The word "smart" is not particularly meaningful, believes Marc Gille-Sepehri, managing director of the software developer Thing Technologies from Schwalbach in Hesse.
More comfortable, more efficient, healthier, more sustainable, all that means smart nowadays.
To put it more narrowly, it means "digitally networked".
The central question that arises for the concept of a "smart city" is: "What motivates other players to tackle things smartly?"
Kim Maurus
volunteer.
Follow I follow
At least some of these players, representatives from Frankfurt politics, business and research, came together this week at an event organized by the Frankfurt Economic Development Agency to exchange views on Frankfurt's digital future.
And they quickly came to the conclusion that if Frankfurt wants to become a digitally networked city, for example on the model of Darmstadt, which was emphasized several times that evening, then everyone has to work more closely together.
The discussion participants found clear words for the status quo of the Main metropolis.
"In some cases we really still have the Middle Ages here," said Oliver Schwebel, Managing Director of Economic Development, who moderated the round.
In some parking garages in the city, you can still only pay with cash.
"Frankfurt is currently at a 4.5 on a scale of ten," admitted Eileen O'Sullivan (Volt), head of the digital department.
Your goal in the next four years is to bring the city to grade 7 or 8.
In the coming months, for example, the launch of an "urban data platform" is planned, which should create transparency and enable citizens to participate in the digitization process.
One is in exchange with other cities, of course with Darmstadt, but also has contacts in Hamburg,
Plug together like hi-fi components
It is important to design an "agile, transparent umbrella strategy" as a first step, so that Frankfurt does not slip further down the Bitkom ranking for Germany's smartest cities.
"Smart City is primarily there to improve the lives of citizens," said the city councilor.
Contact with young companies in the region is also important.
According to Stephanie Wüst (FDP), head of the economic department, who spoke a digital greeting, there are currently around 400 start-ups and 20 co-working spaces in the city.
Gille-Sepehri from Thing Technologies emphasized that only if all stakeholders are involved can the city really become “smart”.
Private individuals, industry, trade and services, transport and mobility, real estate owners and companies - all their contributions must mesh, "just like hi-fi components used to be put together".
No city drives a company's digitization strategy forward, but politicians can at least manage these processes.
Simone Schlosser, Managing Director of the municipal subsidiary Digitalstadt Darmstadt, according to Schwebel the "Champions League city in the smart city sector", explained that Darmstadt's digital transformation is mainly due to the successful participation in a Bitkom competition in 2017 and the associated funding may be.
"It's still a bit of a black box as to what a smart city actually is," she said.
The Darmstadt-based company is working on 14 fields of action, from IT and infrastructure to trade and tourism, everything is included.
The state of Hesse is financing the digital city of Darmstadt with around five million euros, and an additional 650,000 euros are planned in the city budget.
Networking stakeholders is definitely “a model for success”.
Transparency as a starting point
Lothar Stanka from the energy supplier Mainova gave a practical example.
In cooperation with the start-up Awatree, for example, a system has been developed through which the trees in the city can be watered as needed using sensors in the ground.
For companies, but also for the city, it is often a matter of collecting data and using electricity more efficiently, for example, he emphasized.
New radio technologies such as LoRaWAN are elementary for collecting sensor data.
Both Darmstadt and Frankfurt have this technology, which can be used to exchange data volumes over medium ranges with little energy consumption.
Hannes Utikal, a professor at Provadis University, is working on the digitization of Industriepark Höchst, among other things.
"Climate targets are celebrated without there being any systematic transparency about which CO2 values are measured where and by whom at what time," he criticized.
The first thing to do is for the industry to know where exactly it can reduce which consumption.
Transparency is also useful in other ways.
For example, if the industrial park already had a "digital twin", it would be possible to record directly which energy flows would be affected by a gas embargo.
Utikal pointed to Valencia in Spain as a model.
The city makes use of "reversed pitching" and presents its digitization problems together with a budget to various start-ups and companies,
But not everything is just beginning.
From January 2023, 27 trains in the Rhine-Main area are to run on hydrogen and be refueled at filling stations in the industrial park.
"Hydrogen is the by-product of chemical production," Utikal said.
The fact that the resources continue to be used is “an ingenious approach.” And then Utikal also repeats what was already agreed: In order for this to be possible on a large scale, it is “maximum important to get the stakeholders together” and to learn from each other.