Sustainable Cities
Introduction
The SDG goal 11 is devoted for sustainable cities and communities. More than half of us live in cities. By 2050, two-thirds of all humanity – 6.5 billion people – will be urban. Sustainable development cannot be achieved without significantly transforming the way we build and manage our urban spaces.
Making cities sustainable means creating career and business opportunities, safe and affordable housing, and building resilient societies and economies involves investment in public transport, logistics and wastewater treatment, creating green public spaces, and digitalization of services. All this improves urban planning and management, in inclusive ways. It involves changing people’s reality, through actions and ideas that will improve their life quality, with the challenge of making cities smarter and more sustainable.
Brazil and Sweden have developed expertise in many areas of Sustainable Cities. Within SGI, the POCs´ intention is to find new ways to collaborate more closely around initiatives from the two countries’ governments, business organizations and companies, and research institutes and universities, to meet future challenges for smart and sustainable cities.
One good example of the bilateral cooperation is the project Smart City Concepts Curitiba with the participation of Universities, City and industries (https://smartcityconcepts.chalmers.se/).
Main Areas
Applying AI to make cities smarter
Smart city water management
Low-carbon transport and mobility
Indicators for smart and sustainable cities
Goals
A mid-term goal is to push the ongoing digitalization to enable data-driven innovations, promoting digital twins. Another is the bridging of competence between Sweden and Brazil though improved understanding of capacity, competence, and maturity of the work with Smart Cities in both countries. As an enabler for more projects that deepen our collaboration, the mid-term plan also includes feed-in activities to the political level and to authorities involved in project funding mechanism in both Brazil and Sweden.
Project Approved in 2021
Innovative technology for resource recovery from anaerobic wastewater treatment with net energy production. On the Brazilian side SENAI-EQ, BoomaTech, Sanepar and on the Swedish side IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute AB and Enwa Water Treatment. The call was from Vinnova-Embrapii-Senai. https://www.vinnova.se/en/p/development-of-an-innovative-technology-for-resource-recovery-from-anaerobic-treatment-of-sewage/
Participating Research Institutes and Universities
IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute
SENAI-EQ
Sanepar
Participating Industries and Startups
BoomaTech
ENWA Water Technology
Online Workshop 2021
The prioritized areas Mobility and Water management of the Vinnova-EMBRAPII-SENAI call were also the topic of a workshop held in June 2021, featuring many interesting talks and two parallel discussion panels.
Examples of common next steps and challenges from the water panel were
Digital solutions for drinking water (devices, protocols, data analysis, etc) in order to reduce losses, electricity demand and chemical consumption, as well as to include the clients.
Infrastructure resilience and climate changes adaptation based on resource recovery from sewage (energy, nutrients, etc) to promote sustainability and generate value
The transport panel identified the following next steps
Combining parking policies, mobility, car sharing – city planning
Distributed generation of solar energy to charge batteries for e-mobility
E-mobility buses (already 15% in Sweden)
Both panels highlighted the importance to collaborate with the whole ecosystem, including citizens, taking the business perspective into account at an early stage. Both also highlighted the necessity of considering national strategies and regulations.
Examples of participating organizations
IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute
SENAI National Service of Industrial Training
RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
EMBRAPII Brazilian Company of Research and Industrial Innovation
ENWA Water Technology
UTFPR – Federal University of Technology – Paraná
KTH
SANEPAR Companhia de Saneamento do Paraná
City of Curitiba
Saab
URBS – Urbanização de Curitiba S.A.
Volvo
CISB
IPPUC (Institute for Research and Urban Planning of Curitiba)
For more information on cooperation and activities, please contact:
In Sweden:
Gina Aspelin Hedbring, Head of International Affairs, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute: gina.aspelin.hedbring@ivl.se
Eva Stattin, Innovation Manager, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden: eva.stattin@ri.se
In Brazil:
David de Brito Peixoto, National Coordinator, CITinova II Project, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), Brazil: david.peixoto@mcti.gov.br
