On the 1st of June 2018, LDE Centre for Sustainability Students organized the Smart City Symposium in collaboration with the Delft Energy Club and DelftSEA, held in the Science Centre in Delft.
The event tackled many areas and challenges related to the future of cities and urbanized living, and was attended by over 80 people, among which students, researchers and working professionals.
The Smart City Symposium began with an engaging keynote speech by Prof. dr. Henk Visscher of TU Delft's department of Architecture and the Built Environment. During the short talk, he began the day with an overview of how cities are transitioning to become more efficient and sustainable. Prof. Visscher called upon the attendees to contribute with futuristic and out-of-the-box thinking to allow cities to adapt to new challenges.
The morning session of the symposium consisted of two rounds of short lectures.
In the first round, participants could choose to attend lectures on the topics of "Smart Buildings" by Sabine Jansen, "Circular Economy & Energy" by Teun Verhagen, and "Energy Management" by Simone Baldi, which covered many ideas from smart automation in buildings to energy systems in domestic housing.
The second round of lectures consisted of three more intriguing topics, namely "Recycling" by Francesco di Maio, "Water Management" by Fred Sanders, and "Mobility" by Gautham Ram, where the lectures touched upon issues such as the resilience of cities in the face of global warming and the feasibility of electric mobility systems.
Question sessions after the lectures led to lively discussions, and provided a solid base for the case study in the second session of the symposium.
Following the morning session of lectures, Pieter van der Marel, student at Leiden University noted: "it is important to realize the magnitude of the challenges we face now, to make cities more flexible and adapt to become more sustainable".
It is interesting and important to realize the magnitude of the challenges we face now, to make cities more flexible and adapt to become more sustainable."
After lunch, the Smart City Symposium continued with a hands-on case study organized by the Municipality of The Hague, led by dr. Pieter van Genuchten. The case study encouraged participants to brainstorm the challenge of transitioning away from gas towards sustainable forms of energy.
The participants were divided into seven groups, and analyzed the problems from financial, legal and technical perspectives.
The challenge of transitioning cities towards more sustainable forms of energy was analyzed from technical, legal and financial perspectives."
The jury, consisting of five people with backgrounds in business, law, architecture and physics chose the best group, and remarked multiple times that the quality of work and ideas produced in this short time were indeed incredible. The winning group presented innovative ideas, new to the Municipality of the Hague, and thus earned the opportunity to continue collaboration with the Municipality and further develop their work.
The winning group presented innovative ideas and earned the opportunity to continue collaborating with the Municipality of The Hague."
The day wrapped up with networking drinks, a continued exchange of ideas and enthusiastic discussion about the future of cities.
