The Smart City in Montpellier
Is there a solution you would like to test? Could you benefit from specific business expertise?
With its many flagship projects, Montpellier was ranked as France’s #1 smart city, after Paris (Roland Berger consulting firm, 2017). It is also the 1st metropolis selected by the CNES (National Center for Space Studies) and In Space Institute to implement “space solutions” as part of the Smart City, including territorial development, natural disaster prevention, farming, mobility, and more.
This open partner-oriented initiative has three main goals:
experimental projects
planned and in progress in the Montpellier Métropole areainvested
by public- and private-sector partners for large projects in 2016-2017application fields:
habitat, health, energy, waste, mobility, urban logistics, tourism, water, culture, risk management, citizen engagement, and social cohesionto experiment with Smart City concepts
in Montpellier’s EcoCité spacein the Eurêka district
to promote healthy agingin the Mantilla neighborhood
to innovate in energy production, management, and consumptionEcoCité, a smart-city laboratory
Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole has its own life-sized urban testing ground for Smart City experiments: EcoCité. Covering 2,500 hectares, the EcoCité space reaches to the sea from Castelnau le Lez and Montpellier to Lattes and Pérols, focusing on innovative and ambitious urban development. The project was laureate of France’s national “Sustainable City” plan in 2009.
In a geographical area where nearly all major urban issues can be found, Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole is leading pilot projects in 12 fields : mobility, with its tramway lines 1 and 3, and the future TGV train station; energy, with experiments taking place on a city-block scale; health, with the creation of clusters, such as the Health / Independent Living Cluster in Lattes, dedicated to senior life; and habitat, with an ambitious project to renovate Montpellier’s Avenue de la Mer area.
Flagship Smart City projects
The Montpellier Métropole territory is subject to various water risks, notably flooding, urban runoff, and marine submersion. The “City on Alert” program integrates weather forecasts, predictive “risk mapping”, and flood tracking, along with a remote-access collaboration tool for crisis management teams. Co-developed by Egis-Eau/Synapse, the tool will reinforce support provided by Predict Services to the cities in the metropolis territory.
This unique subscription service enables users to access the entire transportation network, including tramway, bus, parking, Vélomagg’, and car sharing.
Modulauto
An urban car sharing service enabling users to access a car that they can pick up at one of the city’s parking lots. The Modulauto cooperative company offers a fleet of internal combustion and electric vehicles adapted for people’s uses.
What if Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole and other territorial stakeholders imagined the apartment of the future for residents of tomorrow? A unique, ambitious, and horizontal research project takes on the challenge: HUT (HUman at home projecT) was launched with support from about 100 Montpellier-based researchers and specialists from 14 research laboratories, and a dozen industry companies involved with technological innovation, such as OCEASOFT, Nexity, EDF, Weda, Aviitam, and more.
More than just a showcase for the Smart City, this 32,000 m² program on Montpellier’s Avenue de la Mer illustrates Montpellier Métropole’s ambitions and challenges. La Mantilla residents can manage their water and electricity consumption via a digital data exchange system – a smart network. This system also makes energy management easier for the city block, which is powered by a trigeneration biomass plant producing electricity, heat, and cooling.
The My Eurêka digital platform supports elderly people’s desire to live at home under the best possible conditions for as long as they can. The platform is being developed in a district bearing the same name.
Independent Living Cluster
Located in Lattes, on Montpellier’s south side, the Health / Independent Living Cluster is a European Excellence Center for research on personal autonomy.
Two initiatives resulting from the call-for-projects: “Industrial demonstrators for the sustainable city.”
Zoom on the Eurêka district
Located in the city of Castelnau le Lez, on Montpellier’s north side, the new Eurêka district is laying out a new city space where aging well will be a reality. Starting in 2018, Eurêka will be equipped with innovative solutions for managing mobility and assistance, notably through dedicated services for seniors.
A consortium comprising both large companies and startups is uniting efforts in a multi-partner approach. Following a competitive dialog procedure, the company Ineo Digital (a subsidiary of ENGIE) was chosen to implement a connected service platform called “My Eurêka.” Being developed in a district bearing the same name (before being deployed more broadly), the My Eurêka platform helps satisfy seniors’ desire to remain independent at home as long as possible and under the best possible conditions.
Doing business with the Smart City!
A real lever for growth and innovation, the Smart City couldn't exist without the creative forces in our area. Montpellier Métropole works with innovative companies around the territory and partners with them to imagine new solutions for urban challenges.
This enables companies to test their solutions, benefit from specific business expertise, obtain their first commercial references, get in touch with a vast partner network (including researchers, fab labs, startups, and large companies), and gain exposure for their solutions.
Companies can also answer calls-for-projects and participate in challenges, and benefit from access to data via an optimized platform that is updated in real-time, as well as getting assistance from Montpellier BIC and using Montpellier Métropole’s own connected object network based on LoRa™ wireless connectivity.
Be there!
The new Booster Nova Digital Challenges were launched in 2017, led by Aerospace Valley in partnership with the Montpellier and Toulouse metropolises. The Challenges are dedicated to products and services involving both the space sector and the Smart City, and are funded by France’s Investments for the Future Program. Four laureates were named in 2017: Gogowego, Moodwalkr, NOAM, and Star.
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