Bifogat det anförande som jag höll idag vid konferensen National Swedish ITS Conference 17-18 September. Förhoppningsvis innehåller det en del intressant information även för läsarna av denna blogg.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The Stockholm region is diverse, innovative and globally connected. Stockholm is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe and the largest city in Scandinavia, a City with an open, supportive and stable business environment. Stockholm’s cosmopolitan energy is a magnet for talent – and the region welcomes the skills, capital, ideas and culture that new residents and investors contribute to our economy. Our excellent quality of life, the combination of a vibrant downtown area with closeness to nature, creates the unique Stockholm lifestyle.
The region stands for 45 % of Sweden’s population growth and in Stockholm City alone we will be one million inhabitants in the year 2024. This poses for opportunities as well as challenges. An increasingly densely populated city does for example not equal more square meters of road. So how do we get people from point A to point B smoothly? Part of the solution is information. And information and technology go hand in hand.
Stockholm is often considered a leader in adopting new technologies and setting new consumer trends. Many companies use Stockholm as a test market. When PWC rank international cities, in its report Cities of Opportunity, Stockholm comes out in 5th place after New York, London, Toronto and Paris. But we are no 1 regarding Intellectual capital and innovation. When it comes to transportation and infrastructure, Stockholm is in 5th place after cities such as Singapore and Tokyo. That is to say that we have a good foundation in order to face our challenges when it comes to transportation and using technology as a tool.
We already use ITS in our Traffic Control Centre, where all traffic information is gathered and used on the website and in the app, which is available to everyone and is great tool when planning your trip, whether by car, by bicycle or as pedestrian. This tool can be used in the three mayor regions in Sweden and is in collaboration with the Swedish Transport Administration.
Although I am convinced that we need leadership from governments, we must also show leadership locally and encourage initiatives and an early deployment of best practices amongst cities. It is not surprising that PwC in their yearly report “Cities of opportunity”, considers that Stockholm has the worlds´ best “digital economy” (that is to say the highest share of citizens and companies that truly use the Internet and use its advantages).
That is why we have an action plan for open data. As the first City in Sweden, we have invited companies and entrepreneurs to an open competition for new ideas and the development of ideas – The Open Stockholm Award in the year 2012 – using city data regarding parking, transports, construction, environment, air-quality and tourism, which are free and accessible through URLs/links. The result was remarkable and we received a lot of new innovation ideas and apps. Due to the astounding results and popularity, we will continue to provide more open city data sources and we are already planning to organise the next competition in 2014.
An example of the great innovations that can come out of making data sources available is an app called Waze, in which you can share traffic information by reporting road accidents and road blocks. This app will automatically update your route based on the current information as well as memorize your usual routes, work hours and preferred routes. Friends can be notified on your estimated arrival time by sending a link that shows you driving route in real time. You can also find the nearest gas station along your route, with the current gas prices, which have been updated by other Waze-users. This is just one of many examples of apps that have been created by innovated entrepreneurs, who have made – and continue to make – life easier for people.
In addition to The Open Stockholm Award, we are also in the midst of a new competition called Innovative Solutions, in which contestants will have the opportunity to develop innovative solutions regarding information on traffic disturbances to passengers/road users travelling to and from Kista, one the world´s leading ICT clusters. This is due to the many infrastructure developments occurring in the area, causing disturbances in the traffic flow. This is a very exciting project as it is the first pre-commercial innovation procurement in Sweden. We´ve had many interesting ideas and I myself have had the privilege to listen and evaluate some of these ideas, by judging the contest in our own version of the program “Dragons´ Den”. It will be interesting to see what kind of technical innovations that will come out of this competition and to what extent it can be developed.
Stockholm City is also renowned for our fibre network, which is accessible to over 90 % of the population and hence all around the city. Today it is the world´s largest fibre network. Something that is very unique and fantastic about this is that this development has been done without using our taxpayer’s money. In furthering our aspirations to making this city more attuned to the technological developments, we are now looking at the possibility of connecting street corners around the city to our fibre network in order to measure everything from traffic flows to air quality in an effective and more simple way than today.
These are just a few examples of what´s going on in Stockholm. But more can, and has to, be done. With such a level of intellectual capital in Stockholm, we have all the potential of coming up with new technical solutions as well as increasing our networking with others countries as it is of vital importance that we all come together and learn from each other.