Smart cities: How Bjelovar aims to become a sustainable wellness tourism destination

Earlier this month, news emerged that the City of Bjelovar has submitted its project Termi for funding from European Union funds. The project, valued at just over 38.5 million euros, aims to increase the attractiveness of sustainable wellness tourism destination in the city, strengthen the tourism offer, and ultimately attract as many tourists as possible.

The activities carried out are expected to result in the construction of a thermal complex in accordance with the DNSH principles and a photovoltaic power plant for the production of its own electricity, which would permanently reduce CO2 emissions by just over 67 percent.

Details of the project were shared on the Facebook profile of the Mayor of Bjelovar Dario Hrebak, who will participate in the Lider conference Smart cities on March 28, where he will present Bjelovar as a modern city that is developing towards new technologies, following trends and aiming to be a regional leader.

– In just a few years, the City of Bjelovar has made a huge leap in the area of digitalization, having digitized most of its services as well as processes within the City Administration. This has enabled faster and more efficient functioning of officials and communication with citizens – confirmed the City.

As they state, they provide their citizens with a range of electronic services related to information or communication with city services and insight into the functioning of the City. They certainly mentioned the Open City Platform, as well as Transparento, a free application that allows citizens to easily search for payments from the City budget and thus gain insight into the use of public money by all taxpayers.

– Through the application, all payments to all entities can be seen, including payments to individuals and legal entities, all payments to officials’ gross salaries, daily allowances, and other material rights. The Transparento application is part of the project City of Bjelovar – the most transparent city in Croatia, aiming to achieve the highest possible level of transparency and prevent corruption – they explained.

They also mentioned Financial Cards, an online service that allows citizens quick insight into their financial obligations to the City, the SIG system for informing citizens, and Digital Forms as a service that enables citizens to submit requests to the City digitally.

More about projects in Bjelovar can be learned at the Smart cities conference at the Zagreb Fair, where leaders from numerous Croatian cities will participate. Join us at the conference with prior registration.