Smart City Hamburg - Real world laboratory instead of future workshop
Recap of the ITS World Congress
A week of exchange around the topics of New Mobility and Smart City is behind us. Beyond the exhibition of the ITS World Congress, it was possible to experience how projects are put on the road throughout Hamburg. At the same time, the city of Hamburg made it to No. 1 in the Smart City Rankings of the industry association Bitkom for the third time in a row. But what is the city of Hamburg already implementing today? Our managing directors Martin Kleppe and Jens Wille share their impressions of the mobility congress.
Networks as future potential for livable cities
The congress will show a range of solutions in the field of intelligent transport systems. The high number of drones at the congress provides a first impression of the direction things will take in the future. The mobility trends at the congress can also be summarized under the keyword networking.
Martin Kleppe (Managing Director Ubilabs): "Actors and infrastructure are becoming increasingly networked. Every vehicle talks to the cloud in real time and in almost all use cases it is important to understand the geographical context. Data from a wide variety of sources is combined so that intelligent and automated decisions can be made. Image recognition and machine learning are helping. Increasing connectivity will allow people or goods to reach their destination more flexibly and quickly in the future. Traffic will be reduced and cities will become more livable."
In the real world lab Hamburg, projects are taken out on the streets
The city is not only becoming more connected, but also more autonomous. Around the topic of smart city, intelligent transport systems are already in use in Hamburg as pilot projects taking the first autonomous steps, or rather trips, under real conditions. Last week, for example, Germany's first automatically moving train also had its premiere in Hamburg.
Jens Wille (Managing Director Ubilabs): "Hamburg is very exciting as a real laboratory. We can experience here under real conditions how projects are put on the road and thus make a contribution to the mobility turnaround. In addition to the autonomous S-Bahn, which we were able to experience for the ITS last week, autonomous buses are already on the test track in Hamburg's city center. More than 50 traffic lights along the test route are equipped with communication systems to exchange data with vehicles. The area of intelligent parking management also offers a lot of potential, such as Telekom's parking project, which we presented to Expert:innen at the ITS Congress."
Start-ups as the engine for a smarter future
With a Start Up Area, the ITS Congress ensured that small companies were also able to contribute their ideas for the future of mobility. Jens Wille: "Many good impulses arose from the exchange with the experts in the Start Up Area. It was very interesting to learn which alternative approaches they want to use to make traffic more intelligent."
Old friends on new paths
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Bauhaus University presents its real laboratory "Bauhaus Mobility Lab". -
Traffic data is projected onto this Hamburg miniature model. -
Exciting presentations show the potential of intelligent mobility
It was not only the networking of technologies and road users that played a major role at the congress. Above all, people networked. In addition to many interesting conversations, two of the projects represented were of particular importance to the managing directors of Ubilabs:
Bauhaus University Weimar, as a joint university of the three founders and managing directors of Ubilabs, is in a way part of the Ubilabs DNA. It was therefore all the nicer that the university was also represented at the Mobility Congress with the Mobility Lab - a real laboratory for new types of collaboration beyond the boundaries of institutions.
Another highlight was the reunion with the winning project from the ITS Hackathon 2020: the "Not without my bike" app helps to calculate an optimal combination of bicycle and local transport. This app was developed by the Trufi team, which we have always supported.
Smart cities of tomorrow: Digital technologies for real quality of life
After the congress, the question for us is how digitalization will continue. Will the projects be able to make a contribution to the mobility revolution? Can the ideas and plans be put into practice in a timely manner and thus make cities more livable?
As a consultancy for Data & Location Technology, we continue to drive the mobility revolution forward and support companies in making mobility solutions more efficient and sustainable. When it comes to actively shaping living space and improving the quality of life in cities, there are no limits to possible data-based applications - whether it's identifying suitable measures or managing them, forming opinions or preventing disasters.
