Smart Cities: You talk the talk, but do you walk the walk?

Smart Cities is the one topic everyone is talking about, but these amazing ideas are still rarely brought into the real world. Slovakia is not only the land of beautiful nature, a progressive startup scene, and amazing tech companies, it is also our home. This is the reason Sygic has co-founded the initiative I Want My City Smart (Chcem Smart Mesto).

With five other companies Sensoneo, Seak, GoSpace Tech, ALAM, and MycroftMind, we cover a wide spectrum of smart services. From data integration, dynamic (routing) and static navigation (parking), to waste management. Our solutions are able to work together as one with no further optimizations needed.

This year (2018) in May and June, we have reached all cities in Slovakia and offered them help with the elaboration of the smart city challenge by Slovak Ministry of Economy. In the end, we have worked with six cities to identify the key issues and to better understand the benefits of the solutions from I Want My City Smart initiative. The ministry supported the implementation of smart city solutions in three cities we have worked with – Banská Bystrica, Dolný Kubín, and Trnava.

The financial support will cover all expenses required to create a comprehensive study and pilot operation of the specific solution. In Banská Bystrica and Dolný Kubín, Seak will install technologies for smart lighting with charging ports for electric vehicles and weather stations.

In Trnava, ALAM will use their app Invipo to publish the data from 8 weather stations across the city. Citizens will get access to all information covering temperature, humidity, air pressure, luminosity, CO2 levels, solid particles, and noise. The companies from I Want My City Smart will also connect to their solution data about traffic and fill state of containers.

The road to the Smart City future in Slovakia is still very long, but we are glad the government understands its importance and is willing to support it. At the end of the day, cities that provide integrated data and make use of the potential of innovative tech companies bring benefits to all of us and our environment. This includes better transportation, more effective waste management, smart lighting or improved communication with the citizens.

So, let’s stop talking the talk and start walking the walk.