaanssen, is helping its clients advance the state of the art in local smart grids, which contribute to a more dependable net zero energy supply for cost-effective on-site energy management.

To show how local smart grids could change industrial sites in urban spaces, the Horizon Europe project CREATORS – of which Bax & Company is a project partner – was invited to present at the Smart Ports by the Port of Barcelona, also a partner in the project.

The project presented the community energy system as one model to bring control and revenue to local energy management. Aleksandar Kavgic from Typhoon HIL presented the CREATORS initiative, highlighting the risks to site operators in installing large quantities of unmanaged renewable assets, and showing how a coordinated energy community was the way to turn this risk into revenue.

Bax & Company helps public and private clients lead the transformation in the way we live and move in cities. Talk to a consultant to learn how we could turn your organisation into a Smart City leader.