There are lots of people and vehicles moving around the central station in Lund. Since the area around the station was initially not adapted for these large flows, the SOM project aimed to investigate how to measure flows of people and vehicles. The idea was that the new and smart technology could make it possible to measure traffic flows in a completely new way. The project considered both how the data created could be used to develop the area and how the data could help control traffic lights, taxis and public transport, for example, so that they are adapted to the way people move in the city.

Another thought example was taken from Malmö, where they wanted to work with lighting in a nursing home. The idea was that the light would mimic daylight in the residents' public areas and at the same time be adapted to the personal needs of the residents' rooms.

The purpose of the two experiments was not that the project would aim at complete solutions, but they were a way to start collaborations, to create ways of thinking and to find possible approaches. In the sub-projects, participating partners were selected to best match the subprojects' challenges. It was important that the activities were run on the basis of needs and challenges identified by the public actors and that either the Municipality of Lund or the City of Malmö were included in the sub-project. One goal of the venture was to become the leading region in Sweden to use innovative IoT solutions in public activities.

The study became a first model for what an open sensor infrastructure might look like and for how to make a good data platform that collects and interprets the results. The goal is to create services, methods and processes that can be copied and used by other public organizations. The project was a first step in a larger joint effort on IoT services in the area and linked well to ongoing work and strategies within both Lund Municipality and the City of Malmö. The project also aimed to find ways for public organizations to work agilely on introducing innovative IoT solutions into their work. The new methods and processes that resulted from the study were expected to allow operations to better keep up with rapid changes while avoiding wrong decisions.

In addition to the two large municipalities, the consortium consisted of large and small leading IoT companies with a strong regional connection, as well as representatives from academia and institutes.

What was the result?

The work on the central station in Lund and the nursing home in Malmö led, in particular, to the project building up an organisation for an implementation part that is intended to be the next step. The project has also built a strong network of industrial IoT players who want to participate in driving and exploiting the benefits of a shared testing infrastructure.

The results include reports on management of IoT adoption in public operations, State of Art around smart cities in the world, and needs and requirements analysis for an open IoT data platform in Lund and Malmö. Furthermore, the project has carried out tests with flow measurement of pedestrian traffic around Lund C and implemented a test area around personally-controlled lighting in a real living environment in a nursing home.

The pre-study leveraged the power of the private IoT actors and academia to stay at the forefront of decision materials as well as technology and business choices. At the same time, the project strengthened the possibilities for private operators to understand the needs of public activities and to be able to get commercial products out of the public sector.

How is the project taken forward?

After SOM I, work continued in AS II.

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Facts Smart Public Environments I

Financier: IoT Sweden

Contribution granted: SEK 2 million

Project Time: October 2016 - July 2017

Project Manager: Anders Trana, Future City of Lund

Project partners: Lund Municipality, City of Malmö, Mobile Heights, Axis Communications, Sensative, Schneider Electric, Ericsson, Malmö University, Lund University.

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Classification in the Future by Lund framework

Layer: ! 2

Zone: Green (2)

What do we mean by zone and layer?

Future by Lund works with a framework to create understanding and provide a basis for strategic decisions regarding the development of the innovation ecosystem where the partnership will be able to review the ecosystem together and conduct strategic dialogues about future development. Working with zones is a way to show what kind of innovation activity and development phase it is, while layers are a way of showing the amount of activities and partner involvement, where you can follow seed investments, project financing and the journey ahead as a result of a project.

Blue, green and yellow zone

To explain the possibilities of the organizational gap between the municipality, business and the university, a model with a blue, a green and a yellow zone is used.

In the blue zone the organization decides everything itself and has control and mandate. Here you control yourself and there is a structure for how you conduct your business. Outside there is Green Zone, located in the gap between organizations. There is a need for cooperation and dialogue with shared mandates. Organizations negotiate and create agreements about who does what, what can be done together, and how it should be done. For example, cities and construction companies often work together to build new areas or concrete projects with common goals and shared tasks and resources. If you go further into it yellow zone the mandate is rather unclear and organisations share challenges and opportunities. Who owns what and who will do what is not clear, presenting greater risks. It is necessary to co-create. In this zone, you need to stimulate, facilitate, test and monitor the outside world in order to create knowledge and understanding. The organizations share the risks surrounding the unknown and the unarticulated. Participant engagement and presence drives the opportunities. Many in Future by Lund's network work precisely with things that are located in the green and yellow zones in areas that you share with others. Activities carried out in the green or yellow zone can eventually become business opportunities and then end up in the blue zone where organizations take home results, use them, build business and scale.

Consequential effects through the layer model

To demonstrate the importance of innovation activities for a system of actors, Future by Lund's associate researcher Emily Wise works with the “layer model” — which is a reporting method used in Vinnova's Vinnprogram and captures dynamics and the “ripple effects” that the initiatives contribute to.

First layer är the support (or base funding) that comes directly to the innovation platform.

Second layer consists of project funding for projects that Future by Lund either leads or participates in.

Third layer is project funding that goes to partners in projects in which Future by Lund does not participate. This is called a spinoff project or follow-on project.

Fourth layer are the qualitative events in the system that are signs that change is taking place in the direction of the sustainable city. It can be new businesses, new products, an increase in the number of employees, new investment streams, new infrastructure and an increase in attention.

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