‘Zagreb is moderately smart, but we must have the ambition to reach the top’

‘Zagreb is 35th on the list of European smart cities out of a total of 70 ranked, making it a moderately smart city, but we must have the ambition to reach the top,’ said Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić at today’s event titled ‘Smart City: Zagreb’.

The event was organized by the City of Zagreb and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing and was held at the premises of FER. It gathered numerous professors, businesspeople, and representatives of state institutions. Giorgio Tonelli, president of the European House Ambrosetti from Milan, also participated in the event, delivering a lecture on Living Labs and Smart Cities and the opportunities that the development of such projects can bring to European cities. 

The purpose of the event was to present the infrastructure project Smart City: Zagreb, which is already being jointly developed by the city authorities and FER. The faculty is in the process of establishing a Living Lab, an organization that would bring together the best minds and resources from public and private institutions and the local community with the aim of developing a vision for the City of Zagreb as a Smart City and then turning that vision into concrete actions. 

The Living Lab encourages research, development, and innovation aimed at improving living conditions in the city, emphasize the event organizers. Several research areas have already been identified, primarily focused on energy, with one of the important goals being the development of a regional energy platform. The ultimate goal of this project is to transform Zagreb into a smarter city, and it is being implemented in accordance with European regulations on smart cities, thus allowing for the possibility of drawing funds from EU sources.

‘This project should network the city, the university, and the local economy. Through a synergistic effect, we would create the foundations for sustainable development of key sectors from energy to public lighting, urban planning and construction, drainage, and the environment,’ said FER Dean Nedjeljko Perić. 
Jadranka Veselić Bruvo, head of the city office for strategic city development planning, spoke about the Zagreb Plan, a strategic development document adopted last year, which pertains to the period until 2020. In preparing this document, experts who worked on it studied the development documents of large cities such as Tokyo and Paris, as well as smaller cities closer to Zagreb like Copenhagen and Ljubljana. The head of the city office for energy, Marijan Maras, spoke about already initiated projects related to energy, while lawyer Ivan Tilošanec explained the legal aspects of the Living Lab’s operations.