Written by Maikel Bouricius

The Interreg IVC project GreenITNet is a collaboration between 10 European cities from 9 different countries. The project focuses on the activation of European cities with a high sustainable energy ambition, a strong ICT technology potential and previous experience in Green IT. Green IT Amsterdam is one of coordinating partners on this project.

The main aim of GreenITNet is to develop a systematic Green IT policy framework and select a number of good practices and effective policies in areas such as energy supply, electric mobility, renewable energy systems, public space,smart grids and transportation, but not only.

Earlier this year the online database with good practices from a variety of European cities and municipalities has been launched. At this moment one will find about 120 green IT practices implemented and later submitted by cities. The platform is offering great insight on green IT urban innovation, policies and models for implementation from across the regions within the European Union.

For example the practice submitted by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, Eblomlådan. Eblomlådan is an evaluation tool that allows companies, organisations and communes to think about the potential role of IT in their activities. Public organisations will be able to perform a self-evaluating assessment focussing on several application area’s like housing & traffic, culture & leisure, serving students & children, and elderly care. Each area can be evaluated from four perspectives including welfare services & self service and IT as an enabler.

Another example are the, perhaps well known, practices from Barcelona, including Urban Lab and Bicing. The Urban Lab initiative developed the 22@ district in Barcelona into a real life test bed for new tech developments and innovative solutions. Bicing is the bike sharing concept for residents and commuters within Barcelona which has been popular by users since its launch a few years ago has seen an exponential growth for example regarding the number of bike stations across the city.

Bicing is a very popular concept with European cities too, as many of them are facing traffic congestion issues and challenges regarding air pollution. Developing a bike friendly city making use of a smart technology like they did in Barcelona could be a solution.The GreenITNet project is not only about showing practices, at this moment all partners are developing initiatives towards possible implementation of practices. Within the GreenITNet the partners from Malta, Catania have shown interest in the infomobility practice from Rome for example. From an Amsterdam perspective we are following developments in this area too, for example the interesting City SDK project from de Waag and the possibility to combine elements from a project like this with available practices.

If you are the owner of a practice  you think should be included in the database, so other cities could learn from it and get inspired, please take action and register here! Otherwise, feel free to browse through the practices and perhaps develop plans to implement some of them yourself.

About Maikel Bouricius

Maikel Bouricius is project manager at Green IT Amsterdam. Green IT Amsterdam is the public-private collaboration to green IT, develop a greener Amsterdam Region by IT and support the green economy. Green IT Amsterdam is partner in the European projects IREEN and GreenITNet among other project. More information: www.greenitamsterdam.nl