More than half of the world’s population is now living in urban areas, and the proportion is expected to reach almost 69 percent by 2050 on a global level, placing city infrastructures under increasing pressure. Smart city technologies can make city management more effective and efficient, which is necessary given the projected rapid growth in urban populations over the next few decades. The adoption of ICT solutions and intelligent use of other modern technologies, can make the critical infrastructure components and services of a city — administration, education, healthcare, public safety, industrial park, transportation and utilities — more efficient and humanitarian for a sustainable development.
Currently, Europe and China are working together to build smart cities and their development will certainly have profound consequences on the outcomes of millions of people. In order to promote the construction of smart cities and contribute to sustainable development worldwide, we sincerely invite you to participate in the “Next EW: Smart City Forum & Mini Expo” jointly held by on May 27th. These events aim to foster Smart City cooperation and knowledge exchange between tech-based companies, industry park operators, and local governments in Europe and China for common development.
Opening Remarks
- Karine Næss Frafjord, Head of Nordic Edge Expo
- Sara Medina, Member of the Board ENRICH in China & SPI
- Representative from Haidian District Gov / Sicence Park
- Lanlan Guan, General Manager, Zhonguancum No. 1
Keynote Speeches
- Helsinki’s Smart Kalasatama – Co-creating a Smarter City, presented by Kerkko Vanhanen, Programme Director, Forum Virium Helsinnki
- Engaging Communities to Guide the Planning Process, presented by Maarit Kahila-Tani, CEO of Maptionnaire AB
- Future of Digital Twins for Cities, presented by Jarkko Sireeni, CEO of xD Visuals Oy
- Autonomous Driving Technology – Developments, Challenges, and Future Directions, presented by Huawei
- Best practices of Low-carbon transportation system in Portugal and Madeira, presented by Claudio Mantero, Project Coordinator, Civitas 2020 – Destinations
- Smart Life in China, presented by Gu Bo, Sound AI
Pitch Session
Innovative solutions for Smart Cities (by both European and Chinese companies)
- YingChina Cross-border Business Acceleration Program – Zheng (Steven) QIN, Industry Service Department – General Manager, Yida
- Predictive Maintenance- a must-have for smart cities – Bianca Barbu, CMO, CANGO
- Towards a Global Hydrogen Age – Fuel Cell Development in Germany, Hans Marius Schuster, CEO, Arena Innovation
- Jiahe Digital Village Intelligence Platform, constructing digital governance system, Shengping Wang, Director of Jiahe Technology Beijing Branch Office
- Hachi Smart Home and Robotics Innovations AI-enhanced smart living ecosystems, Joanna Wan, Hachi Intelligence
Closing Remarks
Facilitator: ENRICH
After entering this Zoom session, please click the “Interpretation” button to select the language (English or Chinese) you wish to listen to.
Dr. Sara Medina is a Member of the Board of SPI – (www.spieurope.eu), an international consulting Group with offices located in Europe (Portugal and Spain), North America (USA) and Asia (Beijing and Macao) and SPI Ventures. Dr. Medina contributes to the overall management of SPI, being responsible for managing SPI’s activities and services in China since 2004 as well as in the Southeast Asian market.
Dr. Medina is an expert and International Committee Member for International Technology Transfer Network (ITTN) in which she promotes international technology transfer and innovation cooperation in China.
Currently, Dr. Sara Medina is involved in the coordination of a project in China promoted by the European Commission through Horizon 2020, that resulted in the creation of ENRICH in China – a global network of centres and hubs that promotes the internationalisation of European science, technology and innovation (STI). The ENRICH in China Centre has its headquarters in Beijing, hosted by the EU SME Centre and a regional hub, located in Chengdu.
Guan Lanlan is General Manager of Beijing Shichuang Yida Technology Service Co. Ltd. She holds a Master of Economics from Renmin University, China.
Focusing on the investment and financing for High-Tech Companies for many years with experience in industry positioning , investment and operation of the Science and Technology Park ; rich experience in service for the High-tech companies and industry , property management and the construction of smart industrial park. She has been in charge of the operation and management of national science and technology park of nearly 2 million square metres.
At present, she is in charge of the operation and management of Zhongguancun No.1 Project. In 2019, ZhongGuancun No.1 was honored to be awarded “National demonstration park of Artificial Intelligence “by AIIA.
Kerkko Vanhanen is the Programme Director for Smart City Kalasatama Helsinki. He works for Forum Virium Helsinki, an innovation company owned by the City of Helsinki. Before Kerkko has worked as CEO for Traficon Ltd – A traffic planning and consulting company – and for Helsinki Region Transport (public transport authority) as the Head of Information Systems Group leading all development projects around digital passenger information and open data.
