Digitalisation, smart cities, big data, cybersecurity, industry 4.0, smart living, digital twinning, clouds and online platforms are nowadays recurrent topics in the public debates and the number of actors that engage with these themes grows every day in all countries. Acoording to several rankings, Germany is one of the leading countries in the field and Hamburg aims at becoming the German digital capital. The city is massively investing in infrastructures and is the initiator and promoter of several digitalisation and automation projects in the public administration praxis, in education and culture, in urban mobility, in harbour, in economy (Source: https://www.hamburg.d
Besides public authorities, a variety of actors has become proactive and looks for synergies to develop innovation and initiate new projects at district and city level. Together with representatives from city agencies, universities and companies from real estate, facility management, IT and industry sectors, Maria Scantamburlo, the manager of Walas Concepts team in Germany, was invited to join a working group on digital transition in Hamburg. The first meeting took place in January 2018 and was the first of a series of events, promoted and coordinated by the company NUCE GmbH and the Hamburg board of the German association of building constructors, architects and engineers (Landesverband Hamburg – Bund Deutsche Baumeister, Architekten und Ingenieure e.V). Aim of this working group is to identify areas and themes, where new projects can be developed, and spark off new collaborations, especially in real estate.
During the meeting, while the debate was focused on the improvement of the new technologies and the possible employment of them in the planning, construction, facility and community management, Maria shared the unique perspecitve of World of Walas, based on the the experience of several communities worldwide we work with, highlighting the needs and wishes of such communties. We prefer not to talk about “smart cities” but about “smart communities”. We believe that technological and digital innovations and big data are not smart per se, but must serve our communities to become “smarter”. If we ensure for our communities access to these innovations, we can accelerate the finding of new solutions to small and big challenges and, overally, the implementation of actions towards urban sustainable development. Within the framework of our platform BlueWorxx, our team looks for new collaborations and partnerships to development and implement projects and to march communities with these innovations. Digitalisation is an opportunity. Let’s join forces and use it well!