SOM II: Smart Public Environments
Imagine if the bin could tell you when it's full, if you could sit at home and see if the vegetables in the grow plot need watering, or if city planners could easily follow which paths cyclists prefer. This and much more was investigated in Smart Public Environments II (SOM II) through connected sensors in a free and open network in Lund and Malmö. The project aimed to find the benefits of new smart technologies in municipal operations and public environments and to implement innovative solutions to the challenges that exist. Another goal was to find opportunities to test entrepreneurs and companies' innovative solutions to public operations. Within the project, more than twenty sub-projects were carried out and a new agile project implementation model was tested with very good results.
Finanisär
The SOM project was used to test and find the benefits of sensors in an Internet of Things (IoT) for municipal operations. The hope was that through this, administrations and municipal companies could face the future with technology solutions that are in many respects more resource-smart than the previous ones. Prior to the launch of SOM II, preliminary study SOM I carried out.
At the start of the project, Lund Municipality had already made a broad commitment to entrepreneurs who want to develop sensors in public environments. Since spring 2017 there was an open and free sensor network based on in LoRa technology. Within the SOM project, a test bed was established that built on this and where other technologies were also tested and built retrospectively. By offering an open IoT testbed, the project promoted that many different companies and entrepreneurs could experiment and test different IoT solutions. The ambition was to implement an effective platform for IoT solutions in municipalities by finding approaches in the project that allowed actors to reuse and share information with each other. This activity was central in order to create an effective platform and to more effectively implement IoT solutions in public operations.
The project had four fixed sub-projects — an open IoT test bed, support for SMEs, project management and communication and started by focusing on four innovation examples: Cycle Data, Critical Infrastructure Monitoring, Urban Farming and Waste Management. Gradually, more sub-projects were added.
Smart public environments is a project that Lund Municipality implemented in collaboration with the City of Malmö, the Academy and many entrepreneurs and companies. The project also had a network of informal partners that grew over the course of the project.
The project was part of the Strategic Innovation Programme for the Internet of Things, IoT Sweden, funded by Vinnova.
What was the result?
The project tested a agile model for a Vinnova-funded project with very good results. Partners, sub-projects and funding were determined ex post facto.
More than twenty sub-projects were carried out in the project and many products, services and jobs were created, such as Sensative, which built up its IoTplatform Yggio which is now used by several cities in Sweden.
The open IoT test bed that was created lives on after the project and provides opportunities to test new solutions by the energy company Kraftringen taking over the LoRa network. For Kraftringen, it led to a whole new business area — to take care of sensor communication in Lund.
A major effect of the project is the increase in knowledge built up in the public sector but also among private actors who participated in the project through new collaborations and by daring to test new ideas. The work has also resulted in new projects by the actors involved.
Results and experiences from the project have been collected in a book about the SOM project.
How is the project taken forward?
In autumn 2020, Future by Lund was granted funding for the Winnovafain-funded project Lund Open Sensing City (LOSC) which builds on SOM II: In January 2021, it also became clear with FLOW funded by IoT Sweden. LOSC is intended to create an open testbed for the future real-time controlled society where people, organizations, infrastructures and sensor systems work together to create a sustainable environment with a high quality of life. LOSC is also the gathering place for several other projects, including FLOW and Finding the untapped bike potential. The FLOW project investigates how to collect traffic data, preferably in real time, using sensor technology and then connect the data on a digital platform.
Facts Smart Public Environments II (SOM II)
Financier: IoT Sweden
Contribution granted: SEK 13.4 million
Project turnover: more than SEK 35 million
Project Time: september 2017 - december 2020
Project Manager: Anders Trana, Future City of Lund
Project partners: Lund Municipality, ABB, Apparkingspot, Axis Communications, Bintel, Village Development, Degavi, DeviceRadio, DivM, dLaboratory, Ericsson, FM technology, Helsingborgshem, HFAB, HiQ Skåne, Hövding, Ideon innovation, Intive, Kamen, Lund municipal parking company, Lund Renholdningsverk, Lund University, Kraftringen, Malmö City, Malmö University, Mobile Heights AB, MiThings, OCCDEC, Protol, RISE, Schneider Electric Sverige AB, Sensative AB, Sensefarm Sony, T-maps, Telia Company, Trivector traffic, U-blox, Vinnergi, Region Skåne.
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.
Sub-project:
The water cough of the cows is getting smart
Air quality measurement by bicycle
Travel habits — data integration
Smart cycling data for traffic planners
Hidden sensors protect buildings
Bicycle Tracking and Theft Protection
Critical Infrastructure Monitoring
