Workshop on Smart and Sustainable Solutions in Stockholm Royal Seaport Anna-Karin Stoltz Ehn Stockholm Royal Seaport Innovation, The city of Stockholm Box 8189, 104 20 Stockholm, Sweden anna-karin.stoltz.ehn@stockholm.se Abstract—This is the report on the workshop on Smart and sustainable solutions in the eco-district Stockholm Royal Seaport, held at the 2nd International Conference on ICT for III. ICT FRIENDLY CITY DISTRICT Sustainability in August Stockholm Royal Seaport is one of the newest and the Index Terms—Sustainability, urban development, ICT. largest urban city development project in Stockholm. The overall sustainability goal is to make the new city district fossil I. INTRODUCTION free and adapted to climate change considerations. In addition In September Stockholm Royal Seaport (SRS) Innovation to the ambitious sustainability goals various state-of-the-art in collaboration with KTH organized a workshop with the ICT solutions are being tested out to influence the user theme “Smart and sustainable solutions in Stockholm Royal behaviors towards more sustainable alternatives. Seaport”. The workshop, held in conjunction with the ICT4S international conference, tried to address questions IV. ENTERING THE INTERCONNECTED SOCIETY surrounding key challenges and opportunities in employing Amy Rader-Olsson from Royal Institute of Technology, ICT as a means towards urban innovation. Experts presented KTH, who was the workshops moderator, stated that the the various ICT solutions embedded in the Stockholm Royal growing rate of urbanization presents new challenges and Seaport project and shared their experience on various requires state-of-the-art innovative solutions to address them. challenges facing the large scale implementation of these This coupled with the rapid pace of climate change requires a solutions. Panel and group discussion focused on tackling the paradigm shift in the way we build cities and use resources such as energy, water and materials. At the same time we are obstacles and identifying key opportunities both locally and entering a networked society where most of our infrastructure globally. is already connected. This presents a great opportunity to Anna-Karin Stoltz Ehn, the head of SRS Innovation, presented provide integrated solutions in influencing our behaviors an overview of the evolving needs of the City of Stockholm, towards a more sustainable society. It also has the potential to the vision to create a vibrant, creative and living city raising provide new business opportunities contributing to a green the important question “How can we fulfill the needs and economy. vision for the citizens of Stockholm?” V. SMART ENERGY PROJECT The Smart Grid and Active house project, which is a joint II. LONG TIME ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING collaboration between Fortum, ABB, Ericsson, Electrolux, KTH and several building developers is a step towards this Tomas Gustafsson, sustainability strategist at SRS direction. Johan Ander, the program manager mentioned the Innovation, highlighted the great focus on sustainability issues importance of awareness driven change in behaviors. that has been a hallmark of the Stockholm region. Having the “We all have an energy behavior but lack awareness which honor of receiving the first European Green Capital Award in makes change more difficult. Focusing on demand response 2010, the City of Stockholm’s ambitions for environmental principle with connected household appliances, electric cars issues span over 40 years. The future vision of the city aims to and local renewable production, the system will respond to accommodate the projected growth in the region focusing on peak load, price and CO2 emissions signals thereby, shifting becoming fossil free by 2050 and providing integrated the load and preventing emissions from marginal energy sustainable solutions to achieve them. Here Hammarby Sjöstad generation.” and Stockholm Royal Seaport, with strong environmental In addition, providing the end user with visualization and focus, play a significant role in leading the way towards a more home automation possibilities will result in energy savings and sustainable future. greater awareness of the energy use. This will enable managing and monitoring the grid in a much better way. The Strong business models will ensure the continual improvements Active homes with home automation, visualization in the infrastructure and bringing new ideas and solutions. technologies and smart white goods will facilitate user behavior B. Triple helix-model enables innovation change, therefore contributing to energy efficiency and emissions reduction in the overall system. The participants also concluded that another obstacle is the “One of the key challenges is to find the right balance difficulty in getting the different stakeholders on board, there is between automation and letting people make the decisions”, a need to strengthen the collaboration between research, Johan Ander commented and also pointed out as a challenge. business and administrative parts and projects such as the SRS Innovation can provide a great platform to achieve that. Participation and long term perspective from the City of VI. DEVELOPMENT OF ICT REQUIRES ADAPTED BUSINESS Stockholm is a step in the right direction and platforms such as MODELS SRS Innovation can help facilitate the process. Stockholm Swedish ICT’s Smart Living Group Manage, Claus Popp Royal Seaport offers a great playground to test new solutions in Larsen shed light on some of the key challenges related to smart living where end user education and awareness are key achieving an interconnected society. aspects. The speakers stressed that regulation of technologies The present ICT infrastructure exists in the form of several shouldn’t be done by the cities but should rather be allowed to vertical structures but in order to unleash the full potential of evolve in order to prevent technologies lockins. the “Internet of Things at home” there is a need for a common In the breakout session, the participants of the workshop horizontal structure. focused their discussion on related projects and experiences He mentioned that at present the infrastructure isn’t being from around the world, scalability of the solutions to other shared and creating a common infrastructure will enable cost parts of the city and the role the City of Stockholm can play in savings and stimulate innovation growth while being better for addressing the challenges. the environment. The key hurdles in achieving this are not C. Suggestions to high-light ICT technical but rather lack of trust and effective business models. Participants agreed that concepts from Stockholm Royal Jörgen Rhodin, head of Ericsson Innovation Russia echoed Seaport are possible to implement in other areas in Stockholm these thoughts and pointing out that while most of the but are more difficult to implement in other big cities in the infrastructure we have built is connected there is a mishmash of world due to their size and their segregated population and ICT infrastructure. Mr. Rhodin also discussed several areas in different social levels. It was suggested that Stockholm Royal which Ericsson is working with to achieve a networked society. Seaport should compete with other smart sustainable urban development initiatives in the world in terms of sustainability. VII. REAL-TIME DATA ENABLES SMART DECISIONS Another suggestion was to introduce a sustainability index in the stock market in Stockholm since it’s located in Hossein Shahrokni from the Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm Royal Seaport. The important role of grassroot level KTH presented the Smart City SRS project. The project aimed initiatives in bringing change was also brought up. The need for the citizens, aims at a bottom up information flow paradigm for including ICT in the planning process of smart sustainable and enables the end users to understand the system cities and inclusion of industrial groups was stressed. Issues consequences of decisions thus providing greater insight into related to the deregulation of ICT infrastructure and ownership the impact of every day habits and actions. of common infrastructure were also discussed. At the end, the moderator, Amy Rader Olsson summed up VIII. PANEL DISCUSSION the discussion by pointing out that it is important to understand how large systems interact with each other and how technology A. Business models are essential interacts with humans. “The problem isn’t at the technology level but rather there During the panel discussion, the moderator of the workshop is a need to figure out how it can be scaled up. Institutional Amy Rader Olsson, asked the experts about the key challenges facing the integration of ICT in cities. There was consensus response to signals should be effective and help create support amongst the expert speakers that despite the great potential of structures for technology”, she said. these solutions and technology being in place, there are several Projects like Royal Seaport provide a learning platform and organizational and structural challenges that still exist for large- test-bed where these solutions can be tested and calibrated for scale implementation. First and foremost there is a need to scaled up implementation both locally and globally. It also provide strong and effective business models. This is necessary offers lessons in changing organizational structures to for innovation diffusion and implementation in larger society. maximize collaboration and innovation development.