SPARCS City Forum
SPARCS
03 june 2022 | Location: Leipzig, Maia
Smart Cities

The SPARCS City Forum, an internal project event, was held online on the 16th of May from 9:30 to 11:30 CET. The topic of the forum was ‘Urban Data Platform: Experiences from the Project Cities Leipzig and Maia’, with the objectives encompassing the garnering of knowledge and experiences of the Project Cities for others to gain a deeper understanding of the concept and operations involved. The Forum was organised by Fraunhofer, joined by the experts from the Cities of Leipzig and Maia. Around 30 project participants attended the event, and it had the following agenda: 

  • 09:30 – 09:45 Welcome & Introduction  
  • 09:45 – 10:00 Leipzig’s Urban Data Platform: How?, Why? And What? 
  • 10:00 – 10:15 Leipzig’s Urban Data Platform: Current Use Cases and Challenges  
  • 10:15 – 10:30 Break  
  • 10:30 – 10:45 The City of Maia and its Urban Data Platform: Development and Current Challenges 
  • 10:45 – 11:15 Panel Discussion and Q&A with the experts 
  • 11:15 – 11:30 Summary and Closing 

The City of Leipzig was represented by Mathias Boedecker from the Department for Geoinformation who spoke on the development of Leipzig’s Urban Data Platform (UDP).  In the following, Peter Huss of the City’s Digital City Unit elaborated on current use cases, namely the city’s Digital Twin program. 

Miguel Azevedo, Smart City project manager in Maia gave insights on the current stage of Maia’s UDP implementation.  

City representatives from Fellow Cities and Lighthouse Cities along with other project participants actively took part in the panel discussion, which ranged from inquiring more of the technical aspect to sorting through the specific issues each city had, comparing the similarities and learning from the differences. The information from the Forum will support in planning further collaborations and exchanges among cities within the project.