The 7th City Forum workshop, held as part of the SPARCS consortium meeting in Kifissia, Greece on the 8th of November 2022, was designed for direct exchange between the Lighthouse Cities (LHCs), technical partners and Fellow Cities (FCs). The City Forum workshops are organised as part of subtask 5.2.2 to facilitate direct Knowledge Exchange with LHCs and their Partners. It involves participation of LHC representatives and technical partners to share the knowledge and support FCs in their process of planning their implementations.

The planning, coordination, and execution of the city forum in Kifissia was the result of weeks of collaboration effort between ESP, LPZ and FHG IAO team. The workshops presented 5 SPARCS topics: –

Virtual Energy Districts
Virtual and Physical Energy Districts
Integrative Energy Systems
Mobility
Citizen Engagement

which were chaired by two technical partners each, moderated and documented by representatives of the LHCs and the Fraunhofer IAO SPARCS team. Each Table had a maximum of 10 participants, consisting of 2 technical partners, 1 moderator and 7 consortium members who engaged in discussion rounds of 30 minutes. After 30 minutes the 7 consortium members changed tables to discuss other topics interesting to them while a new group of 7 joined the technical partners and moderator at their fixed table. There were 3 such discussion rounds punctuated by lunch break. At the end of the discussions, each moderator presented the most important issues discussed in their groups to the entire consortium clearly stating the lessons learnt and specific areas where further discussion is needed.

The City Forums are important as they allow representatives of the Fellow Cities and consortium members to clarify doubts, get extra insights and inspiration from the work of the LHCs. The City Forum creates a platform to achieve better understanding of each other’s work through Information obtained regarding technical questions on implementation in FCs. Ideas for further exchange/webinars, workshops, etc. were noted and will be the topics of subsequent webinars and exchanges in the future.

At the end, all FCs will have a clear understanding of the work and solutions implemented by the LHCs through SPARCS and helping the FCs to plan their own implementation.