Overview
The RUGGEDISED project will create urban spaces in the lighthouse cities of Rotterdam, Umea and Glasgow powered by secure, affordable and clean energy, smart electro-mobility, smart tools and services.
The overall goals are:
• Improving the quality of life of citizens, by offering them a clean, safe, attractive, inclusive and affordable living environment.
• Reducing the environmental impact by reducing significantly CO2 emissions, investing and popularising the use of renewable energy sources (RES) and deploying more electric vehicles.
• Creating a stimulating environment for sustainable economic development, by generating more sustainable jobs, stimulating community involvement in smart solutions and boosting start-up and existing companies to exploit the opportunities of the green digital economy and Internet of Things.
A key innovation challenge to achieve these goals in all three cities is to propose successful combinations of integrated smart solutions for energy and e-mobility (enabled by ICT platforms and open data protocols) and business models with the right incentives for stakeholders to invest and participate in a smart society. Specific challenges are:
• managing peak load variation in thermal and electrical energy supply and demand;
• developing suitable cooperation structures and business models for exchange of energy;
• developing Smart City open data platforms and energy management systems
RUGGEDISED has identified ten specific objectives and planned 32 smart solutions to meet the challenges. Implementing these solutions in the three lighthouse cities is not the primary goal of the project, but a necessary means to find the right incentives and to validate business cases to enable large-scale deployment and replication of solutions. The three follower cities of Brno, Gdansk and Parma have selected 27 solutions to be implemented in the lighthouse cities, with a goal to prepare for their deployment in the future.