In English.

The project will be led by Future by Lund, which is Lund Municipality's innovation platform that operates a large innovation network of business partners, organisations and academia. Enrolled project partners in Lund Open Sensing City are Axis Communications, AFRY, The power ring, Lund University and Mobile Heights, California, Sensative, Sony, Telia and Trivecteur. The project is also carried out in collaboration with Ericsson, Volvo Cars and U-blox with several. The project will build test environments together with municipal administrations, including the Technical Administration and the Environmental Administration. Future by Lund has also previously successfully run projects in the field, e.g. Smart Public Environments (Vinnovafinansierat) which has established an open IoT testbed in the city and delivered over 15 different sub-projects that connect with public challenges and infrastructure in the city.

“It is gratifying that in this way Vinnova recognizes the municipality of Lund as a municipality with a well-developed green-tech industry with good opportunities to be a test bed for innovations. It will be exciting to follow the project,” says Philip Sandberg (L) Chairman of the Municipal Board in Lund.

“Lund Municipality has been at the forefront of innovation and sustainability for a long time. With this wine innovation project, we are now given the opportunity to participate in creating the smart communities of the future,” says Anders Almgren (S), 2nd Vice Chairman of the Municipal Board.

The project seeks solutions that focus on immediate challenges that can include everything from emissions and safety to resource optimization and prevention of traffic incidents linked to different vehicle flows. It could also be about solutions that target micro-flows (walking, cycling, electric scooters, etc.) as part of creating a healthier and more meaningful lifestyle in the city.

“Now we have the opportunity to use the test bed that we built in the SOM project (SOM stands for Smart Public Environments) and take it further so that we can really use the city as a testing ground,” says project manager Anders Trana at Future by Lund. In the project, we will connect physical places with digital ones - this can be about how cars, buses, bicycles and people move in the city and that by creating real-time data, you can control these flows through traffic lights at intersections and lighting, for example.

The test bed shall offer three different test possibilities. These are Fixed places/zones (e.g. squares, intersections, inside buildings), Mobile locations on vehicles running loops in the city and Connection to city infrastructure (e.g. electrical cabinets, lighting, traffic lights, etc.).

“Participating in the project Lund Open Sensing City means that as a local company with a global market, we can access a new platform where we can test and evaluate new innovations and solutions. Together with other local actors, we can share experiences and learn what challenges cities face, and jointly find solutions,” says Veronica Sällberg, Global Business Development Manager Smart City, Axis Communications.

The project sees a great need to better understand and develop the city based on the flows of people, bicycles and other vehicles that exist, change and create in the future based on real-time information, data platforms, applications and machine learning. Today, this ability is limited by fragmented information in different solutions such as analog data, behind firewalls and in proprietary systems. Although the shift is towards open data and IoT-based systems, there are still many challenges left to solve.

22 applications were received for the call Test beds for societal challenges - implementation project 2020. Vinnova intends to support six implementation projects, including Lund with the following justification: (Quoted from Vinnova's decision notice)

“Lund wants to establish an open testbed for a future real-time driven society where people, organizations, infrastructure and sensor systems work together to create a sustainable environment. In the project, they want to establish a test bed with a variety of sensors and sensor locations, different connectivity options and open data platforms in order to ultimately be able to solve challenges more efficiently and create new values.

In competition with other applications, this application is considered to have good potential to create a test bed that can contribute to systemic effects in the long term, thanks to a strong constellation of actors, a good monitoring of the environment and a strong link with innovation-supporting actors. Furthermore, the described test bed is assessed on the basis of the application to create conditions for testing opportunities in a real environment in a way that is currently lacking. The project team is judged to have the skills, commitment and credibility necessary to implement the project.”‍

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LOSC Facts

Financier: Vinnova

Project Time: May 2020 - December 2023

Project Manager: Anders Trana, Future City of Lund

Project partners: Axis Communications, AFRY, The power ring, Lund Municipality, Lund University, Mobile Heights, California, Sensative, Sony, Telia, Smart Villages and Trivecteur

What was the result? ONGOING

How is the project taken forward? ONGOING

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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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