A final celebration for IRIS Smart Cities

More than 80 participants where welcomed to Johanneberg Science Park, the coordinator of the Gothenburg site of the project. The day started with a session putting the spotlight on the projects fellow cities, Vaasa, Focsani, Alexandroupolis and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Moderated by Sofia Corsi, project manager of the network Scalable Cities, the cities shared thoughts on challenges and achievements and how the work to become smarter and more sustainable continues after IRIS.

In the afternoon participants took a look in the mirror - a self-assessment tool the IRIS-project has periodically used to take a look at its successes and challenges. The final mirror also included the perspective of how these changed when compared to the original project ambitions and the way the collaboration in the project took place.

The concept of "Bears and victories" was also revisited: a peer-2-peer session on personal learnings and a chance to define what roles are necessary to build a successful project team. The interactive small group session provided the project members a free space to share their experiences. 

At the end of the first day, the City of Gothenburg opened the doors to its beautiful City Hall, "Börsen", where delegates were welcomed by the deputy Lord Mayor, Margareta Broang, and enjoyed a lovely dinner as well as speeches and a newly composed IRIS-Song to celebrate the end of a European collaboration that resulted not only in knowledge sharing, but in friendships from north to south, east to west.

The second day three study tours were offered reflecting central themes in the IRIS project: Energy efficient buildings, electric transport and digital twins. The first group visited sites at the IRIS demonstration site surrounding Johanneberg Science Park. Brf Viva, HSB Living Lab and A Working Lab are all buildings where energy efficiency solutions have been implemented through IRIS Smart Cities.

The two latter groups where welcomed to Lindholmen Science Park and Visual Arena, were Gothenburg's digital twin, a geo-fence connected bike by Ericsson and the electric ferry across the river was shown and discussed.

IRIS Smart Cities ends in March 2023 - read more about the project here >>