Tuesday, 5/2/2017
The IAPMEI – Agency for
Competitiveness and Innovation recently recognised 20 national competitiveness
clusters. In this edition, the highlight is the Cluster of Smart Cities, which
counts on the intervention of the School of Engineering of the University of
Minho (EEUM).
With
the aim of leveraging the develop and experimentations of innovative solutions
at the level of territory and not only the cities, the Cluster of Smart Cities
emerged. Its presentation meeting was held in Oporto
in January 2017. This aggregation brings together half a hundred
entities from the most varied areas such as business, academic and national
associative.
"The Cluster of Smart Cities appeared because the maturity of the
concept and the sensitivity that society demonstrates to the concept itself
were at a point where it was possible to create this cluster", Ricardo
Machado, representative of the Cluster of Smart Cities through the ALGORITMI
Research Centre (ALGORITMI) of the EUUM reminds. Clusters are a recent
initiative in terms of government recognition and the constitution of this
platform was only possible after the application was submitted to the Portugal
2020 program, in July 2014.
The former PCT’s – Competitiveness and Technology Centres – designation
assigned by previous governments, gave place to the current clusters. The
terminology is different, but the essence remains: look at the territory - from
the point of view of economic activities - and add a set of consortiums capable
of acting strategically to develop economic activities with added value. In the
case of cities in particular, there were no PCT linked to smart cities
"because the theme was still very emerging and society had not implemented
this type of structure. There was, in fact, a transition from the concept of
PCT’s to clusters ", Ricardo Machado explains.
To encourage urban entrepreneurship is the watchword, in the search for
an environment conducive to the development of intelligent urban projects, in
line with territorial specificities, and of products and systems with high
added value for smart cities globally. “Clusters are dynamisation centres for
the creation of consortia. Also in the area of smart cities, there is the
expectation that a series of events will be organised, where the various
researchers may be invited to form partnerships”, the research highlights.
CEiiA, Brisa Innovation and Technology, COMPTA, Siemens and the
University of Minho are the entities that compose the direction of the cluster.
Regarding EEUM's participation in this Cluster of Smart Cities, the researcher
from ALGORITMI of the EEUM has no doubts that this is an initiative that
aggregates a set of entities "and if we are not involved, we are out. This
means that we are telling society that we do not have relevant scientific
activity in that domain [of smart cities] and therefore will not arouse the
interest of any company for the EEUM, which is not our aim”.
The creation of this cluster is still recent, but promises to
revolutionise the participation of companies in the smart cities market, as
well as affirm the image of Portugal as a space for the design, production and
experimentation of products and services for smart cities. The first direction
meeting was held in March 2017.
+ info (in Portuguese): https://www.iapmei.pt/; https://www.umcidades.uminho.pt/; http://www.programainterface.pt/pt