Urban ICT Arena is a co-creation hub in Kista Science City, one of the world’s leading ICT clusters, that believes in the importance of cooperation in meeting the goals set out in the UN’s Agenda 2030. Urban ICT Arena provides tools for ICT companies and the public sector to overcome tomorrow’s challenges today.
Kista Science City is Urban ICT Arena’s ‘reality lab’. It has real people in real buildings, with real traffic and real conditions. This is where the Urban ICT Arena IoT (Internet of Things) test bed is located. It’s plug-and-play ready, making it ideal for testing smart city devices such as sensors and hardware. All the necessary infrastructure for testing is already in place.
But technology alone cannot build smart cities. So Urban ICT Arena is working together with the public sector to ensure Sweden’s municipalities, regions and authorities are on board too. Cooperation is crucial to bridging the gap between IoT companies and the public sector.
Three Aims
1. Developing sustainable cities
Policymakers and industry in many cities are working hard to meet three urban challenges: social, economic and environmental sustainability. ICT is often described as a key component of the solutions to these issues. Although there are many examples of successful ICT initiatives tackling such challenges, both clients and contractors still have a long way to go before the potential of ICT is fully realised in making cities truly sustainable. A lack of coordination between clients and contractors is one of the areas in need of improvement.
One of Urban ICT Arena’s aims is to foster more ICT-based solutions for urban sustainability challenges, resulting in both greater impact, individually and in conjunction with other solutions, and lower costs.
2. Boosting innovation
The rate of growth in ICT, especially IoT, Big Data and 5G, is extremely fast. However, many innovation processes lose momentum too early, and in some cases fail permanently.
Another aim of Urban ICT Arena is to strengthen capabilities to support innovation processes and assist SMEs and start-ups in developing ICT-based products and services. In particular, the region needs to get better at attracting new talent, and the arena can play a key role in this effort by boosting attractiveness for skilled labour.
3. Securing the jobs of tomorrow
Kista Science City and the surrounding area have served as an engine for driving the growth of the future labour market for nearly three decades.
One of the long-term aims of Urban ICT Arena is the advancement of the region and preparing it for new demands in the future. This will be done by securing more jobs in the region and determining the skills required to meet future needs.
