Urban Ecomap for Amsterdam
ByThe launch this week of a 2nd Urban Ecomap (following on from San Franscisco) for Amsterdam is a good example of how digital technology can start to help “join up” initiatives within a municipality. For “energy planning” in an urban area, there are many stakeholders – including residents, workers and businesses, as well as government and other organisations. Many of these will already be collecting – and sharing – data on the city, but often this might be behind the scenes.
A public website like this will surely provide a useful focal point for information about an urban centre’s progress. In 2010 the FutureEverything conference plans to launch an initiative to make Manchester an “OpenData City” – so hopefully pulling together a wide range of information from a diverse range of partners.
“Cities can be seen as laboratories”, writes Drew Hemment, about the FutureEverything initiative and its something that MDDA embraces being part of the European Network of Living Labs.
As part of MDDA’s work on PEPESEC we’ll be shortly providing more information about how “intelligent systems” can be useful for an urban area’s energy planning – and we’ll be enhancing the Best Practice toolkit with other tools, information and case studies.