Kerkko’s special competence is in smart mobility and digital service design around mobility. He has strong interest also in smart energy solutions and generally in any innovation that makes urban life easier and causes less negative impacts on nature. Kerkko has M.Sc. in Civil Engineering (Aalto University, former Helsinki University of Technology) and he has also studied minor in the department of architecture about Urban Planning.
Maarit Kahila-Tani has her background in planning geography from University of Helsinki and urban planning from Aalto University. Her research focused on new methods for enabling and encouraging wider public participation. In her dissertation, she studied the opportunities for urban planners to take advantage of map-based PPGIS tools like Maptionnaire to get ideas and insights from residents. (Short link: mpt.link/maarit_dissertation)
Currently she is the CEO and co-founder of Mapita, the company behind Maptionnaire. She continues to work in the domain of community engagement tools for urban planners and city developers. Maptionnaire is a powerful community engagement tool that helps urban planners and city developers to create map-based tools to get ideas and insights from residents – thus enabling and encouraging public participation. Currently Maptionnaire is a global SaaS service
used in over 35 countries.
Jarkko Sireeni is CEO and Founder of xD Visuals Oy, the developer of xD Twin, a
digital twin solution for cities and projects (https://www.xd-twin.io/). He is also the chair of the city planning group in buildingSMART Finland. Jarkko has 29 years of experience in BIM, VDC, VR, AR and visualization in planning, design, and construction of urban development projects.
Claudio Mantero is Senior Project manager, Transport planner and expert in regulation of Public Transport Services with wide experience in Project management in the field of innovation and development. Interested in ITC, new technologies and services.
Thematic areas: Project management, Transport, Logistics, Local Public Services, Sustainable mobility, new technologies and applications.
Gu Bo is Partner and Chief Growth Officer of Sound Intelligence Technology. He is a student of the Turing Program of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, has a MBA from Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, and holds a bachelor degree from Dalain University of Technology.
He has worked as Key Account Director of Dolby Laboratories in the United States and Sales Director of Thomson Group in France.
Qin started his career as an engineer and has complex management experiences from multiple industries. He built technology innovation ecosystems for multinational enterprises and official industry organizations such as National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Center. With a successful private equity investment portfolio in semiconductor industry in China, he pursues insights of China’s economy and industry development, and uses his expertise to promote cutting edge technology applications in China.
Bianca Barbu started her journey in telematics and automotive industry 12 years ago and in a world full of technical details In 2019 she was nominated for her contribution in Smart Mobility sector and during the 2020 she shifted herattention from hardware to software application for smart cities and smart mobility sector. 2021 came with the recognition as the CMO of the year and CANGO is selected as one of the top 20 innovators in telematics industry based on the applications developed for smart cities and smart mobility industry.
Hans Marius Schuster is the founder and CEO of Arena Innovation, a company that combines clean energy solutions with digitalization using the ready-made IT-Tool, Be-Circle, for planning and simulating a circular economy. He is an IT engineer from the University of Applied Sciences Giessen-Friedberg, Germany, and a certified European Research and Innovation Funding Programme Professional from the School of International Business and Entrepreneurship – Steinbeis University Berlin.
Shengping Wang, Director of Jiahe Technology Beijing Branch Office, Master of Software Engineering received in Peking University. He has extensive experiences in block-chain, big data, industrial park operations and others. He was a former employee of Tencent group. In 2011, he served as the General Manager of Founder Mobile Media Company under Peking University Founder Group, and managed a team of more than 100 people. In the past, he has successfully run more than 30 industrial parks across the country with deep understanding on big data. He has more than ten years of experience working with government projects, and most of these projects received funding of more than 30 million yuan, among which the maximum amount of a single project exceeds 1 billion. All projects Shengping Wang has participated in, including but not limited to, the Sino-Russian cultural and artistic exchange activities organized by the Deputy Director of the Ministry of Culture and the big data conference of the two sessions of the State Information Office. As a Senior Executive of a company he previously worked for, he participated in the economic symposium hosted by Premier Li Keqiang and assisted in preparing report materials.
Joanna Wan started her journey in consumer electronics industry 12 years ago. She has worked for Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Coolpad. Currently she is the CMO of Hachi, a leading provider of robotics technology that helps consumers and communities build AI-enhanced smart home ecosystems. She was voted CMO of the Year 2020 for her contribution in Artificial intelligence companies where she managed a wide range of branding activities covering corporate strategy, media platform building and management, as well as marketing for corporate clients and consumers across various product lines, successfully building the international and local presence of local AI start-ups in China and effectively enhancing their global visibility and reputation.