Photo: smartcityexpo.com
New cities join OASC

Lea Hemetsberger

Nov 18, 2016

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Greece | Hungary | News & Events | Norway

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15 new cities joined the OASC global initiative at the Smart City Expo in Barcelona. Less than two years after its launch, OASC now connects more than a 100 cities worldwide in the efforts to establish a global smart city market.

November 16 2016, Barcelona, Spain: Norway, Greece and Hungary are the new countries in the Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative and have come on board to help communities access the economic and social benefits that smart cities have the potential to offer. Together, the new member cities bring a wealth of smart city experience to the network.

This is not least the case with Trikala that was awarded with the title Greek’s first smart city back in 2004. According to Leonidas Anthopoulos, the Trikala Mayor’s Special Advisor, the city has more than a handful of good reasons for joining the OASC and plans to let the membership be in favour of all of Greece:

“Trikala plans to undertake initiatives in the country to define smart city standards for Greece. In this respect, OASC standards are expected to play crucial role in this effort,” he explains.

New cities from from around the World
Eight new cities from countries already part of the OASC are joining the initiative, which means that the initiative is currently representing more than a 100 cities from 22 countries worldwide.

At the launch, two new Brazilian cities joined OASC making it a total of nine Brazilian member cities. Brazil’s OASC representative, Vice President at the Brazilian Network of Intelligent and Human Cities Cláudio Nascimento, is happy to welcome new cities and countries to the network and emphasizes that though member cities share a lot of challenges and goals, each city might also have its own unique reasons for joining:

“Take for instance Olinda. It’s considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site with all its natural assets and its intangible cultural assets,” he says referring to the ‘old’ member city Olinda in the northeast of Brazil.

“Apart from learning and being part of the global smart city discussion, Olinda in a way has a responsibility to share its ideas and assets with the rest of the world; to enrich the ecosystem of innovation and creative economy thinking not only in economy but also enriching people’s lives.”

Looking ahead: Conference in Brussels
The next big public OASC event is the Connected Smart Cities Conference on January 12, 2017, in Brussels. Here, the OASC community convenes for a full day of inspiration, learning and networking at an event which is produced in partnership with key stakeholders in the global and European smart cities landscape.

The Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative is driven by its national networks of cities through the OASC Task Force and Secretariat and is related to the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities and to DG CONNECT Net Futures of the European Commission, including Experimental Platforms, FIWARE, and the Alliance for IoT Innovation (AIOTI).

If your city is interested in connecting with other cities and join the OASC network, send an email to info@oascities.org or contact your OASC representative.

Full list of new members
Brazil: Nova Friburgo, Uberlandia
Croatia: Rijeka
England: Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire
France: Issy-les-Moulineaux, Soissons
Greece: Trikala, Katerini
Hungary: Kaposvár, Miskolc, Szolnok
Norway: Bodø, Trondheim, Stavanger
Poland: Poznan