SCORE Digital Partner Meeting
By Kata Börönte, Aarhus University
The biannual meeting was held over two days and attended by representatives from the broad range of partnering cities and organizations in the North Sea Region. Rather than the vibrant streets of Hamburg, attendants were directed to an elaborate array of digital halls and working tables.
“Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, the project partners were not able to experience Hamburg in its digital transformation first hand. Digital solutions such as the Urban Data Platform Hamburg, the Master Portal or the preparations for the ITS World Congress 2021 could only be communicated in a virtual format. Nevertheless, international cooperation was further strengthened and transnational collaboration was pushed forward in this successful partnership meeting.” - Henning David, City of Hamburg
Like being in Hamburg … but not really
The first day started with a plenary session. Here, the work package leaders presented key developments from the last six months.
This included work package 2 and 6 lead, Martin Brynskov. He updated the partners on the key findings of SynchroniCity and urged attendants to convince their local politicians to sign the Join, Boost, sustain declaration, and presented coupling between OASC and the SCORE project.
"It is important to view SCORE not only as a project but as part of the digital transformation in cities and communities. For this reason, we encourage not only knowledge sharing and conversations internally but strongly link to like-minded initiatives that we can learn from and work with towards a common goal." Martin Brynskov, Aarhus University
Work package 5 leads from Johanneberg Science Park announced the initiation of the development of a generic guide on the replicability and upscaling of open source solutions within the delivery of public services.
“By developing a replication guide within SCORE project, we aim to offer a step-by-step guidance on how components of open source solutions can be reused or replicated in other cities. A two-layer approach will be followed so that both city representatives with no-technical background as well as developers can benefit from the guide and ultimately, replicate open source concepts in an effective and successful way.” Evdoxia (Eva) Kouraki, Johanneberg Science Park
Justine Ottevaere from City of Ghent presented the preliminary suggestion for how to approach SCORE as a business case building on the case of the QR-toolkit.
“The purpose of SCORE should be that we create components that are as generic as possible so they can be replicated and adopted by any city or municipality. The business case should help to document the value of the solutions for each different city. At the end of SCORE it would be nice to have an overview of the different components in our solutions and to see the many different departments they serve in different cities.” Justine Ottevaere, City of Ghent
Further, Bradford University presented the outcome of their peer review of select SCORE solutions.
Updates on the solutions
In the afternoon there was an opportunity for partners to get updated on the solutions using the Score Community. You can find the updates provided by the partners by following the links below:
IoT Strategy, Stay Put and Simple State by Aarhus
3D Digital Twin by Aarhus
Flood Monitoring Network and Flood Warning App by Aberdeen
Signalen and IoT Registry by Amsterdam
Liveability by Amsterdam University
Mobility Dashboard by Bergen
QR-Code Toolkit Progress by Ghent-Digipolis and Bradford City Council
Citizen Science as a service and Gully sensors by Bradford University
APIAPI IOT component by Ghent-Digipolis
ROADS by Hamburg
GeoNetBake by Hamburg
Masterportal by Hamburg
Mimicking the great atmosphere from the Bergen meeting, the rest of the evening was reserved for social activities that included an extremely difficult quiz on the history of Hamburg, a digital Easter Egg Hunt and a chill-out dub-session.
Digital Working Tables
The second day was reserved for working tables focusing on solutions, the replication guide, and revisiting the SCORE vision and communication strategy. Links were rapidly sent back and forth in the chat bars and plans for the following six months were made. Towards the end of the day, all Working Table hosts had the chance to present their key findings and points for future discussion.
“It was important for us to recreate as similar an atmosphere as possible, even though it was online. By ensuring inclusive participation and encouraging natural social interactions, we made sure there was enough time to catch up and socialise as well as making real progress on the solution development. This is particularly important for partners who have been working together for more than two years. All the partners were able to attend both days and brought a high level of energy that made guiding them through this virtual journey an easy and pleasant experience!” Juliette Tenart, Bax&Company
