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Cluster to the Smart Cities with EEUM’s intervention Back

Tuesday, 5/2/2017   
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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
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