At the 2021 spring edition of Smartcom Summit 2021 meeting, Petra Claessen (CEO @ BTG), Eric Reij (Chairman @ BTG), Patrick Verstappen (Regional Account manager @ CommScope), Paul Bree (InfraTech @ VDL groep), Hugo Brandhorst (Business Development Manager @ Cellnex) and Epko van Nisselrooij (Key Account Manager @ Axis communications) sat down with moderator Danny Frietman (Moderator @ BTG) to talk smart cities and everything involved.
Everything is getting smarter: The way we work, our devices, the homes we live in, even the cities we call home. It’s a transformation that’s visible everywhere in society. One that brings its own set of challenges and opportunities for anyone involved, from citizens to entrepreneurs, municipalities, and policymakers.
BTG is a branch organization that’s active in the IT and telecom industry. It aims to connect different organizations from the private as well as the public sector with common interests in the field of IT and telecom.
Together with their partners, corporations like CommScope, Cellnex, Axis Communications, Nokia, The Future City Foundation, amongst others, they formed expert groups around topics like AI, 5g, cybersecurity, circular economics, and smart cities.
These expert groups are not only a way to collaborate but to share and bring knowledge and experience together from different domains and industries.
A framework for smart cities
Recently, the BTG expert group Smart Society developed the BTG Smart Cities stack. A multi-layered framework that can serve as a foundation upon which smart cities can be built. It functions as a conversation starter about topics around smart cities to enable policymakers to gain new insights and knowledge in new domains related to smart cities.
One of the most important and interesting aspects of the BTG stack is the open structure. There’s no lock-in: it’s vendor-independent and reusable to accommodate municipalities as well as possible.
Smart city technology is already here
Smart cities are not science fiction. As Epko van Nisselrooij (Axis Communications) explains in the session, the solutions and tech that are necessary to create smarter and healthier cities are already here. By combining tech and data, cities can become smart very quickly. It’s only a matter of a new mindset.
Epko cites a recent project as an example of this. The city of Amsterdam and the Johan Cruyff Arena teamed up with Nokia and CommScope to build a dedicated network for the Johan Cruyff Arena involving 5G, sensors, cameras, and data in an experiment in crowd management.
A call to action to cities
Petra Claessen (CEO @ BTG/TGG) and Danny Frietman (moderator of the session) end the session by making a case for cities to open up and share their use-cases and ideas with the BTG to get smarter sooner rather than later.
Watch the full video from the session below:
