Marching forwards: Member innovations

Looking for inspiration? Your fellow Flux50 members have been pushing boundaries with a number of new innovations.

Agoria

Agoria has not just organised the Agoria Smart City Forum and Awards to display, promote and honour smart city ecosystems, they also used it to allow 20 visionary speakers to present their views to an audience of 300 industry experts. With this in mind, Agoria presented their own white paper: ‘Data, de bouwstenen voor de steden en gemeenten van de toekomst’. It informs cities and councils about how to use data and data architecture in a smart city context.

Enervalis

Last month, you read about the major project Enervalis won. They have more good news this month, with founder and CEO Stefan Lodeweyckx nominated for Top Management’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award. This is a clear sign that their contributions to the growth of the innovative energy economy have made a major impact.

Imec

Imec presented an exploratory study, executed in collaboration with Pantopicon, that questions how smart technology can help advance the circular economy in cities. The province Flemish Brabant brought it up in a major event where the plans of Smart Flanders, AGORIA and Circular South from the City of Antwerp were on offer. They presented five takeaways to close the session:

• A little structure won’t cause problems.
• You measure to establish facts, but do you know what you’re measuring?
• Sow data, harvest applications.
• Smart technology is no longer for the happy few.
• Don’t forget your users!

BoPro Sustainable Investments

Finally, some wonderful news that has only just reached us: BoPro Sustainable Investments have won a project in the ‘Inventons la metropole du grand Paris’ competition with their Triango submission. They will be developing a 15-hectare site in the Triangle de Gonesse area focusing on the circular economy. Plans include space for high-tech urban agriculture, 10,000m2 of greenhouses for the growth of food and raw materials for bio-economic activities, and 167 100m2 modular offices envisioned for use by businesses involved in bioeconomic activities. All buildings – sports infrastructure, a medical centre and even a creche are included in the plans – will be CO2-neutral and energy positive, easily adaptable and able to be dismantled. All materials used on the site will be recorded in the materials database, allowing them to be traced. This will prove convenient as everything being used has been chosen based on its environmental performance and its capacity to be reused.

We wish to warmly congratulate BoPro Sustainable Investments on their winning design.